Sunday night blogging

No football today, more's the pity. And my hockey team lost last night. Darn.

Let's see. What's been happening? Well, the headboard didn't come. They ordered the wrong size, so now I have to wait some more. Got all my lectures done for both online courses for the rest of the quarter. Did some work on two research papers. Practiced the xylophone for half an hour. Bought a pumpkin. Slept in for that extra hour.

Nothing much, and nothing too exciting, but just the usual plodding on.

And now it's time for bed again!

I am feeling virtuous--for the moment

An update from yesterday's not-done list:

1. Asset management course forms need revisions, per faculty meeting today DONE! (Update: I had to come back and strike this one out; it feels good to cross stuff off the list!)
2. Data mining class homework grading DONE!
3. SQC class homework grading DONE!
4. Any xylophone or bagpipe practice (has to wait until I am home)
5. Any research work (tomorrow is research day)
6. Headboard delivered and installed (postponed until tomorrow)
7. Rewrite of product design course descriptions and outline forms. (need to get a graduate bulletin first GOT IT!)

Additional items completed:
1. Data mining class presentations from Tuesday graded DONE!
2. Homework solutions uploaded for SQC DONE!
3. Grading finished for ITQ DONE!

What did and did not get done today

Did get done:
1. Course forms for a new intro to asset management course.
2. Lecture for robust design class
3. Emails answered and written
4. Kitty litter bought and the box emptied, washed out, and filled with fresh litter
5. Garbage taken out
6. Bed made
7. Dishwasher emptied and dirty dishes put in
8. Utility room vacuumed
9. Chapter 5 of blind book finished
10. Oil changed in car.

Did not get done:
1. Asset management course forms need revisions, per faculty meeting today
2. Data mining class homework grading
3. SQC class homework grading
4. Any xylophone or bagpipe practice
5. Any research work
6. Headboard delivered and installed (postponed until Friday)
7. Rewrite of product design course descriptions and outline forms.

I did find an old DOS game that was a favorite of mine--Project: Space Station. But I will be disciplined and not play it until I have done some of what I did not get done today. I will work on those things tomorrow. At least the grading had better be done tomorrow.

I just want to say....

1) Happy Birthday to Lisa!

2) I hate night classes.

There be a xylophone here

Spouse brought my xylophone to the UniTown condo yesterday. Yay! I've played it for a grand total of 30 seconds, but it's here and all cleaned up and mallets in place. He also brought a lamp and chair. I brought two dressers and lamps back with me too, so this place is starting to look somewhat furnished. Still don't have a sofa, but we are making do with Youngest Daughter's twin-sized airbed to lounge on.

Tomorrow my headboard comes. Need to straighten up that bedroom before then!

Yesterday I had a long long meeting with one of the department chairs about a couple courses I teach for him; about 10 minutes of that meeting were actually about the courses, ha ha.

Another paper airplane appeared in the chandelier. I wonder if they are being fruitful and multiplying? :-)

I was Dr. HandyMs this morning and took out the screen in my storm door and replaced it with the storm window. Not an easy task, as the screws were all stripped and (of course) it's raining--but the window is in, which means I don't have to worry about the inside door blowing open with the wind. It already feels warmer in here, too.

Tonight after class I must remember to buy clumping litter. I ran out last week and resorted to the regular stuff. Big mistake! It's dirty, kicks up too much dust, and is generally nasty.

Oh--our department chair got a grant for worker training and I'm on it. Summer salary! Yay!

The aftereffects of the October surprise

Back in Hometown for the weekend, and even though I had a good idea what things would look like after the storm, it's still awful to see. This city is known for large, beautiful, leafy trees. Well, now it looks like Paul Bunyan just went walking through and stepped on them all. I started seeing the devastation about 25 miles outside of town--trees bowed down to the ground, tops cracked right off, huge branches ripped off, leaving long white gashes down the sides of the trunk. A local cemetary's rows of trees look like sticks with broken umbrellas hanging off the sides. In some places, the debris is piled so high you can't see the house behind it. Despite a week of cleanup efforts, drivers still have to weave around huge stacks of branches and limbs. My brother- and sister-in-law are still without power; I called the utility company for them and the canned message says power "should" be restored by midnight tonight.

