Happy Hump Day CCSU,

Here we go, week 8—that last two-week combo hurt our participation just a little bit. When you compare all of the divisions and schools, everyone except CLASS and SEST is below their week 1-7 average in the number of participants. Shout out to Lauren V in SOB—240 minutes or 2400? Only the IRS knows for sure 😊.

How do we get our groove back? Maybe that’s the question for week 9. Also, what is that  Yuengling truck doing? Find the hidden truck on our PDF for extra bonus minutes! This truck is messing with our campus climate unless there are drinks to be had somewhere on campus? Also, on a climate note: a friendly reminder to make sure you complete the campus climate survey (search your inbox for an email from CCSU Office of the President heri@vainc.net)

This week was the helpful advice edition in recognition of advising week and the March Madness insanity. So without further delay—dig this advice from your colleagues. One of my favorites was, “Don’t take advice.” 😉Also, something interesting, the number of pieces of advice that start with “don’t”– don’t you know if you tell someone not to do something, they usually do it?

I think there is some great stuff in here, appreciate you all sharing your wisdom with us.

• “Make yourself indispensable…” (re: jobs)
• “The secret to a good marriage is some selective deafness” (RBG)
• As long as you are getting what you want, let the teenager have the last word.
• At the age or about 38 my mom told me to look at how a woman treats her father and that is likely how I would get treated if I married her. Two years later I met my wife.
• Be patient!
• Be prepared to jump through hoops set up people less intelligent than yourself.
• Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
• Do your #!@#@! homework
• Don’t jump off that cliff
• Don’t compare yourself to others.
• Don’t listen to me!
• Don’t put your partner on a pedestal, be beside them as a partner
• Don’t worry about being the best, just focus on being your best
• Focus on what you can do better in the future rather than mourning over the past.
• If it hurts, don’t do it
• If you want to figure out what you should be when you grow up, figure out three things you like and you’re good at. Where they intersect is what you should do.
• If your first born cries and your second newborn cries, attend to the first born as he/she probably is more aware of the situation than the newborn.
• It gets better.
• Keep going
• Listen
• Listen more than you speak and always be kind!
• Listen to your inner voice.
• Make your work fun and you’ll want to give up your weekend!
• Never spit into the wind
• Never take advice.
• One day at a time!
• One day at a time…
• Remember to take time for you
• Stay in your lane!
• Strive to be happy.
• Take deep breaths
• The only way out is through.
• The president (company) puts his pants on one leg at a time just like you do. When as a new hire just out of college I had to make a presentation to him.   Stayed with me throughout my career. 
• This too shall pass
• Treat everyone how you would like to be treated
• Trust your instincts
• Very few things are forever – make the best decision you can.
• When life gets you down just keep swimming, just keep swimming
• When you work at something you love….it’s still work….but you’ll love it!

Hey! Where do I keep my dad jokes? In a dad-a-base…

So I’m very far behind… and after this e-mail goes out tonight, you get to submit your minutes for the next week tomorrow. So without further ado the dad joke and gratitude edition with pictures. Since the last time I emailed out a image heavy e-mail to the list-serv, the email failed miserably, so hopefully you found this link. Enjoy! 🙂

Good evening list-serv– I managed to peel my eyes open long enough to stare down two weeks worth of activity data and mash them up into our two teams. Just in case, we mashed together a few divisions and the winner was…. (in bold)

Team Blue Devil Horns (21,276minutes)
(SEPS + SEST + IT + SA + Facilities + Presidents Office)

Team Blue Devil Hooves (25,936 minutes)
(CLASS + SOB + Athletics + Library + AcAff/Staff/Admin)

Way to show some CLASS you SOBs, you did it! By a few thousand minutes. They have Shelly from Athletics who apparently does not sleep they are so active. Now for some fun stuff

This week we requested your best cringeworthy/dad jokes and…

So let’s get to it! Bonus minutes for next week if you use one of these jokes in a department meeting, with your boss, or with kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, or in your next class! Jokes are in no particular order and a few of our favorites are in the attached PDF report with some other fresh jokes from our team. I should warn you, I’ve been sending my department a dad joke a day for the past few months—they weren’t laughing then—and they’re probably not laughing now 😉.

• “Q: What do you call a magician who loses his magic? A: Ian
• My grandfather always said his secret to his long-lasting marriage was that my grandmother was blind and he was deaf. #cringeworthy”
• What does a baby computer call his father? Data.
• Why did the skeleton not go to the ball? No-body to go with
• Why are you never hungry at the beach? Because of all the sand which is there!
• Knock knock, who’s there, orange, orange who, orange you glad I told you this joke
• Knock knock, who’s there? who….who who? What are you an owl. hahahaha!
• What do you call a snail that isn’t moving? An escar-stay.
• daughter age 6 drops a dime: oh no! I dropped my 10 centses. But Mom, I really only have 5 senses. That’s my joke. Good one huh?
• What shape is always getting into an accident? A “rec”tangle.
• The other day during a virtual teaching session, I kept hearing music and I could not figure out where it was coming from. After shutting everything off, I realized the music was coming from my printer. Apparently the paper was jamming.
• Today I gave my dead batteries away. They were free of charge.
• Why didn’t the homeowner confront the thief who stole his gate? He was worried he might take offense.
• Did you hear about the volcano? It was a real ash hole. (Came up with that one myself.)
• Today I gave my dead batteries away. They were free of charge.
• Which days are the strongest? Saturday and Sunday. The rest are weekdays.
• Did you get a haircut? No, I got them all cut!
• Why did the cow cross the road? To go to the moooooovies.
• Why was 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9. Hahaha
• What do you call a snake that’s 3.14 meters long? A pi-thon.
• What is Forrest Gump’s password? 1forrest1
• How do celebrities stay cool? They have many fans 🙂
• Why do dogs carry bones in their mouth? Because they don’t have pockets.
• I opened a restaurant on the moon, but it failed. No atmosphere.
• What if my dog only brings back the ball because he thinks i like throwing it?
• I’m not sure why I love Switzerland so much…but the flag’s a big plus!
• What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta!
• How do you organize a space party? You planet…

Lastly we asked everyone what is a simple pleasure you are grateful for? Take a look below. What words jump out at you? 😊

So we made it to week 5! I can’t believe there are a few of you who have no idea what a face palm is? Seriously? Never slammed your open palm against your face sitting in a meeting with a colleague, student, relative, and just wondered about the decisions  you’ve made in life that brought you to that exact moment?

