Once again, my Wednesday trip to the Great Wall Cafe.

Same food, different day. Maybe better pictures.



Here's the view from my designated table. looks empty, but the soonest I can get there for lunch is about 1:40 PM, after the rush, when the cooks are comin' out of the back and sitting down to eat. I order my usual, which they know by heart, and enjoy the quiet, and the AC, and the soft tones of some unintelligible oriental music.

Actually business is pickin' up. Several folks came in while I was eating and sat down to eat, rather than just get take-out. May be a good sign.



More of the Generals chicken. Well, the generals something or other, but it tastes like chicken.



And the rice. Damn, look at the size of those shrimp! I've got half of it in the fridge, for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Loving the stuff they cook at the Great Wall, but sometimes I think if I don't stop eating like this, they'll be able to see MY ASS from space. Later.

UPDATE: OK here's what the leftovers look like with a real camera.



Note the peppers, the actual color of the "chicken". Question is, will it survive till breakfast? Hm.

Well, I guess the whole class scedule bugaboo will be ok after all.

The college reps on the base want everything to work out, and the kids don't give a damn about the unconventional way it's going down, so I'm sure it'll all come out smooth as shit.

How did all this happen? Basically, the new guy who is running the Political Science department talked to me several months ago about teaching for them again. The last classes I had for them went down about a year ago. I had one class on the main campus that lasted about 16 weeks, a conventional semester, and another on base that lasted 8 weeks. The 8 week ones are concentrated, containing the same number of contact hours as a 16 week class, but lasting half the time. It was a class in constitutional law, which is always a blast to teach. Lots of interesting topics and heated class discussions.

The top twerps on the main campus across the highway were looking for a new guy to head up the department back then, wanting to hire some new PhD in the field so they could get some graduate classes started. This local campus is still playing catch up and trying to establish itself, trying to keep from having it's funding killed by the real main campus in Stevenville. When they found a contender, they brought this little twerp into my class in the last week of that 8 week semester, while I was giving final exams, and auditioned him in front of my students. Next thing I know this guy is being given all the old classes I used to teach and they didn't need my services any more. That was a year ago. Imagine my surprise when this guy calls me and asks me what classes I want to teach and when. I was totally taken aback.

He'd found that he needed someone to teach a few extra classes, and the old guy who used to schedule them sent him my way. I taught a mini term a few weeks back, between the regular semesters, and then the regular 8 week semester began last week, on the 29th. According to the talk I'd had months earlier (and I wrote this stuff down so I know what he told me), this 8 weeks I'd be teaching a class on State and Local Government, and the next 8 weeks, August to October, I'd teach a class on the Executive Branch. It was clear cut, so I told the CTC folks when I'd be available to teach for them, and they set up the rest of my schedule to fit everything together. A week or so before the semester began, I found out that the TSU class would be prorated. I'd get less money to teach it due to low enrollment, but I was willing to go along with that just to have a little extra money coming in.

So, I started the semester thinking all was well. Normal stuff; classes every day from 11:30 to 12:30, 12:30 to 1:30, and then evening classes for CTC from 4:45 to 7pm and 7:30 to 10pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a class for TSU from 4:45 to 7pm on Mondays and Wednesdays. Because of the holiday on Monday for memorial Day, The semester began on Tuesday. I'm about 20 minutes into my 4:45 CTC class, the first half of US History, talkin' about Columbus or somethin' like that, when the TSU rep on Ft. Hood comes knockin' at the door with a big smile on his face, tellin' me that I've got a class I'm supposed to be in in another room.

I'm totally shocked. I tell my folks to take a break and I go down there and sure enough, there's 4 students there waiting on me (4 of the 6 that are enrolled). I take down everyone's name and email and head back to the other class. The TSU rep is takin' it in stride. He just wants the class taught, and doesn't really care how I do it. He starts tellin' me that I can turn it into an online class or somethin'. I'm too pissed off and stunned to think, so I go back to my other class and sink myself into the comfort of familiar things; the Age of Exploration, the Black Death, the rise of the Nation State, and all that sort of crap. I'm thinkin', how the hell could this happen? How the hell could I have let this happen? Did I assume things that were false, or was there some sort of miscommunication? The main campus across the road is clueless about it all, and the TSU rep couldn't care a less, so I have to make up a way for this all to work out.