Spouse and I spent the afternoon yesterday cleaning up the refrigerator, putting the drain back in the chest freezer, and setting it back upright and level. We turned the dehumidifier back on to get the musty smell out of the basement. Fortunately we don't have any trees left on our property (except my lilac tree, which seems to be okay) and we took down the dead tree on our neighbor's yard last summer as a precaution. Good thing we did! It would have ripped the power lines off our house. The tree behind it broke off at about 15 feet and fell forward into the yard.

The unremitting rain has got to make it hard for utility crews to get things fixed.

Before I go back to UniTown today, I'm going to take a ride through the northern suburbs which were hardest hit, to see the damage for myself. It's sad to see trees destroyed.

Found a bunch of old crochet books in a dresser I am taking back with me. Wonder if Eldest Daughter would like them....

A list of weird, bad, and wonderful things that happened in Week Seven

1. I have now racked up $700 in car repair bills. $500 for Son (I underestimated) and $200 for me (I have platinum spark plugs. So what if I don't even have a diamond--don't want one--but I do have platinum spark plugs. How many girls can say that?).

2. I sent one student into an attack of the giggles by referring to a kid's book. I cannot believe he never heard of The Saggy Baggy Elephant. I threw it in the lecture a couple more times just to see him collapse in laughter. Usually he puts his head down and goes to sleep, so this was an improvement.

3. The 8 a.m. informational thingie I was supposed to go to at the local community college was postponed until sometime in 2007. YAY!!!

4. We lost power Sunday but got it back Thursday evening. Oh well, it's an excuse to clean out the refrigerator and the chest freezer, right?

5. Daughter's orthodontist appointment was postponed to November.

6. Our center got a training grant from the Department of Labor. Yay! Summer salary! Money to pay off the car repairs!

7. My data mining class for next quarter is full already.

8. I caught another student plagiarizing. Despite much yellow highlighted evidence, he insists he was "paraphrasing".

9. I found out my nice black dress shoes are not so nice. They leak. I gave my lecture Thursday night to the sound of squishing with each step.

10. Youngest Daughter asked for lunch money, and I gave her $20. I had intended to use the balance of that money for kitty litter, shampoo, and kleenex. She returned with $2.10 and a ceramic bowl full of chili. Oooookay. I can wash my hair with the bowl, she can blow her nose with it, and then the kitties can do their business in it. I don't think it will suds all that well, though, and it might be a tad rough on YD's nose. As for the kitties---I don't even want to THINK about that.

It's a nice bowl, it was a nice thought, and I was only kidding. Sort of. No, really. Anyway, Eldest Daughter thought that was hilarious and stuck $20 in my bank account to compensate. What a sweetie. :-)

The evidence...

I still say it's circumstantial.

Can I have just one month without car repair bills?


Just one? Please? Yesterday morning my check engine light came on again. Sigh. I'm just hoping it's nothing hugely expensive, because I've already shelled out a chunk for Son's car. I could have bought three sofas for what I've paid in car repairs in the last six months. I dropped my car off at Dad's and borrowed my mom's car for the day. She has short legs and pulls the seat WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY up. I had to open the door, turn the car on, move the seat back, and THEN I could get in. Otherwise, the steering wheel would be in my chest and my knees wedged under it.

The white cat that hangs around here got a bunny yesterday.

Usually on Wednesdays I don't go on campus, since my Wednesday class is online and Youngest Daughter doesn't have class either. But TODAY, of COURSE, when I am tired and need to get Mom's car back to her and take Son's car back to him and get the lecture ready for the online class, I have a meeting at 10:00. Pooh.

Our house still has no power. My brother doesn't anticipate getting power until Sunday. Seventeen school districts have canceled classes for the week. And some brainless politico made the beyond stupid, clueless remark that FEMA should have been in the area the night the snow fell. What an idiot.

Anyway, time to get ready for this meeting. At least I have heat, and power, here in the condo in UniTown. Things to be thankful for!

I'm not telling how that paper airplane got into the chandelier in the engineering atrium

Nope, I'm not. Not a word. Had nothing to do with it, nope nope nope. No one *I* know had a paper airplane lab in their class tonight. I'm totally innocent.

