You know, pictures are worth a thousand words so I’m going to cop out and throw on a bunch of pictures and call it a trip wrap-up.
Seen at MacArthur State Park:
Some bejeweled older woman would not shut up about raccoons are supposed to be only out at night. I had to get away from her as quickly as possible because she was more of a danger to me than the raccoon looking for water.
We sat in the sand and watched the waves for quite awhile:
Seen at Morikami:
We got home just a little while ago. On the way home we stopped and picked up Chinese take-out and I’m now doing some laundry. We had a nice time hanging in FL with my sister. Pictures and a longer post to follow.
I think it will be hard adjusting to non-80 degree days.
The soon to arrive Niece is pretty darn cute. I can’t wait to meet her in person.
Now, about the cry babies.
I went to class late this afternoon and we got our mid-terms back. I received a respectable 88 (and when you hear the lowest grade, you’ll agree a high B is respectable). Apparently there were 2 questions that flummoxed most of us so in reality I got an 84 but everyone who missed those 2 questions got back 4 points. Even with an 84, I blew past the average grade. Grades ranged from 50-92 (before the 4 points were granted). So, an 88 is like Einstein took the test.
Now you know I don’t care for this class and have yet to feel engaged in the subject matter, but I twisted myself in knots and studied like hell. Someone in graduate school got a 50 on a mid-term. 20% of our grade. And, then the class proceeded to whine and moan about the paper we had to turn in. There were 4 people who were given permission to turn their papers in during the week of Spring Break.
I seriously felt like standing up and telling them all to get a freaking grip. At this level there’s no room for babies. Get the work done. And for crying out loud, the paper we had to turn in isn’t even going to get a grade. It is so the teacher can give us pointers for when we write the entire paper that’s due next month. Babies.
This weekend my nose was to the grind stone about 80% of the time but I finished both my papers. I was really unmotivated today to go to work and spend more time entrenched in research because my brain hadn’t recovered from the three-day weekend research and paper writing bender. Lucky for me, I spent two hours waiting for a meeting to start (it is a long and boring story about why it didn’t start on time and I’ll spare you). I spent part of that time reading ahead for one of my classes and the other part of the time grousing with everyone else.
There’s a jammed packed couple of weeks in my future and for lack of better content, here’s a list:
Tomorrow afternoon-my sister’s family gets their first look at the daughter they are adopting (paperwork and picture are arriving). My sister has told everyone she knows and now I’m telling the internet. I’ll have to come up with an alias for the newest niece.
Thursday morning-our plane leaves around 7am and we’re headed to FL to see my other sister and her husband.
Monday the 12th-we come back from FL.
Tuesday the 13th-we go see Kodo.
Wednesday the 14th-doctor’s appointment in the morning and the Niece’s birthday party that evening.
Saturday the 17th-dinner with friends and we’re hosting–no idea what we’re making.
I just finished my first paper and now the serious goofing off has begun–popped open a Fresca, Black Cherry Citrus and started cruising the internet.
We had a pretty big rain/wind storm here late last night/early this morning and for those of you who have well water, you’ll appreciate this. I woke up at 6:45 and got into the shower. I got dressed and went downstairs to get a bowl of cereal. I decided to detour to the bathroom to take care of a call from nature. I took care of it and then washed my hands. I went back to the kitchen and poured Raisin Bran into a bowl. The lights went out hard then weakly flickered a couple of times before finally dying. It was a little after 7. Then the power supplies all over the house started whining. The first thing I thought was thank goodness I was able to flush that toilet. Of course, you always get one flush per toilet when you are on well water and the power goes out, but I know it would have freaked me out if I’d been in the bathroom doing my thing and the power died.
As it was, I started shutting off power supplies and then went in to wake the better-half. How he sleeps through beep-beep-beeping is amazing to me. He was deeply asleep when I woke him but he stumbled into his office to start bringing down all his servers. While he was doing that, I went to the one old school phone we have and reported the power outage.
