Gee, is there enough stuff going on yet??

I went down this weekend to see Best Friend. We indulged ourselves by watching Bollywood films to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the release of Lagaan. We saw Swades, Jab We Met, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Dil Chahata Hai, and of course, Lagaan. We agreed that Aamir Khan is awesome and Shahid Kapoor is really really cute. Great fun was had by all!

That was, until Spouse called to tell me there was a letter from the Dean. I thought it was just the formal mid-tenure review results that finished in January. Well, it wasn’t. It was notice that the Dean is putting me up for tenure THIS year—a year early. No one asked me if I wanted to go up early, or told me that this was going to happen. In April the dean asked me if I was going up early and I said no, I was due to go in 2010. I have no idea why, but apparently everything is in motion already.

So my problem is that I was going to wait until next year for the last try at CAREER while I cultivated some local industry contacts and got some more papers out that addressed the comments I got in the last round. But now, I’m kind of forced into either writing the grant or forgoing my last chance. I don’t want to let that happen, so I’m going to have to buckle down and do it. But I am not sure where to send it or if I should put the system framework part back in (I took it out last year). I’ve got until July22nd to get it in. Fun, wow.

Then I got word a friend's daughter is having severe emotional difficulties. Son is also having a tough time at school and work. Niece didn't get a job she was hoping for. Eldest Daughter is still waiting to hear about her latest interview. Local community college didn't send Youngest Daughter's transcript to her new college, which is holding up her high school diploma, which is holding up her registration at new college. We met with the Provost about the issues with our department, and he basically threw everything all back in our laps. And, Kitty Mama had three teeth removed today.

I am hoping for a boring day tomorrow. I really need it.

Happy Birthday, Youngest Daughter!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, Youngest Daughter,
Happy birthday to you!

May you live long with us
May you live long with us
May you live long, may you live long
May you live long with us

Njech nam zhje stolat
Njech nam zhje stolat
Njech nam zhje stolat Youngest Daughter,
Happy birthday to you!

Hope you have a wonderful day, and love you tons!

Spoke too soon

The S10's touchpad refused to work today at all, so I shipped it back to Lenovo. It's going to take about two weeks to get a refund, which really stinks. They don't have a replacement policy for netbooks, so I don't think I will order another.

Just for the record, I think The One has not only been deplorable regarding the Iranian protests, but I cannot believe he is inviting Iranian diplomats to July 4th barbecues. Something is seriously wrong with that man.

Card is delivered, whew

So Youngest Daughter has money, or at least access to money. Now I can relax.

Well, sort of. I have two big data projects this summer, and everyone wants them finished at the same time. Not gonna happen, unless I clone myself! Plus I have a couple journal articles I want to get out, if I can ever get to them.

The other big news is I bought a Lenovo S10. My left shoulder has been wiped out by hauling my laptop around, and there are lots of times when I need access to files but don't necessarily need the full powered laptop. Having a phone with a data plan helps cut down on laptop lugging, too. Anyway, I have a little blue S10 and it's cute. I had to fix the touchpad software but otherwise it's perfect.

Tomorrow I head to Virginia to see Best Friend and spend the weekend watching Bollywood movies. I am really looking forward to this trip. With any luck, I will score a nice quilt from the Quilt Lady in Pennsylvania. Eldest Daughter got me the John Adams HBO special soundtrack for the road trip. Yay!

Happy Father's Day

to Spouse, Dziadzi, and all the uncles--and to my dad, the best father in the universe. God bless you all.

Blindsided, and the @$#%$^ banks

Monday we had a faculty retreat that was originally called to discuss the new dean's dissatisfaction with our department focus. Each department (and subsequently, each faculty) was told to define our area(s) of excellence. Well, I work in a multi-disciplinary department and no two of us have the same background. Finding one or two unified areas of excellence is pretty nearly impossible. The dean also wants each department to submit a group grant application each year. So for us, that would be something like a geographic data mining project management economic cybersecurity technical communication grant. Not gonna happen.

Anyway, the other issue is that our chair and our new dean do not play well together, partly because our chair was in the running for the dean's job. Rightly or wrongly, the new dean sees Chair as a rival and a threat, apparently, and we are caught in the middle of their peeing match.