I am beyond tired today. It's going to be a long week, too, with meetings and things, and an 8 a.m. seminar at the local community college on Thursday. Friday we have to run in to Hometown for an orthodontist appointment and then come right back to Uni town for Youngest Daughter's voice lesson.

Son's car has to have a new alternator and radiator, and that will set me back about $350 which I do not have. I need to think about how to juggle things so I can pay that.

Even though I need to get a lecture ready for tomorrow night, I am just too beat to think at this point. So I am going to bed, immediately if not sooner.

Weird things our cats do

• Scratch shoes. Usually, shoes that have peoples' feet in them. We prefer to think this activity is a sign of love, not a destructive tendency.
• Try to climb into empty shoes, and act like the empty shoes have catnip in them.
  
• Drool when petted. Fine, as long as it's not 1) on the computer, or 2) on our food.
• Bite buttons.
• Carry play toys around in their mouths. Kitty Son does this often, especially if said toy has landed on the tile and not the rug.
  
• Completely and totally destroy catnip mice within nanoseconds.
• Eat hair.

Spouse came over and dropped off a small carload of frozen food because the power is out at our house. It was fine, and then went off this morning with no warning. Could be the weekend before it gets restored.

Youngest Daughter completed Level 4 of the Learn to Skate program successfully. Yay!!!

One lecture done and uploaded, one more to do for tonight.

A snow day without snow

I was supposed to go somewhere this weekend but the trip got cancelled. So, essentially, today was a "snow day". It rained, and the wind blew, but there was nary a flake of snow. As a matter of fact, the wind blew the front door open. Again. So I guess we need to lock it when we are home. Can't risk having our kitties getting out! (Or the neighborhood bunnies getting in!)

Anyway, I slept in until about 9-ish, then got up to do some research work. Or so I thought. I did some administrivia first, and then just as I was going to start working on my paper, the phone rang. It was Son, and his car had broken down on his way to work. So I changed out of my jammies in a jiffy, grabbed my coat, and went to pick him up. Of course, it has to be cold and rainy! After I dropped him off at work I called Allstate Motor Club and waited for the tow truck to arrive. By the time I got home it was 12:30. I think the alternator is gone OR there's a sneak circuit somewhere. I'm hoping for which ever is the cheapest and easiest to fix (probably the alternator), but we won't find out until Monday.

Got a call from my brother and his power has been out since Friday's freak storm. His generator went too, which means his sump pump isn't working and his basement is flooding. Two of his trees got damaged. But the worst part is that his business has a lot of water damage from a leaking roof. The rugs are wet, the computers are soaked--when he turned the keyboard over, water just ran out of it. He's had a tough couple of years with this business, and here is just one more kick in the teeth. I wish I could help him out somehow.

My two sisters- and brothers-in-law also are without power, keeping warm thanks to fireplaces and bailing out their basements with buckets.

Talked to Eldest Daughter this morning. She has submitted her passport application in preparation for a trip to Ireland next spring. Wah!! I want to go, too! Every time I think I can spare the money to get a passport, something happens and it just evaporates. Oh well. I can handle that, as long as I am able to pay my bills I don't mind so much that there's no money for extras. My mom says I should just remember that as long as I have kids at home or in school there just won't be any extra money, and not beat myself up that I can't seem to save anything. I am very grateful for my job, the salary I make, and the ability to pay for things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford, like a nice graduation party for Eldest Daughter, voice lessons for Youngest Daughter, and the Galapagos trip for Son. Not to mention tuition payments that used to take my entire paycheck.

I've been feeling guilty lately for not getting more grant proposals out, and for not having the maintenance/reliability and product development curricula done, and for not having more articles sent out, and for generally being so inundated with teaching-related stuff that I can't do much of anything else. I am going to try something new to relieve some of that guilt. I'm going to use a little more disciplined approach to slogging through this work, and make sure I do some every day. I don't often have big blocks of time to work on stuff, so I need to make those baby steps forward each and every day.

That said, time to open up a certain file...and celebrate that my hockey team is winning 7-3!!!

I survived Week Six

Which included tons of grading, six lectures, and several conversations with students who suddenly realized that tests can be hard.

