A Month or More

It is hard to believe that it's been over a month since I've found the time to blog! I have no excuse- only work! The past seven weeks have been a wild ride! (The next sentence pretty much sums it all up!) Saturday was the first day I felt almost caught up; I spent Valentine's Day taking down the Christmas Decorations!

December 21 - January 2 was spent in Arkansas visiting with family and friends! Being away that long just reminded me how wonderful it is to come home!

January 3 - January 6 was spent scrambling to write a research paper for an upcoming conference. Gal Pal Sal was right there with me writing another paper on a similar topic! What a week! Glad THAT is over!

January 7 - January 11 was spent in brisk Hartford, CT at the Association of Science Teacher Educators annual conference! Our papers were well received and it was wonderful hob-knobbin' with folks I look up to! I also got to see several fellow UA students! It was a fabulous week and well worth the angst of preparing the dreaded papers.

January 12 - January 12 was spent preparing for my classes! ASTE has just about the worst time for conferences (Right when classes start!). I never quite caught up!

January 13 marked the first day of courses! Woot!

January 19 I picked up an extra class. Seems there was a course sans a professor. I stepped in. It is a field experience course and very similar to another class I teach.

January 20 I got sick. Very sick. Took me nearly three weeks to recover.

January 31st I attempted to take the Christmas tree down. I got about half the ornaments off.

February 4 Orion got strep throat. I begged the doctor to tell me how to avoid it! I couldn't get sick again. He let me know I probably GAVE Orion the bug. Note: I do NOT encourage Orion's penchant for drinking out of my glasses; I find it rather gross. So it is possible he gave it to himself!

February 13 I finally caught up with my calendar writing, syllabi writing, grading, organizing my courses on BlackBoard, and the like. I worked every day that week from 6:00 or 6:30 a.m. till about 7:00 p.m. I left Friday having only 7 tests to grade! It was the closest to "caught up" I've been all semester! I celebrated with gyros, tabouleh, hummus, and beer with some friends in Sedalia! Woot! We offered props to Darwin, Lincoln, Valentine, and wished Lupercalia was still celebrated.

February 14 was Valentine's Day. I finally finished taking down the Christmas tree and assorted decorations. Wheph! Dinner was fabulous. Really. My boys gave me a Gameboy Advance (and old one to play my Tetris game on!) and some tasty chocolates! It's so good to be loved!

February 15 was spent in the bathroom! Intestinal bug. Or a parasite. :-)

February 16 found me back at work, plugging away. I can't say that I feel 100%, but I feel much better than I did at the end of January! Ugh! And so far, I'm caught up with grading and what not for all five of my courses.

Here's to staying healthy, blogging more often, and getting back into that "dissertation saddle!"

I've missed you guys!