So, we were surprised--but shouldn't have been--to hear that we were to discuss the possibility of moving out of our college and directly reporting to the Provost. That move has all sorts of implications related to tenure and promotion, none of them good as far as I can tell. Since Monday, we've had discussions via e-mail and in person and two two-hour meetings, one with the dean and one on our own with no leadership present. It's been an intense five days, and more is to come. The next meeting is June 30th, with the Provost; we have a lot of questions and his answers will determine what we decide to do. Fun, wow. We have decided that we will decide in early July; it's been a very hard year and we do not want to prolong this anxiety for ourselves and our staff any longer.

As for the @#$%^&@ banks, this is related to the @@&$#% robbers. One of the ATM cards was not associated with the new checking account, but was canceled. Just so happens, that's the ATM card that Youngest Daughter uses, and took to England last Saturday. So now she is there with no access to her money. Sigh. I had to go to the bank and get a temporary card, activate it, and then send it to her. She won't get it until Monday. Grrrrr....

Amazing how exhausting all this uproar can be.

Key West pics

I almost forgot that I promised photos from the day trip to Key West! First up, Hemingway's writing studio. He had a catwalk (pun!) from this studio to his bedroom but that got destroyed in one of the hurricanes. Next, Archibald MacLeish trying to cool off on the display case, a view from the lighthouse, the curtain wall of Fort Zachary Taylor, and the throne room of Coral Castle. Yes, I know Coral Castle is not on the island--but I wanted to end with the Key West sunset, which is the final photo.

On Letterman and phone calls

I've been following the David Letterman/Sarah Palin thing, and not surprisingly I come down hard on the side of the Palins. As a mom, I find this "joke" to be absolutely disgusting and deplorable. First rule of dealing with moms: don't mess with the kids. That's the unpardonable sin; threaten my kids and you are toast. So he said "sorry"--well, I find Letterman's so-called "apology" to be less than convincing. Once again, being sorry that someone is offended is not the same as being sorry for what one has done.

I never liked the Clintons, but Chelsea was off-limits. I don't like the Obamas, but their children, likewise, are off-limits. It takes a pretty despicable person to say horrible things like Letterman did about young women, and I don't care if he did mean Bristol instead of Willow (also, if I were Alex Rodriguez, I'd beat him up). The double standard of both the main stream media and the liberal Democrat establishment, as well as the so-called feminists, is clear in their reactions (or lack thereof) to this outrage. In my view, feminists are only willing to fight for those who espouse their same viewpoint. Stray off the reservation, and you're on your own. The narrowness of feminism as practiced currently is glaringly noticeable in their refusal to champion Muslim women, but that is another blogpost (I am still fuming at the photo of the Secretary of State in a headscarf).

On another note, a student looked up my name in the HomeCity phone book and left a message on our voice mail that he wanted to talk about a project I've asked him to advise my group on, and also discuss some "personal matters." I never give out my home phone number to students, or my cell phone for that matter. At first I thought I would just ignore the phone message, as if he got the wrong number (you can't tell from our voice mail prompt who the number belongs to), and not answer the e-mail requesting it. But my colleague recommends that I acknowledge his phone message and then tell him I have a policy of not conducting university business at home. I am going to think about that for a bit and then decide what to do.

Star Trek and cat follies

So, last week Eldest Daughter came to visit and went with me to see the new Star Trek movie. She had seen it before, but it was my first viewing.

I liked it. Chris Pine, in a couple of scenes, had Shatner's expression and mannerisms down perfectly. I wasn't all that impressed with Young Spock, but Karl Urban was masterful as Bones McCoy. Absolutely masterful. Winona Ryder was less than believable as Spock's mother (no one can hold a candle to Jane Wyatt) but thankfully she had a really small part. All in all, a very good movie and a worthy addition to the Star Trek collection.

On to cat follies. We were away for four days this week, and my sister was supposed to watch the kitties while we were gone. The landlady was scheduled to come in and replace smoke detector batteries on Friday. Last night, when I opened the door, the first thing I saw was one of the water bowls sitting in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining area. It was empty. The other water bowl had about a half inch of water in it. Both food dishes were completely empty. Worst of all, the door to the utility room--where the cat litter is--was closed.