Today I made reservations for our Thanksgiving holiday with Eldest Daughter in the state which is Too Very Far Away. We will get to see her from Wednesday evening until Saturday. I am so excited! I miss her more and more all the time. We also bought her plane tickets for Christmas so she can come home. Yay!! It will be wonderful. She is going to be here in time for my birthday, and in time to make Christmas cookies (gluten free, of course!). I can't wait!

Speaking of ED, she sent us a box with some clothes for Youngest Daughter, the shoes YD had left at ED's place, a moose turd refrigerator magnet (don't panic, it's shellacked! It has little ears and googly eyes and looks like a moose head), and some absolutely DELICIOUS Irish breakfast tea. I brought some to work and it is just scrumptious. What a good daughter!

When YD and I got home today, we found the front door open. Fortunately, the cats were still inside! Apparently I didn't shut the door all the way, and the wind blew it open. The screen door doesn't really latch, so it would have been easy for them to just push it open and make their escape. I was so relieved! Just more professor follies, I guess.

YD and I went to the bookstore tonight (it's payday) and she picked up the last Series of Unfortunate Events book. I got 25% off for being faculty! But I didn't buy anything for myself, because I want to take it easy with the money. Guess I will mosey on over to the campus library Monday and see if there's any light reading there.

Speaking of reading, this article is great and exactly what I've been thinking.

Professor follies

Trying to keep up with the administrivia and lecture prep for four classes can be a daunting task. Most of the time I can manage it, but today I did a silly thing--I forgot my colored dry erase markers. I went into every classroom in the building, but not one had a dry erase marker. Finally, in desperation, I went down one of the office halls--and found a blue marker in the door pocket of Son's favorite Biology teacher! Saved!

I brought Hershey's kisses for my class because they were getting their exams back. Some of them REALLY needed that chocolate.

I count my blessings because I like my colleagues very much. BUT...(you knew there was going to be a but) I wish one of them would stop with the political statements. There is no need to bring President Bush into a discussion on a student's choice of academic program. There is no need to make blanket (and untrue) statements about conservatives not wanting their daughters to go into technical careers like engineering. There is no need to take a perfectly innocent conversation about geneology searches and turn it into a rant on "how white men have screwed up this continent." And there is no need to put an offensive political cartoon on one's office door. Why do I not confront this person about these annoyances? Because I need tenure. So I turn the talk to something else or ignore the inanities. They are only annoyances. But I really wish this person would just cut it out.

Time for bed. Tomorrow I need to get a lecture ready to upload and finish grading homework assignments. Fun, wow.

I got ...


...a present! My colleague who interviewed Homer Hickam brought me a T-shirt from the Big Creek Missile Agency Rocketry School! I am SO excited! It is fabulous!

...a text message from Youngest Daughter just before I started my class tonight: "MamaCat puked on the tile by the door. Watch your step and don't open the door the whole way." Oooookay.

...an e-mailed apology from Cheating Student. It's not enough. He ought to at least give me something, like the student last year who tried to atone for his three-week disappearance by giving me a Peruvian Penance Hat. Not that I would ever wear it, but hey-it supposedly came from Peru, he was penitent, and it was a hat. It is forever enshrined in history as the Peruvian Penance Hat.

...a chocolate milkshake from a local ice cream place for lunch. Yummmm.

...to get back to work now.

Nice, but too much

Oh man, my feet are KILLING me. Someday I will learn not to commit to outings that consist of slowly strolling along for miles and hours. That's a sure fire way to end up with sore footsies. Ouch.

And I'm a bit sunburned, but no biggie.

That craft show started out as a few ladies showing some Barbie doll clothes etc. on tables in one of the park's buildings. Now it's miles long, and while there are still doll clothes, there are also some beautiful works of art. It was kind of funny to hear my mother lamenting that I never liked playing with dolls, and that SHE has my old Barbies because I could care less about them. My two girls are similarly unappreciative of dolls; for some reason, they always end up naked and headless in a corner. Mom says it's because I didn't teach them to like dolls. Bad mother, me.

