Listen to this post! 

Know thyself and Nothing in
excess
(inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi)

Since I’ve now been ‘tagged’ with the 5 Things meme thing, in the spirit of
the first aphorism above I’ll share a bit about myself. I’m not a fan of chain letters
(or, in this case, chain blog posts?), but I confess that I have enjoyed
learning more about the personal lives of some of my favorite bloggers. So on
the off chance that some of my readers would like to know a bit more about me,
I’ll play along…

1. In high school some of my buddies and I created the South Lakes High School Sleeping
   Club. We had a motto: “We sleep around” (we even had buttons made!). On random
   weekend nights we’d sleep on some unsuspecting girl’s lawn and, if we were
   lucky, sometimes get invited in the next morning for breakfast. We thought we
   were so cool…
2. I have what my wife might call an inexplicable fascination with a few key TV
   shows and comic strips from my childhood: Looney
   Tunes, Speed Racer, The Muppet Show, Schoolhouse Rock!, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, etc. I also
   think Leave It to
   Beaver is one of the (unintentionally) funniest shows of all time.
3. I’m a huge baseball fan and grew up idolizing Mike Schmidt. I told my
   professors during my first summer of doctoral
   coursework that I would be leaving class early to see the best third baseman
   of all time get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and that
   they would just have to figure out with me how I could satisfy the rest of my
   course requirements. I think the conversation went something like this: “You
   want to miss several weeks of your doctoral courses for WHAT?” “It’s a
   once-in-a-lifetime event. I have to go now or miss it forever.” “Oh. Umm…
   okay.” Kudos to them for helping me figure it out (‘cause I was going no matter
   what!). Definitely the highlight of my sports fandom.
4. I almost flunked out my freshman year at college: a classic case of a kid with a repressive
   parent letting loose in a completely unstructured environment. If you told my
   former hallmates that I now had a law degree and a doctoral degree and was
   teaching at a major research university, they’d laugh in your face. I later
   posted that freshman year report card in my classroom to show my eighth-graders
   that you can come back from adversity. Not sure any of them bought it (maybe if
   I had been making millions instead of a first-year teacher salary…). [On a side note, that middle school’s mascot was the wapiti.]
5. I have the three cutest, nicest, smartest kids on the planet. I know you
   think your kids (or grandkids) are, but actually mine are. Really.

Like John,
now that I’ve shared, in the spirit of the second aphorism above I’ll cut off my part
of the chain here. Tag, no one’s it.

Happy New Year, everyone.