Fortunately, the wise kitties chose an empty box to do their business in. One of them had an accident on the living room chair, but otherwise they either held it until I got there (Kitty Mama ran into the utility room as soon as I opened the door) or found a way to go without pooping all over the place. Right after I finished cleaning everything up, including some Kitty Son puke, my sister showed up. She had just remembered that she was supposed to feed the cats. They didn't hold it against her, though, and loved her up anyway. :-)

Eldest Daughter's kitty decided to scratch open a big spot on her ear yesterday. She goes to the vet tomorrow. Hope it's something simple like ear mites.

Sifting through the mess

A month later, we are still picking up the mess left from the robbery. Spouse is reluctant to pitch anything out unless I have seen it (I don't seem to have that same reluctance, lol) and I am rarely here in HomeCity long enough to do any prolonged cleaning bouts. So that means a lot of the stuff is still strewn around on the floors, the tables, etc. I finally closed all the dresser drawers last night, and got through some debris in the bedroom, but it's still a royal mess here.

Sigh.

And, I really don't have time today to do anything much because there's a proposal due Wednesday at 6 a.m. and my colleagues are waiting on my 1-3 page discussion of the technical issues. Gack.

No rest for the weary!

Today, besides working on the proposal, I have to take YD to get her money changed into English pounds if we can find a bank to do that, get the truck's oil changed, and drop off the license plates from Son's old car (No, I haven't even had time to get to the DMV!). She leaves tomorrow for two weeks in Merry Olde England.

Monday I have a faculty retreat all day, fun wow.

Busy!

On the road again tomorrow for Youngest Daughter's college orientation. Crazy busy, with way too much to do. It's summer! I shouldn't be this busy! Today I drove to HomeCity for a doc appt, then back by 2 for a meeting with the Dean, then another meeting at 3, then to the bank out in East Chahunga to pick up new ATM cards, then to my parents' house to clean the grill and plant some beans (yum), then to my sister's to drop off the condo key so she can feed the catses, then to the store to get litter and some other stuff, then finally home to do laundry and clean. Whew. And every day has been like that!

Kitty Mama jumped up on the coffee table and swatted my glasses right off onto the floor. YD says KM is trying to tell me to clean off all horizontal surfaces. Could be right--she went to the other side of the table and swatted a pencil.

Okay, time for bed. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.

One wonderful weekend

The conference went better than I expected, which was nice, but the best part of the trip was spending time with Son.

We had a fabulous day Sunday, touring Key West and eating marvelous food (Dippin' Dots! Deep fried oysters! Key lime pie! OH YUM) and generally enjoying ourselves. We are such nerds--most people go here for the beach; we went to Fort Zachary Taylor. I sent Eldest Daughter a photo of Son at the fort, and her immediate reply was "Is that a cannon?"

Saw some wild and crazy things along the way (I promise some pics later today, when I've caffeinated enough) like the huge spiny lobster outside a seafood restaurant (unfortunately, we didn't see that in time to get a photo), and a disturbingly weird green gecko, with yellow eyes and a meerkat expression, on an ad for a local deli. Visited a pirate museum that was just a tad over the top--the three-minute audio "show"in a darkened brig was an amusing highlight. We climbed up the lighthouse steps, toured Hemingway's house (no AC!), and visited Truman's Little White House (AC! Yeah!). We wanted to see the sunset from the fort, but clouds interfered so we went off to find some dinner. Son had grouper (I tried some, it wasn't too bad) and I had some absolutely divine deep-fried oysters.

We had packed a lot into our day, and then we got up at 6 a.m. Monday morning to drive back to the conference. My hotel room wasn't quite ready yet, so Son dropped me off at the conference site and he went back to finish the check-in process and get a much-needed nap. Then in the late afternoon we went to an Italian restaurant (16-layer lasagna! YUM!) and afterwards he drove back home while I crashed at the hotel.

Yesterday was more conferencing until about noon, and then he and I went to see the Coral Castle. We tried to make it to a special ice cream parlor but ran out of time--I had to be at the airport at 4:30 for my 6:30 flight back to UniTown. It was hard saying goodbye to Son. :-(

I have lots of new magnets for my office door thanks to Son, who spoiled me rotten the whole time. Next visit we will hit that ice cream parlor, for sure.