Interestingly, there were few small children, probably because of the size of this event. I think I saw only four or five strollers. But, unfortunately, there were several canines in attendance. That's one ongoing pet peeve of mine: people who bring their dogs to these things. Several aisles were very narrow and packed with people who are, naturally, looking at the artists' wares and not down at their feet. I saw one pooch nearly get stepped on; another's fluffy, long, dragging tail was momentarily pinned beneath a fair-goer's feet, and the poor dog whipped around wildly to see what happened. I don't understand why dog owners think walking for miles on rough paving and being surrounded by a crush of strange people would be enjoyable for their pet. Not to mention that people attending may be afraid of beasts like, say, the Irish wolfhound someone brought yesterday. Admittedly, I only marginally tolerate dogs, so the thinking may be completely escaping me, but I just don't get it. And I don't buy the line "My dog is very friendly and loves people"--if usually well-behaved children can be bratty, then a usually well-behaved dog can be, too. The difference is, children don't tend to bite. There are events where children don't belong, and events where pets don't belong. IMO, outdoor craft shows are for people, not pets.

The only things I bought at the show were tickets for all four of us to ride the shuttle bus that ran from a nearby town to the park. I was looking for the pottery lady who made the teabag holder MamaCat destroyed last week, but she wasn't there. I saw a pretty blue bowl and some amazing baskets made from the stumps of old trees. One guy from a nearby town made a gorgeous lawn swing surrounded by a pergola. Out of cedar. Smelled as good as it looked!

Today is church, skating, grading, and getting two lectures uploaded. I need to write the homework answers up for one class and upload that too. Lots 'o work to do! And football too, we mustn't forget football...

Today, I am going to a craft show

Yes, I have an insane amount of grading to do. Yes, I have six lectures to prepare. But darnit, I'm GOING.

I stayed home from campus yesterday because I am trying to establish Fridays as my research day. Maybe I should pick another day, because it seems that Fridays attract weird events like waiting for repair dudes, or errands that Simply Must Be Done. Yesterday was no different, and I got zero research accomplished.

One weird thing that happened: a student called me on my cell phone. I do not give out my cell phone number to students; I figure they have my office phone, my email, and my AIM screen name so there should be no need to have my personal number too. He hung up just as I was asking where he got my number. I've emailed him, but no response as yet.

It's been getting VERY chilly here in the mornings. And apparently our front doors are going to be painted; I have to pick a day for them to do mine when I will be home because the door has to stay open for two hours after painting. Hm....No, I *refuse* to pick a Friday!!

Mama Cat needs her claws trimmed. They catch in the carpet when she walks. I am afraid of Mama Cat's claws and will not do this myself, but will let some poor dude at the pet store get swiped. :-)

We went to the bookstore last night and happened upon an ideal present for Spouse. It's a Complete History of the US Marine Corps, bound in camouflage and with the Marine Corps emblem on the front. Son had bought his dad a similar volume on the Navy, only that book was written in teensy tiny print. Both books are humongous (heavy reading, heheheh), so we are anticipating Spouse's reaction at Christmas when he sees this one-- "Oh no! I just finished the Navy book! Another heavy reading book!" and then opens it to see lots of pictures and fairly large type. The relief! Ha ha ha!

Now the task is not to forget we bought it....

I got Homer Hickam's second book as consolation that my colleague is interviewing him and I am not.

Too bad Eldest Daughter can't be here to come to the craft show with me. :-( She would love it. They sell yummy salt potato fries. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Freedom of speech in academia?

Not for conservatives, it seems.

People who think there is no bias in the university are blind.

I have survived Week Five

But barely.

Tonight I talked to my class about plagiarism. I also confronted the plagiarizer, who staunchly insists his word-for-word copying of the article was either unintentional or not really word-for-word. He offered to rewrite the assignment, three times. I said no, three times. I am convinced it was not only intentional, he thought I either would not catch him or would not pursue it. He was pretty boldly insisting he did not plagiarize. I was just as firmly saying he did. This time, I win. I already reported him to the graduate coordinator, so if this is his second offense he is toast. I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

The second unpleasantness was confronting a disrespectful student. He at least apologized. I told him if I was his boss, and got an email like that one, I would fire him on the spot. I hope he learned something but I doubt it.

Tomorrow there's a reception for alumni of our center. I have been trying to save Fridays for research work (without much success) but I think if I don't show for this it will look bad. Drat.

