I left Seattle 16 hours ago, but I’m still not in Milwaukee.  My first flight arrived on time, I enjoyed my first visit to Minneapolis.  Second flight took off on time, but then we started circling.  We spent about 45 minutes circling above madison Wisconsin, only to find out that we can’t land in Milwaukee.  It was too foggy there, and the transponder on the ground was, well, broken.  So they fired up the engines, and we headed to Detroit.   We landed in Detroit around 11:30pm (EST at this point).   Luckily, they are going to turn the plan around at 8:30 am and try again for Milwaukee. With the time difference, we should get there just after 8:30am.

Now, I just have to see if the shuttle agency honors my reservation and payment from last night.  And, more importantly, see if my luggage arrives.  I was forced to check my luggage at the last minute due to the overhead bins being full.  I just want to put this out there for the airlines: I would give up the privilege of carrying on a bag, if you let me check it for free.  Just saying.

And now to McDonald’s.  Delta gave out meal vouchers, good for $7 towards breakfast at the airport.  McDonald’s was the first to open this morning, so I went there. I ordered a meal that should have been about $5.  After getting my food, and looking at the receipt, I saw that they had upsized my meal to get it as close to $7 as possible.  They made my meal a large and added an extra hash brown.  I don’t know if they do this to everyone, but one or all, it is unethical.  Sorry McDonald’s, I’ll be calling your corporate office and Delta’s corporate office when I get a chance.  This behavior is not truthful and is not ethical.  If it is a one time thing, great, now you know it happened.  It it is systematic, then I hope you will address it.

Ok – back to setting in the airport.

For the last 15 or so months, I’ve been the Webmaster for SIGCSE 2010 (http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2010).  SIGCSE stands for the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education.  Most of my publications are in the computer science education area, so I’m excited to be able to go.  I’ve never actually had a publication at SIGCSE, but have had 2 conference papers at ITICSE 2007 (associated conference) and have had a publication in the SIGCSE bulletin.

Since I do hope to shift my career back to academics at some point, I’m also going to be on the look out for CS departments that are hiring. Maybe there is a need for someone with my background

Being the Webmaster for a conference is a lot of work. Requests for updates come from a lot of different people, and there is just a lot of information to collect, parse, format, and post (all at the right times). Apparently I enjoyed doing it, because I am performing the same role next year.  I’ve already go the 2011 site up and running, http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2011.

I’ve got a full Yoga schedule tonight, but I’ll be flying out tomorrow and enjoying the west of the week at the symposium! I’ve even found a Yoga class to check out when I’m in Milwaukee.

Well – in December, I completed the Baptiste Level 1 Teacher Training in Mexico. It was an awesome experience, made even more awesome by attending as a couple. There is so much more I could say about this training, but I’m not going to. If anyone out there ever goes through this program, it is best if you enter with a completely open mind and have no expectations.

Last month, starting on Jan 12th, I started in the Teacher Mentorship Program at Shakti Vinyasa Yoga (where we practice). This is a pretty unique program in the Yoga world (from what I can tell anyway). As part of this program, I assist two nights a week in our 8 class intro series. Assisting takes multiple forms in this environment. We organize the room, teach some Yoga philosophy, demonstrate poses, and physically assist the class. Our studio is very hands on, with the teachers and assistants actually helping students with safe alignment and the deepening of poses.

My first month was a lot of fun. I was able to see a class from a different perspective. Literally. Viewing a class from the front of the room feels very different than being in the middle of the room, as part of the class.  It took 2 or 3 classes, but now I feel at home in the studio as one of the teachers. In the last week of my first intro series, I was able to teach 2 sections of the class (1 each on different days). Over the next few months, the amount of teaching that I get to do will increase. It is a lot of work to become a Yoga teacher this way, but it is the right way for me. Lots of training time, lots of hard work.

