Summer Activities

As we approach the official start of summer in a few days, I should explain that my attention to this blog will be rather hit and miss throughout the season.  I hate to disappoint the tens of thousands of devoted readers, but I’ll be back in full force in the fall.  Why am I taking some time off from blogging, you ask?  I’ll be embarking on a ten-day trip to Northern California to see the Redwoods and Sequoias with a couple of friends, Johannes and Marcus. On the heels of this pleasant junket I’ll have my two-week annual training for the military, which for this year happens to be at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.  I'll be teaching an online course somehow throughout these trips.   Meanwhile, I have to write a couple of book reviews for a scholarly journal, one on the origins of the Thirty Years War and the other on the 16th-century Protestant reformer Martin Bucer.  A number of changes will be occurring this fall for me, so I hope to get a head start in preparing for them later this summer.  For instance, I’ll be juggling a few classes for Hexington College and the University of Mantua and plan to finalize my syllabi by the middle of August. (The reader will again note that these colleges are pseudonyms.)

Finally, I will be undergoing rigorous and sustained therapy—emotional, mental, spiritual, and telepathic—this August at the Melchior Center for Relaxation and Healing in Green Gate, Minneapolis.  Of all my summer activities I’m probably looking most forward to this experience. They say that you leave Melchior a different person than the poor wretch who showed up three weeks earlier. You basically get a mental makeover.  They return you to your family with a vastly improved personality, a brand new temperament, and a completely different worldview.  I’m already enrolled in a full “semester” of courses: Anger Management 101, Coping Mechanisms 130, and Road Rage Decision and Risk Analysis 310.  I was able to get into the last one, an upper-division class, because I’ve repeatedly taken the basic survey course elsewhere.  Also, lest I forget, I’m enrolled in an elective course entitled “I Like Me.”  Throughout the three weeks, the inmates take plenty of nature hikes and get sufficient nap time. I’m told there’s a coffee shop on the second floor of the impressive facilities.   An interesting detail that I gleaned from Melchoir's promotional brochure is that the headquarters building was originally greyish blue, but the management had  it painted brown because some of their more disturbed patients, upon arrival, have the habit of splattering their feces on the walls.  I won't do this, for my issues are relatively mild.  Anyway, put all of these things together, including the free bag of Cheetos you get just for signing up, and you can see why I’m looking forward to August.