On the home front, my garage door would not close last night when I took the garbage out. I didn't want to mess with it because 1) it was dark and late and night, 2) there is no light inside the garage, 3) I didn't have my phone with me, so if I got shut in I couldn't call for help, and 4)YD would probably not notice I was gone for HOURS.

So it stayed open all night. Still would not close this morning. I called the landlady after lunch, and she finally got it to shut. I shall never open that thing again. I can't park the car in there anyway, it's too narrow.

Son and his frat made liquid nitrogen ice cream today. Yummy! They did a great job.

ED called and we had a nice chat. I WANT HER HOME! Okay, got that out of my system for today. We are going to spend Turkey Day with her, and I need to make the reservations for the hotel nearby. That will have to wait, though, until PayDay since it's quite a nice little sum and I don't have that much right now in my bank account.

Did I mention that my coworker is interviewing Homer Hickam tomorrow? I AM SO JEALOUS! Maybe he will be nice and bring me an autographed copy of October Sky...........

Grading is .....

Well. Let's just say it's not the most fun thing in the world. What makes it worse is when students plagiarize or when they do something totally inexplicable like blame me because they can't get their datafile in the proper format for the software.

Today I graded 10 SQC assignments, 2 quality management team projects, and 33 data mining assignments. I also wrote and uploaded a midterm exam. Ran into two cases of clear copying in the assignments, which is a frustrating thing. It's kind of a dead giveaway that someone's been plagiarizing when all of a sudden the Royal We shows up in their writing. It's been an exhausting day.

Talked to Eldest Daughter on the phone quite a bit today. She is having some physical problems and it bugs me that she is so far away. I want her home! We have to wait and see how this goes, which will be the toughest part, but we are trusting for a full and complete recovery. It really feels awful that she isn't here and close so I can do something more.

Tomorrow is a busy day. We have a faculty candidate coming in and Spouse is going to meet me for lunch if he gets done with his meeting in time. Then I have office hours and class from 6-8. I am really looking forward to the weekend. I need some serious downtime.

It's WEDNESDAY!

Technically it is still Tuesday. But my exam is given and I am home and in my jammies and I may never get out of them again. Well, at least until Thursday.

Monday was busy, what with faculty meetings and panicky student emails and grading and test writing and all that stuff. I met with one of my students at 8 p.m., after my night class, and so it was nearly 9:15 by the time I finally got home. Then I had to be on campus by 11 this morning for the department meeting. I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30, showered and dressed, did some small tasks here and there, woke up Youngest Daughter, and the two of us drove into the parking lot where I am supposed to have a reserved spot by 10:30 a.m. I say SUPPOSED to have a spot because it's Week Five and I have yet to be able to claim said spot, despite paying $150 for the privilege. We ended up parking in the last row of the last lot in Outer Mongolia.

Naturally, because 1) we are at least three miles from our destination and 2) I am wearing my nice purple silk shirt and 3) I have forgotten my umbrella, it begins to rain. YD lent me her coat to cover my shirt, and we dodged raindrops all the way to our buildings.

After my meeting, I took YD back home. It was REALLY pouring by then, and we had all that distance to walk to get to the car, so we were both pretty wet when we finally got there. I had to change clothes! Got back to campus at 1:30. Do you think I found a reserved spot? But Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. So I fired off an email to the parking dude asking him how they decided the number of reserved spots and explaining that every time I get to campus I end up parking in Outer Mongolia. He answered right away that they are going to move the markers for reserved spots and if I don't see improvement by Friday to let him know. Good.

One student in my class forgot it was midterm day today and came completely unprepared for the exam.

My son thought I should have a bonus question. His recommendation was that I ask which of three Star Trek species (Klingons, Romulans, or Ferengi) were likely to use data mining to further their goals. So far the Ferengi are the species of choice...even among the students who have no idea what they are. LOL! The response that made me laugh the most:

"I would say Ferengi, since they are great with money matters and business/cost savings. Although Data and Lore would be the best at it since Dr. Sung would have programmed them for DM tasks on Omicron Theta before the Crystalline Entity destroyed it. And I can't believe I remembered that."

Is it Wednesday yet?