By the time he came down to start up the generator, I was done with breakfast and was reading a little bit about how to write my first paper by the cool light of a Rayovac fluorescent lantern that we inherited from the previous owners. They left a ton of crap all over the yard and in the woods-at least a couple of things were worth keeping.
The power was off for less time than the power company thought and it meant no more procrastinating for me. I turned on the computer and got to work. I should probably get back to it.
Last night I was in the car, sitting at a red light, when Peter Solomon played The 13th Day off the Lawn Chair Society CD. Just as the opening bars poured out of my speakers a group of young men riding bicycles whooshed down the cross street. It was a perfect interplay of sound and sight.
The work lunch bunch went to Joe’s Inn today and I got a gyro. Everyone else got breakfast and while I like their Most Requested Omelet, when I saw the gyro as a special I knew that was what I had to have. The gyro was good but it was served between two pita so there was too much sauce oozing. I worked around that small problem though.
We sat at a largish table and for whatever reason I wasn’t really involved in much of the conversation. So, I watched the other people in the restaurant and I thought about one of the papers I have due next week. I have to come up with a research proposal and the first part of the proposal is due next week. I think I’ve ironed out the way I’m going to proceed.
I’m taking tomorrow off so I can write that paper and another one due in my other class. That paper is a little more murky but I think the subject is a little more loosey-goosey (how motivation changes through a person’s life cycle). In other words, I think I can BS my way through that one. The paper for Research Methods needs to be more methodical.
Last night when I got home after class it was around 10 and I entertained the better-half with the names of Journals I gleaned for articles related to my topic. I’ll entertain you with the oh, so very interesting Journal names:
-College Teaching
-The American Journal of Distance Education
-International Journal of Instructional Media
-Academic Exchange
Academically geeky, but I really like this stuff.
Last weekend we made Char Siu (Chinese Barbecued Pork) and it was good but we had so much other food the pork didn’t get eaten but it was tucked away for later. That later time was yesterday afternoon.
The better-half recently purchased Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn (we’re going to make bacon from scratch soon). Taking a suggestion from this well-written book*, we slow cooked the leftover Char Siu in the oven with a liquid bath. Essentially the pork steamed.
The house smelled so good that I can hardly describe it–porky goodness but also faintly like baking bread.
We made a chipotle sauce (also out of Charcuterie) to go with the pork. The sauce included onions, garlic, olive oil, chipotle with adobo, ketchup, ground cloves and other ingredients (I’m too lazy to walk downstairs to give you a complete list).
It sounds weird to take pork that had a hoisin based sauce on it already and mix it with a chipotle sauce but it worked. It isn’t your mother’s barbeque but damn, it was good.
Served with brussels sprouts, roasted potatoes and as you can tell Stump Jump.
I went to the bowl three times:
*The other night I was reading the first few pages and the better-half said, “it’s like God is talking to you, isn’t it.” I could only answer with mmmmmm noises.
I’ve had my desk up against the window since we moved into the house and I’ve been living with the blinding glare of the sun for the last year (since we had some trees cut down). I decided to go ahead and move my desk around and while there’s still some glare it isn’t as bad. I used to wear sunglasses when the sun was particularly blinding.
I could buy some blinds but I like the view.
Here’s the before:
Here’s the after:
I got home today and the better-half met me outside and said “who trips down the streets of the city, calling to every car that goes by?” I didn’t get it because I have gaps in my pop culture awareness. At least I didn’t give him a blank look and then say “my, it’s windy this afternoon”.
Speaking of not getting it (and what a nice segue), in Tuesday’s class the teacher gave us a break and I went out into the hallway. I ended up standing in a very large window looking down into the courtyard. A class friend came out and gave me a look of despair. I told her I was thinking of jumping out of the window so I wouldn’t have to go back in the room. She laughed and said she had just doodled a note that if she had to sit in the room a minute longer she was going to kill herself. Yes, we love Research Methods.
We have a mid-term next week so if you are wondering what I’m doing this weekend, I’ll be cramming 6 chapters worth of information into my head so I can answer 50 multiple choice questions on Tuesday. My class friend is planning on doing the same thing. We’re both sure we’ll have no memory of all that information as soon as we complete the test.
