robglazebrook.com

So… what’s been going on over here? Long time, no see! Glad to see you’re all still hanging around. Although I’m starting to worry you only exist when I’m directly interacting with you. And that in turn makes me feel guilty for ignoring you for so long. And my ~guilt~ in turn makes me want to ignore you all over again. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle, people.

Life is pretty busy over on this side of the computer monitor. Amanda and I are still trying to sell our house, though it’s not going as well as we had hoped. I think we’re going to have to drop the price of the house a touch in order to get the sort of traffic we need to get it sold. This here economic crisis thingy isn’t doing us any favors, I can tell you. Part of our problem, I’m guessing, is that our home is well-suited for first-time buyers, older buyers on a fixed income, and young families — and those are the exact people that are going to have a hard time getting approved for a loan right now. Luckily, Amanda and I have really good credit, and we’ve already been pre-approved at several banks. But we have to sell this place before we can move. Anyone looking for a solid lil’ house in a quiet neighborhood?

I’m also currently teaching my web class again through Des Moines Public Schools, which means my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are filled from now (well, starting two weeks ago) through mid-November. The class is going really well this time around; students are asking lots of questions, which means we’re falling behind, but it also means they’re interested in what I’m teaching. And that makes up for any scheduling hassles it might cause. I was planning on this being the last time I taught this class, but I’m enjoying it enough this go around that I might sign on for another tour of duty.

CSSnewbie still helps to keep me busy when I’m not otherwise occupied. And I’m happy to report that I’m inching ever closer to being able to give the site a complete facelift, which I’ve been itching to do since around late February of this year. My designer friend Jeremy had some free time (or at least made some free time) for me, so we’re hashing out a new design now. He and I are also throwing ideas back and forth for a web-based business I might start up on the side that has me pretty excited.

Other than that, I have a group-type meeting (Des Moines Web Geeks) every other Monday evening, an exercise class after work on Wednesdays, and social stuff most weekends (Amanda and I were in Minnesota for a wedding two weekends ago, and we had engagements Friday, Satuday, and Sunday nights this last weekend). So what I’m saying is, if you would like to catch up with me in person, you might want to somehow be associated with one of those things mentioned above. Or schedule several days in advance: I already have tentative social plans for this coming Wednesday, Sunday, and Monday evenings, and a possibility for a Saturday evening thing, but Friday is currently free as far as my calendar knows. Call now! Operators are standing by.

Oh, and one last thing: today is the Two Year Anniversary of me buying my house! :) And since I won’t be around tonight (see above), Amanda and I celebrated last night. We made pulled pork burritos with slow-cooked onions and green peppers, refried beans, Spanish rice, and salsa verde. We also topped off the meal with a ~fantastic~ bottle of Bordeaux we brought back with us from Paris. And I have to say: it was the best Mexican-American-French fusion we’ve EVER made.

I managed to survive my first week of teaching! In fact, I happen to believe I more than survived it — I kicked its ass. Or maybe that’s a hyperbole in the other direction. At the very least, we’ve come to some sort of a ceasefire: all of the students that showed up for the first class also showed up for the second, suggesting they’re willing to weather me for three weeks at least. And when I left class on the second day, I came to the surprising realization that I had honestly and actually enjoyed myself during class. Revelation of revelations, no?

But I’m considering that a good sign: By the second day of class, my jitters were gone and I was enjoying myself. Now I have just four more class periods before Amanda and I head to Europe!

Which… well, we’re thinking we should spend a little more time thinking about this week. We still don’t have bus tickets between the cities, so we should probably get on that. And I sorta intended to re-learn a touch of French before we left (not sure if that’ll really happen, though).

In other happy news, my mom celebrated the 19th edition of her 27th birthday last Thursday. She has officially had as many 27th birthdays as she had regular-type birthdays before I was born. This August, I’ll finally catch up to her, and I fully intend to pass her by in early August 2009. Pamela Glazebrook remains the oldest surviving member of the Forever 27 Club. She resides in Johnston.

Whew! My life continues to move forward at a breakneck speed, whether I’m ready for it or not.

I start teaching my first web design class in five days. I have my course packet written and sent off to the coordinator, who will make me copies and make sure they’re in my classroom on the first day. Last time I checked, I have 14 people signed up, and since the class is currently capped at 15 students maximum, that’s a pretty awesome number to have.

Of course, I still have some details to work out for the class. For example, I’m going to be teaching my students how to upload their files via FTP to a server, so they can see their pages live on the web. But I have no idea where that space is going to exist. And I’ll need to have code examples for most of my classes that don’t yet exist (although Justin pointed out that the code is simple enough, I could probably write it on the fly without much of a problem).