Later I find out that since there are only 6 students in each class, the college is going to re categorize them as Independent Study courses. That's to say, a graduate style course where students do work on their own and write papers for their grades. I've done a few of those classes, and they are always fun. Apparently there's a state rule about classes with fewer than so many students in them being unaccredited unless they are set them up this way. It's cool with me, but they still expect me to teach them as conventional classes. Well, that isn't going to happen. One will be taught that way, but the conflicted one is gonna mostly be online. I'll have them email me 4 short papers on topics in the chapters and one 10 to 15 page research paper. They'll study review materials in the chapters they read, and I'll set up times for them to take their midterm and final exams. If the fools on the main campus stay clueless, we'll all slide through this like pros.

of course, it could all blow up in my face at any moment, so I'll have no excuse to be bored this 8 weeks. Paydays should be rockin' though, and there's a few good gun shows comin' up.

On a lighter note, I went to the Great Wall Cafe today for lunch after my classes got out at 1:30, and took more pictures with the Razor of sinfully good Chinese food. Don't want you to get away without feeling a few pangs.



That's two dinner orders for lunch. A huge pile of shrimp fried rice on the right, with plump shrimpy goodness throughout, and General Tso's chicken on the left, with no broccoli thank you very much. There will be no green food to distract me from my mission. I eat about half of it, or maybe a third of it for lunch, and then take the rest home for dinner or lunch another day. It travels well. Hell, I may get up early Wednesday and have it for breakfast.

Anyway, I hope all your weeeks are less complicated than mine, and all your plans work out for ya. Cheers.

Not much to say on this Friday.

Gettin' ready to go over to Temple to get dad, to take him to our regular feed. All of us went down to Austin yesterday to eat at Papasito's, so this will be our second big feed in as many days. Probably take him to the drivin' range after, and let him give me some tips.

been stayin' up late recently scannin' old pictures and storin' then away. Here's an old one to give you somethin' to look at.



That's my great grandfather on the far left. He's the guy who came to Texas from Alabama after the Civil War. The others are his sons and daughters. My grandfather is the guy, fourth from the right, with his hat off. This old man W.S.S., was a Bastard and a half, or at least that's the story my dad tells me. He'd come to Texas in the 1870s and made good money, somehow, so that when this picture was taken he was a big land owner with lots of sharecroppers working his property. When his first wife died (my great grandmother), he married another woman. When he died, she was set up to get all his property. She sold it all and took the cash to California. My Grandfather got $200. He could have taken care of everyone, but in stead he treated them like crap and they all ended up becoming sharecroppers. He's buried in a cemetery in Salado, next to his first wife, but none of the other family is buried with him. So here's how my dad grew up...



Poor as hell, picking cotton on land my Grandfather farmed for another man (Dad is the kid in the middle). My Grandfather didn't have his own place till my dad started to send his salary home from the Army, so they could start making payments. Thank God for the Second World War, is all I can say, and the opportunities it brought to guys like my dad to build a better life.



Update: Talked to dad on the way to the feed last night. He confirmed that I'd gotten a figure wrong. He said that his folks had gotten $500 from granddad Wilson's estate after his death. His dad and uncles had worked their fathers land for years as sharecroppers, and thought they'd get a share of the land when he died. The second wife liquidated the property, shared out the money to the family, and then took the lions share of it and split to California. Dad said he remembered seeing his father crying over the issue after the fact, and his mom consoling him, telling him that $500 was better than $400. So my Grandfather went to work as a 'cropper for a man named Holland, at a place called Summers Mill, which is where my father grew up. It's a beautiful place. One of these days I'll go over and take pictures of it and show them to you.