Okay, taking a break from the Enlightenment view of God… (can somebody help me? the world's a blur and I think it's 'cuz my head is spinning… wheeee… ::falls down::) Leaving shortly for Grandmother's House (over I-80 and through Nebraska…) Proofread a page from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica for Distributed Proofreading. I love that encyclopedia… I'm such a book-geek. 🙂 I can't wait until it's on Project Gutenberg — anything's better than this travesty. Oh, and PG needs more theological works. Calvin and Luther, especially. Newton would be nice, too. Basically the "movers and shakers" you learn about in Western Civ class. Wonder if DP takes donations…
Went to the TEAM thing tonight. I've always hated the "organized" events, because basically they put 200 MS & HS students in a gym, give them basketballs and board games, and tell them to have fun. I've never really liked such unstructured time — I was always the kid who sat on his own at recess and read a book or, in my case, wrote outlandish "programs" in my own made-up BASIC variant, while the balls whizzed by my head. I'm really surprised I didn't lose more brain cells… though I never could figure out why the programs didn't work… Couldn't be because they're not really in GW-BASIC, could it, Kev?
Thankfully my 6th grader was pretty game to do stuff, and so we shot hoops (er, well, missed hoops) for a while, played UNO, and had a pretty good time. I was struck by something, though — as soon as I walked into the gym with him, balls whizzing by my head, I was back in elementary school, a short kid ducking projectiles and not really sure what to do. I'd always loathed recess, because it was just that sort of time — nothing specific to do — and I never was really good at integrating myself into groups. Once bitten, twice shy, I guess. Frankly, I have no clue how to just start doing something; if I don't know what to do, I don't do anything. We eventually ended up trading off. He'd take a shot, I'd take one, lather-rinse-repeat. The interesting thing was that, once I got warmed up, I started getting the same thrill from getting the ball in the hoop as I get from solving a nasty programming problem. Basically, I think I probably could have been a really successful jock — 5'6" isn't captain of the basketball team, but it's not so much a matter of physical qualities as the drive behind it. That's what I've got. If I had wanted athletic success bad enough, I could have had it — but I didn't, and I don't. It surprised me, because I've spent so long thinking of myself as an intellectual that I never credited what might have been. I got, you could say, a moment's glimpse down a road not taken.
Then I went back to avoiding collisions… I enjoyed the time, though, which is more than I can say for eight years worth of recesses.