And then there’s the class that starts in April. I’ve barely even started planning it. I have a general outline as to what I want to teach each day, but I don’t have specifics laid out yet, and I haven’t written a single word of the course packet yet. And if the last course packet is any indication, this one will probably be around 30 pages long. So I should really get writing, is what I’m saying. Especially considering we leave for Europe three weeks from tomorrow, and I have to have the whole class planned before then. Yeesh.

CSSnewbie is still taking up a lot of my time, as well, but at least that is fairly rewarding work. Not monetarily rewarding yet, by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s personally rewarding. And I guess that’s something. Happily, I’ve found a couple of people willing to write me a couple of guest articles for the site while I’m on vacation, so I won’t need to worry about generating a boatload of additional content in advance.

ICanHasHope has sadly fallen by the wayside. I haven’t updated that site in like a week. It doesn’t take up all that much time, but I don’t have a lot of free time regardless, and I just can’t justify spending that time for the amount of traffic (or lack of traffic) that it’s pulling in. Sadly, it’s actually gained more steady traffic since I’ve started ignoring it. Although, I’d still encourage anyone and everyone to submit images, and I’ll post them. :)

Non-web-related life has also been busy. I spent a good portion of last week (and a bit of this week) sick with the flu, or at least flu-like symptoms. My grandfather has also taken a (momentary) turn for the worse, health-wise, so I’ve spent a bit of time over the last couple of evenings visiting him in the hospital. You can read more about that on my mom’s site.

And there’s been other stuff taking up a bit of my free time that I’ll probably talk about real soon. But you know what? I think I’ve already spent enough words and minutes talking about working. :)

I’ve posted a bunch of new photos up on Flickr, for those of you who… err, like looking at me, I guess. They’re a couple of weeks old, though, so you’ll have to imagine what I might look like now. And for those that have a bad imagination, here’s a little help: my hair is a couple of millimeters longer, my facial hair is a bit scruffier, and today I’m wearing black instead of blue. Otherwise, the resemblance is downright uncanny.

I only have 18 days until I start teaching my first class! This is exciting and scary simultaneously. Right now it’s mostly scary, because I haven’t finished the course pack for that class yet. And I haven’t even started the pack for the second class. Or planned what I’m going to teach in the second class, for that matter. I think I’ll have to start thinking about that stuff this weekend. :)

So that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend. Well, that and writing stuff for CSSnewbie. And I’m going out with friends on Saturday night. And I’ll have to post a few more comics on ICanHasHope. I keep busy, is the uniting theme here.

This year, I managed to come up with four resolutions for the new year. I didn’t manage to post them within the first week ~of~ that new year, but you know. Baby steps. My resolutions, in all their lazy glory, were to:

• Work out at least once a week,
• Either take or teach a class,
• Speak better Spanish than I did at the end of last year, and
• Blog more frequently.

And I realized this morning that, even though we’re not quite four weeks into the new year, I’m already making decent progress on my resolutions. Go me, eh? Here’s how they’re going so far:

Work out 1X Weekly

This one was probably the easiest of the bunch to manage, because I’m signed up for a weekly “boot-camp style” (their words, not mine) exercise class through work. Basically, every week I pay a nice woman named Sarah five bucks to hurt me for an hour. Which I consider a great bargain, considering businessmen around the world pay easily 20 times that amount, and all they get extra is a bit of leather and perhaps a whip. I’ve also managed to get to the gym at least one other time every week – usually Monday or Tuesday evenings. So I’m doing all right!

Take or Teach (Sink or Swim?)

As my exuberant post yesterday mentioned, I’ll be teaching a couple of web design classes starting in late March. I’m still really excited about this opportunity. And also a little nervous, now that I’ve had time to consider all the planning I need to get done for the class, on top of planning our upcoming Eurotrip (which I’ll be blogging more about in due time). And if this class goes well in the spring, there’s always the possibility of teaching it again in the fall. So yay there. :)

Speak More Gooder Espanol

Well, I certainly don’t speak worse Spanish, at any rate. This one is going to be a slower work-in-progress. I’m hoping that immersion will help me along a little bit – Amanda and I will be hanging out with Hannah and Tono on Sunday afternoon, and whenever the four of us are together, around 1/3 to 1/2 of the conversation is in Spanish. Personally, I’d prefer if the ratio were higher – I need to work on picking up new words. Of course, I worry my ears aren’t helping me out on this one. My hearing is getting worse these days, and sometimes I struggle to understand English.

Blog More

Luckily, it’d actually be difficult to blog ~less~ than I did towards the end of last year. And I’d say I’ve made good progress so far. This is my eighth post this month already, in less than four weeks. That’s pretty darn good for me. And I’ve also come up with a way to help encourage myself to blog with greater frequency. But I’ll talk about that in another post. :)