As usual, I’ve been very busy.   2 of the last 3 weekends, I participated in the Teacher Assisting Program (TAP) at Shakti Vinyasa Yoga.  This was about 24 hours of training, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.   I supplemented both weekends with 8am Saturday practice, and the Sunday 9:30 practice.    Overall: awesome experience.

So, what exactly did I do?  We learned how to assist other people in Yoga poses.  Assisting always starts with safe alignment (the corrective assist).  Once you have someone in a safe position, all kinds of possibilities open up.   You can give support, spark awakening, help some one go deeper and expand their edge.   I had a great time, and learned a lot.

Since we all needed people to practice on, I ended up doing lots and lots of Yoga poses over the workshop, and holding some of them for a very long time (longer than I’m used to).   This turned out to be a very valuable experience.   I learned a lot of things to help deepen my own practice and to help others along their own path and learned how to analyze my own body in a pose and see where I can self adjust.

To top it all off – assisting is fun.  There are some standard templates to assists, but there is lots of room to be creative and really find the best way to help someone in this moment.  I had a chance on Sunday to assist someone for an entire class – and since some of the poses are taken several times, I already had a change to experiment a bit.

Next steps: I have already applied to enter the mentoring program at our studio.   I have an evaluation this weekend where I will assist one of our teachers during a class.   And we’ll see where it goes from there.

All of this experience should be a great help when we head to the Baptiste Level 1 teacher training.

Earlier this week we enjoyed the October cupcake of the month, Carmel Apple. It is fabulous, and it comes on a stick, what’s not to love?

We had a wonderful time in Disneyland last weekend.   The parks are very manageable (compared to the size of Disney World).   So, it was nice to be able to do everything we wanted to do in just two days (including riding a lot of rides twice: space mountain, big thunder mountain, the matterhorn, haunted mansion, and buzz lightyear).

The lines were ok.  Saturday early evening was a little crazy, but other than that it was ok.   We saw the Fireworks both nights (9:25, but the park was open until midnight).   And then Sunday morning, the park wasn’t supposed to open until 10am, but it was open early…  So we went in and knocked out a few rides early.

Also, on Saturday, we had 6 free Fastpasses (Disney’s system that lets you head to the front of the line).   This helped a lot!   We were able to avoid a lot of line waiting.

Fun time! great weather.   All pictures are here -> http://picasaweb.google.com/mike.helmick/Disneyland#

Not my brithday… Cortny’s birthday is coming up (Sunday)!  Happy Birthday!

We’ve got a very exciting and fun filled birthday weekend planned…. Disneyland!   We’ll be spending 2 short days in California with Mickey and the gang.

That’s all for now – I’m sure we’ll have more to say after we actually go.

Our Baptiste teacher training bootcamp is approaching pretty quickly (less than 2 months now).   We have been putting in the physical preparation (4 to 5 practices a week).   I start every week wanting to go 6 times, but that is a huge time commitment, and just is not always a possibility.

16 changes of Yoga clothes

Shortly after signing up for the bootcamp, I went through a rough spot in my Yoga practice.  This was, as one might imagine, mostly related to rough spots in my other obligations.  Work has been (and continues to be) extremely stressful and mentally draining.   I let this carry over way too much, into my non-work life and into my Yoga.  This resulted in lots of mental distractions, physical missteps, and a generally bad quality of life.  Kind of depressing, I know.

So, I’m happier now than I was two weeks ago.  I’m more focused than I was two weeks ago.   Quantifying how this happened is a little difficult.   Of course, Cortny has been a big help, because she is probably the most supportative wife out there.  Thanks   Getting back to the Yoga, she even supports my crazy Yoga schedule.   She joins me most of the time, but she does like to skip Saturday at 8am… I don’t really blame her.   This support extends all he way to Mexico, as Cortny is also going to the teacher training (even though she doesn’t want to teach Yoga right now).