Me neither.

Maybe it was from all the video gaming I did before securing a tenure-track position– and in order to clean up all those crazy line graphs (I’m by no means a graphic artist), I simplified our average participation across divisions for weeks 1-4 and then showed you how we sorted ourselves out for week 5. . In any case, welcome to the party Institutional Advancement, we did sadly lose the President’s Office participant.

Now full disclosure, these survey results do not get sent to your direct supervisors, Dean’s, Department Chairs, President Toro… no—they go to Google’s infinite database system to feed you specifically targeted advertisements. I say this because you all were likely lying or you do way too much work on the weekends. RECHARGE those batteries. Next time I’m asking you all what you do for fun when you’re not working.

Since there’s not enough space in the PDF for your favorite activities, let me share some fun ones from our friends this week.

• Honestly, this! There were days when this was my motivation. Thank you!!
• Soul Power session at SCW weekend MANIA
• Pickleball (who is playing pickleball in CT???)
• Peloton and GoNoodle with kids (you all need to watch GoNoodle on youtube, they are silly)
• Long naps (is this similar to long walks on the beach?)
• Zoom 🤣- dance party with family
• Lifting
• walking
• walking
• Sydney Cummings YouTube – check her out!
• Walking
• walking
• Jazzercising!!! (as always)

Living the dream… or dreaming about living

Jay, Cass, and Jan

Thus the final week of the challenge comes to a close today. Here is the e-mail and PDF that was sent out to our University List-Serv!

Cheers to all who participated, it was a blast to organize and write! 🙂

Good morning!

I tried to come up with some good excuses for why this is late. I’ve got a few. Pick your favorite:

1. I’m on a 4/4 load and not a 3/3.
2. It’s exam week and I needed the time to enter my final grades.
3. Do you know how hard it is to teach fractions to a third grader? It’s easier to get consensus on the FY21 budget than explain numerators and denominators!
4. I’m tired and this semester has been a whirlwind. Is the end in sight?
5. What day is this? Why won’t WebEx load!?

Ok, let’s get real now. For those of you reporting over 900 minutes or more per week, come talk to me over here.

Closer… closer… wait. Where’s your face mask? Too close. Ok. That’s over 2 hours of activity per day in a week. Do you people even work at this University? Did you install a treadmill desk or something? What is your secret?

A big shout out to those of you doing creative things with your favorite activities. Here’s a shortlist – as we appreciate your humorous responses, guess which one is Coach Ericksen (we’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count):

• Epic Nerf Battles with the Kids

• All the matches on Tinder (careful now)

• Heavy metal gardening (OIRA Represent!)

• De-skunking the dog 😦

• S’mores

• Weight training

• Step pattern for my cats (we need video!)

Sadly, only one person Jazzercised in week 3, which leads me to believe that there is not going to be a mythical joining of two CCSU colleagues to share the love of Jazzercise, but perhaps Sinead will lead us in a Zoom class during our summer break? I will jeté into that class with bells on! (Shhh…Jan & Cass here to assure everyone we will get photos of that for the listserv.)

Apparently, pineapple pizza is a Canadian thing? 54% of you voted Hell NO! to putting it on your ‘za. 37% of you are sicko’s or Canadian. And 8% like Arrested Development (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA8Q-2pF27w).

There seemed to be a split on whether or not we were absolutely not HARD enough on the SOB (48% said we were not, 42% wanted us to dish out more [see excuse #1]). This also seemed to inspire a certain dean to identify as “The MOST hardworking Dean ever.” So if I ever get invited to a Council of Dean’s meeting I’ll throw down the gauntlet and put that title to the test.

Thank you all for participating in the physical activity challenge, we logged in three weeks a total of 154,625 minutes! It was great to see increases in participation across divisions in each week.  The Library had an impressive run, ahead of Athletics until this week when Athletics doubled their numbers— way to represent! (And save face!)

We are wrapping up our Spring 2020 challenge with this posting. Will we return this challenge in the fall? Will I carry an overload? Is there enough material to keep poking the School of Business without losing my license? Will my department be audited next year? Only time will tell…

We hope that during this semester we brought you a few chuckles and inspiration to move as a community. Laughter is a medicine that can heal the soul. One of my favorite quotes that sits in my quarantined office is, “Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.” And something my great Uncle always says… Life is like a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious, life’s too mysterious. (CLASS, we’ll forgive him the grammar for the sake of the rhyme.) So here’s to a healthy summer full of laughter.

Until then, keep moving, stay active, and laugh!

Jay, Jan, and Cass on behalf of the PEHP Department

Another fun week of motivating activity for CCSU. For posterity, a copy of the e-mail I sent to the University Senate ListServ is below along with the PDF of the CCSU campus statistics for those who submitted their active time!

I wanted to just write a short blurb and share with the world a fun graphical PDF I put together with the website http://www.venngage.com. Colleagues and I in the PEHP department challenged CCSU faculty and staff to log their minutes of activity.

Here’s what we came up with at the end as well as the original e-mail message that accompanied this PDF.