A lot has happened in the past few days. The refrigerator man came and said the reason the refrigerator didn't get cold was because the door had been left open and the airway between the freezer and the refrigerator part got blocked with ice. Hmm. Okay, he supposedly knows what he's doing--but it didn't get cold right from the start, and I never noticed the door open. As a matter of fact, I hardly used the refrigerator section because it never got cold. But then why did he ask me if anyone had tried to take it apart, because the fan was askew and not running correctly? Once he fixed that, it sounded like a regular refrigerator and now it runs just fine.

Right after he left we had to hightail it to Youngest Daughter's voice lesson. I sat in the nearby coffee shop and typed the book the Blind Association sent me to transcribe. It's a historical novel set in the 1600s, and I was surprised to see that one of the major characters is my ancestor! That was cool. I put a typist's note in the beginning of the book that stated "This book was typed by a descendent of J___ H____" I hope they put that in the Braille edition!

I spent an hour or so Friday afternoon trying to find a vet who carried the special food Son Cat needs, to no avail. So I had to call Spouse to see if he could get some from the vet back home. We made arrangements to meet Saturday morning halfway between our two cities; then I would have to beat it out of town to pick up my mother at the women's convention she was attending and take her to the Poconos to her 55th high school reunion dinner.

Spouse got the food and a bunch of other things we needed, and he and I met at the Bob Evans to transfer the stuff to my car. Unfortunately, we didn't have time for a cup of coffee/tea or breakfast, because I was already going to be late leaving to pick up Mom. I ran back to the condo to drop off the food and other things, then drove off on my long trip. Mom was waiting for me, and we made a short stop at Applebee's to get some lunch before getting back on the road. We got to the Poconos early enough that I could take her past her old house and neighborhood. She kept saying how small everything looked compared to what she remembered, and how close the house was to the road. I barely remember that house--there used to be a lawn swing in the front yard, and I remember the big stove, but that's about all. We stopped at the local McDonald's for some tea, and I changed clothes so I would look respectable.

The dinner was held in a firehall in a tiny town near Mom's old house. The food was great, and Mom's classmates seemed genuinely glad to see her. I was pleased, because Mom always felt uncomfortable about not finishing high school (she went back at 43 to get her GED), and it was obvious they accepted her as a full member of the class even though she didn't graduate with them. After dinner I got to be the unofficial photographer and took many pictures of the group with many cameras. Then a group of the classmates got out their instruments and played old songs and hymns, to great appreciation and applause. I had a great time, and so did Mom. Many of her classmates thanked me for bringing her, and I promised I would make sure she got to the next reunion.

We left around 8 p.m. to head back to Uni Town. It wasn't a bad ride, even though it was drizzling almost all the way home. Mom made a game attempt to stay awake--she usually goes right to sleep even through horrible rainstorms! We got home around midnight and I fell into bed. I was pretty tired.

Today Son came over to do laundry and spend some time with us. I made chili but all of a sudden realized it just MIGHT be important to have a can opener......YD finally went next door and asked the neighbor if she had one. The chili was yummy.

I had WAY too much that had to get done today--two lectures and assignments at minimum. I still have two lectures and a test to write, and assorted grading to do. Plus, the department meeting got moved up two days. For some reason the assistant director has decided to have us each give a short presentation on what we do, and GUESS WHO HAS TO BE FIRST??? Moving it up two days was NOT NICE! But I finished at least some sort of presentation tonight, and I'll run it by her tomorrow to see if that is what she was looking for.

On the teaching front, my boss asked if I'd take on the graduate gateway course next quarter. I'm okay with that as long as I can do the online class; I am already scheduled to teach two nights a week, and that is about as much as I can stand. I really don't like night classes.

Tomorrow is a faculty meeting, and then I meet with boss to talk about the grad course, then I have to work on tomorrow night's lecture AND the midterm I am giving on Tuesday. Plus finish the grading for my online courses, hold office hours, teach, and meet with a student after my night class finishes at 8. Tuesday is the department meeting and the midterm from 6-8. I am going to be very glad when it's finally Wednesday!

P.S. The deskunkifier formula worked on my stinky suitcase. It now smells nice and fresh! Yay! All I did was sprinkle baking soda on the suitcase, mix about 1/2 cup of hydrogen peroxide with a couple teaspoons of dish detergent, pour the liquid on the suitcase, and scrub it in with a brush. Then I let the case dry and rinsed the baking soda residue off with cool water. Smells great now!