First Evening Fishing of the Season

One of the great pleasures of living on a lake, is sizing up the current weather, and walking down to the dock to cast a line into the murky depths.  Tonight was the first time this season that I wet a lure.  Alas, without a nibble.  As my brother would say:  "tonight the fish won."

I was joined by Candace, Sarah and Thomas, all of whom lasted approximately five minutes when nothing was hooking itself to their Zebco poles.  They, however, companionably stayed with me while I continued fishing, tossing rocks into the water, and trying (with some success) to snatch flies out of midair.

Even without any success, I love hearing the frogs croak, the birds chirp, and seeing deer in the distance, making their way from their hidey-holes deep in the trees toward unplowed fields searching for the last remnants of last year's crop.

And all was right with the world.

Doing the Teaching Thing...

I've been teaching a class at Creighton this semester, and that has put a pinch on my available time for other activities.  This blog has been one of the casualties.

Time to actually be at the class has been stolen from my time at work.  Time to prepare for the class has come from my writing time.

Now, I find I'm counting down the days until the end of the semester, when I will get that time back.

Not that there haven't been rewarding aspects to the class.  I enjoy the interaction with the students -- they are enthusiastic about soon starting their careers, and are looking forward to finishing school (they are all seniors).  They have interesting, and sometimes odd, takes on the world.  For example, in their world, Apple Inc. is taking over and is ultra-popular, whereas in my world, they are a quirky company with a failed computer business model and were only able to survive and thrive by releasing a series of very successful consumer electronics products.

But preparation is a huge drag.  I spend close to five hours per case reading and preparing my teaching plan. And there are two classes per week, so with the travel time, office time, grading time and everything else, I'm spending close to fifteen hours a week on this "hobby."  It is seeming a lot more like "work" than "fun."

And I never worked so cheap in my life.  The compensation is, to put it mildly, pathetic.

So, I'm now contemplating -- if asked -- would I agree to do this again.  Do the positive aspects outweigh the negative ones?