Over the last two weeks or so, I’ve been trying to change things.   I can’t get rid of the stressful work environment (unless you need an assistant professor of computer science).   What can I do?  Let it go.   Don’t react.   Those are the tools that I have at my disposal.   This is one reason I find Yogic philosophy so appealing, helpful tools for everyday life.   I’m not leaving things up to someone else, I am in control.   I don’t have to wait, I can make changes now.   This is just a sampling of what we’re learning and what we will be learning.    What really helps me, is that the asana practice (the physical part, what most people say then they mean Yoga) really ties it all together.

When we first started Yoga (intro series a year and a half ago), one of our teachers said that your Yoga mat is like a mirror.   The mat is like a mirror in that how you are on your mat reflects how you are in the real world.   Do you quickly react to adverse conditions, can you work through a difficult spot, can you keep your mind clear and focused?  These are tough issues.   What happens each time I come to the mat changes.  Sometimes I can hold a tough pose for a long period of time and not notice, sometimes 3 or 4 seconds in and we can’t move on fast enough.   The point is, I’m trying to make changes to get towards the non-reactive side, both in my Yoga and in my life.

It has been a long journey, and at times I feel like I’m still at the beginning. But here we are.

I can say that I’m ready to go to teacher training now.   Not only because I have enough clothes for 16 practices (I get very sweaty…), but because I am mentally ready.   I know that I am ready to let the experience happen and now to have expectations about what will happen, not because I can do every yoga pose with perfect alignment.

In 3 weeks, I start the teacher assisting program at our studio here.  24 hours of training over 2 weekends.   I’m very excited about this for 2 reasons: it will give me 2 weekends to just let go and be present in the Yoga studio, and it should be a great preview to our week long teacher training experience.

Wow – longer entry than I intended, and it went a totally different direction.  But I think I’m happy with the way it turned out!  I’m sure that some people have wondered why I’m always going to Yoga, maybe this sheds some light on that.

We are grownups!   Cortny and I went to the Toy Story and Toy Story 2 double feature today, in 3D.

Yes, we’ve seen these movies a bunch of times, but it was really cool to seem them in the theatre again.  And 3D has gotten a lot better.  And, now we’re both even more excited to go to Disneyland in a few weeks.  There is even a Toy Story ride at California Adventure.   I am also excited to go to California for the first time.

Other than that – life is just busy.   Work has been going full blast for over 6 months straight.  At least I have some down time in sight (Disneyland and Yoga teacher training).  Not that teacher training will be downtime, but I will have zero time to think about anything but Yoga for 8 days.   That in itself should be well worth it and a cleansing experience.

I’ve also been doing lots of work on Cascade (www.cascadelms.org).   I’m trying to think about how to handle the next major area of expansion – making the whole system more social.   I think it is important to remember that I’m not trying to build the next facebook, but that getting students to interact with each other more is a good thing.

Finally! New TV shows are back! So here is the run down of what we’re watching this fall:

My favorite show now – How I Met Your Mother. I love this show because it is consistent every week, and being the same age as the characters I identify with a lot of them. Of course because of this, can I see that some of the time based stuff they’ve done in the show is a little off

We sort of stick to CBS for the rest of Monday. I’m not a fan of Two and a Half Men, but watch anyway. And the Big Bang Theory has been upgraded from “watch it if its on” to “season pass” on the Tivo.

Tuesday is an off night for TV I guess.

Wednesday, we are now watching Glee.   I don’t think it will last, but will enjoy it while it is on.

Thursday is the big night on NBC (hey, that’s tonight).   SNL is on (for now – until 30 Rock comes back), Parks and Recreation, The Office, and Community (which was OK last week, we’ll give it a chance).

Nothing else on the schedule until SNL on Saturday night.

Then Sunday rolls around.  We always watch “Sunday Morning” on CBS.   Then Sunday night, there is the one reality show that we watch, “The Amazing Race.”  And the week is rounded out with “Mad Men.”

Apparently, when you write it down… we watch a lot of TV.   Of course, I’m always doing something else while watching TV.   Typing the blog post, handling email, working on Cascade, learning to program the iPhone, etc…   Always busy, but I must admit, I work better with a little background noise (or background TV in this case).