I mixed up my dates in a recent post, so here’s a clarification on precisely when I wll be in Calgary and Edmonton.

Sunday, 25 January, I’ll be at the University of Calgary, talking about science education and creationism.

Monday, 26 January, I’ll be at the University of Alberta for a debate with Kirk Durston. For even further confusion, unfortunately, that site says the debate is tonight — that’s not going to happen. It’s next week.

These are open to the public. There will be festivities somewhere around them, I’m sure.

People are also asking about the Ohio event in February. It’s still at the state where none of the details are worked out, and I’ll post those as soon as I know them.

Checking my mail today, I discovered one curiosity, one holiday card, and one piece of Very Official Stationery from the University that employs me.

The curiosity: I actually got a reprint request. Those are very strange — it used to be that you’d always get a flurry of these after publishing something, and you’d be sure to order lots of extra copies of your paper so you could send them out, but nowadays they are going the way of the dodo. It’s so much easier to download the paper from the journal’s electronic archives, and even when I get a request because of limited access, I can just email a pdf. I usually only get these from third world countries anymore. This one, though, was from the US. From Liberty University. Asking for a copy of my review of Miller’s book. Weird. Sorry, but I don’t have any paper copies of that article…and the request didn’t include an email address. How quaint!

The holiday card: it was from the OSU Students for Freethought. May the FSM nod benignly upon you, and caress you all with his pastalicious appendages.

The Official Notice: my request for a sabbatical leave next year has been Officially Approved! Huzzah! I have big plans for some serious writing, new course development, and new research directions, and now I may actually get the time to do it all.

This is sad news. Greg Cahill, an old acquaintance who had been a fellow graduate student with me at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, has died suddenly. I did not know him well, but I remember him as a fine fellow among my small cohort of fellow students, and it’s sad to hear of this unfortunate loss.

No, I haven’t forgotten how to blog all of a sudden — I’ve been distracted. I wrenched an ankle wrestling with a snow blower the other day, and woke up this morning with my foot all swoll up like a lumpy ol’ potato with five little toes wiggling at one end. It’s not good.

Joints are such a fragile point of failure. I’m finding the little lower torso replacement illustrated above extremely enticing right now.

Even though we couldn’t be there in the flesh, we did watch the ceremony over the web…and there’s our boy, receiving his diploma. Yay!

It was not an auspicious start to the day. Before we could even leave for my son’s commencement at UW Madison, we had to clear the 6″-8″ of snow that had fallen overnight from our driveway. Then we had to flounder through unplowed roads to the highway. Then we discovered near-blizzard conditions of blowing snow on the road, but we persevered. We told ourselves that it would get better the farther east we went — Minneapolis always has wimpier weather than we do.

Then we got to the freeway…and it got worse. The roads were icy and slick, everyone was limping along at half the speed limit (except the idiot drivers of 18-wheelers, who were howling along at over 70mph in the left lane, stirring up billowing clouds of snow as they passed that would blind us all with a temporary white-out), and scattered all along the road were cars that had spun out and ended up in a ditch. We were held up by multiple car crashes. The final straw was when we pulled over to ask at a gas station about conditions further east, and were told a tale of apocalyptic catastrophe further on, with the freeway in both directions snarled with flipped and smashed cars.

We gave up, and came home. It was just too dangerous.

Now we are Disappointed Monkeys — we have to miss our son’s graduation. It also means he is stuck in dreary, uninteresting, barren Madison for Christmas, since we planned on bringing him back with us.

At least the university will be streaming the 2008 Winter Commencement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, so we can watch it, but it’s not the same. If any of you happen to be going to the commencement for your own kids (or perhaps because you’re graduating, too), could you listen for the name Connlann Myers and give a little whoop and holler for us? We’d like to have been there, but we thought that orphanhood would be a really lousy graduation gift.

I’m a pilgrim today, traveling far to the east to the mysterious land of Wis-con-sin, where I shall spend some time in adoration of the son.

My middle child, the cute and monkey-like Connlann, is graduating from the University of Wisconsin Madison tomorrow, with a degree in English. Hooray for the hard work and success of our boy! Hooray for rituals of completion! Hooray for the end of chunky great tuition payments!

So, anyway, I shall be spending most of my time today driving, and most of tomorrow driving, and a good spell of tomorrow sitting in uncomfortable seats watching a ceremonial parade of strangers, but it is all worth it.

(Thanks to Lisa M for sending me the charming Happy Monkey illustration.)

Perhaps you have been pondering the meaning of the new traditional greeting, Happy Monkey! (important usage note: it is not Merry Monkey, nor is it Happy Monkey Day. It is simply “Happy Monkey”, full stop. Trying to change the phrase means you are waging war on the Monkey, and you know how they will respond.) I haven’t. I’ve been bogged down in the end-of-semester grind for the last week, writing tests, giving tests, grading tests, and there has been little room in my brain for deep philosophical thought.

But then, just a few minutes ago, I reached an end. The exams and papers were all marked and graded, and I filled out the forms and submitted them to the registrar. And I had an epiphany. Happy Monkey is not a day, not a greeting card, not just a phrase. Happy Monkey doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Happy Monkey…perhaps…means a little bit more. And what happened then…? Well, my small Monkey grew three sizes that day!

Happy Monkey is any moment that you feel the burdens lifted, that you feel a lightening of the mood, that you feel puckish and prankish and like kicking your heels. Happy Monkey can strike any time, any day!

So Happy Monkey, everyone! And may you have many Happy Monkeys in days to come!

A quick note of thanks to the UCF chapter of the Campus Freethought Alliance for the pleasant time in Florida (especially pleasant now that I’ve come home to the prospect of several inches of snow today). We did get a nice photo of our last supper together: pizza and beer, of course.