catsari

We had the 8 hour faculty meeting marathon, the results of which leave me with somewhat mixed feelings.  (There will probably be a separate post on that, later.)  Today, it's an advising meeting and the picnic thrown by the new Dean.  A meeting with the parents of my new advisees on Saturday and then the advisees themselves on Tuesday.  Along with various other meetings (including two academic integrity cases), and, once we're at the point where we're ready to collapse, finally classes start next Wednesday.

We're back from the beach.  Got back on Saturday, even managed to buy groceries last night.  Now my mom's in town, I think through Friday (?), since daycare is closed this week.

I taught my half-day workshop for high school teachers this morning.  It was an interesting mix - I had folks who'd done a fair amount of gel electrophoresis, and someone who'd never run a gel.  Hopefully they got something useful from it - I was relieved that the experiment worked and gave usable (if in some cases not gorgeous) bands on the gels.  I don't think I made minimum wage on it by the time you count in all the prep time, however. :P

Now I've got 3.5 weeks before I head out to my conference.  Whoosh. 

Thanks everyone for the wishes.  It was a pretty good birthday.  I turned in my grades for that intensive-learning (13 days = a semester worth of class) course this morning, had lunch (and "Chocolate Overload Torte" ) with T, and got to play in lab with my new summer research student, who started yesterday. 

We picked up D as usual.  The original plan was to go out for Indian food, but then D had a near-meltdown over wanting to go to the coffee shop (go figure) in the car.  By the time it became clear just how much he wanted it, we were already on the interstate (plus we'd been there for lunch without him), so I spent much of the trip back to C'burg working him out of his funk.  He agreed to Indian food eventually, then, as we were leaving our house (having stopped to let TY out), declared that he wanted to get food and have a picnic at the duckpond (something we'd offered earlier in the evening).  So I called in our order at the Indian place, and then we had to stop at a grocery store to pick up paper plates and bottles of water (too ?? to go home for them).  We got our food, got to the duck pond, dished out food, ate a few bites and then the wind picked up from breezy to massively gusty.  Gusty enough to blow loaded paper plates off the table.  About the same time, D declared that he was ready to go see the ducks.  So Tim put what was left of the food in the car, and we fed ducks for about an hour.  Lots of hungry ducks, as usual, so D had a good time.  We also saw two ducks having a major dominance fight (I guess?) - apparently it's duck mating season or something - lots of weird duck behavior tonight, which D pretty much ignored.

Went home, ate the rest of Indian food, got to open my presents (novels and dish towels) from T & D, let D play with the Spore creature creator on Tim's laptop (which he LOVES, and is surprisingly good at), went to bed.  Well, or at least, Tim and D are asleep.  I got up once D was asleep, will probably read a few minutes before I go back to bed.

Summer's going to be busy.  Although teaching this May course was interesting, and not as bad as I'd thought it might be, it was still a big bite out of my research time, so I'm getting started a month later than I usually would.  And I'm going to a conference at the end of July, for which I am really hoping to have more data than I have now.  And I have a grant app due in September, for which I'd really really like to have at least one of the papers on my desk in the "submitted" category, in hopes of it being accepted before the granting agency actually reads the apps in early '10.  Yep, going to be a busy summer.

For once, my Kroger had some good looking avocados, so we had guacamole with our leftover black beans in burritos last night.  Dalton made the guac.  He loves to scoop the avocado out and mash it, although we had a bit of a struggle over the lime juice - he wanted to keep squeezing and squeezing the bottle.  He used to love avocado when he was a baby, but lately, he's happy to scoop it but not interested in eating it.

Oh well, more for the adults. Yummm.

Addition:  Yes, for those of you who were wondering, letting a toddler make guac is a recipe for ending up with a greasy, green, but very happy toddler.

I just finished my last class before spring break starts.  I still have a department meeting and a helium fill to do this afternoon (so I'm not leaving until 5pm), but it's a nice feeling to have a week coming up without class meetings.

Next week, we've agreed to come in to work every day.  I've got a grant renewal that has to go into the mail on Monday, plus the usual pile of grading (I gave an exam today), and I'd /really/ like to make some progress on a manuscript that's languished on my desk for the last 6 months.  And I should take another whack at the course I'm teaching in May, since I need to have it mostly ready to go before the 3 week May intensive-learning term starts.  (Not a whole lot of time to even THINK let along PLAN during May.)

T and I were going to go out for lunch before the department meeting, but he forgot he'd told students they could come take a make-up exam this hour, so I guess I'm off to pick up lunch by myself. :(

We took the sleeper sofa apart last night and found my sewing book wedged deep in the works.  I don't know how it got stuffed in there without taking all of the cushions off (something that hasn't happened lately), but mostly I'm just glad to have it back.  I got Dalton's jumpsuit about 2/3rds finished and managed to get him to do a fitting.  It is wide, very wide.  I cut a 4T in order to get enough depth in the crotch (he's all torso), but now I'm wishing I'd done a 2T or 3T and lengthened it instead.  It's hard to tell without sewing all the side seams and putting in the sleeves, but I'm thinking I'm going to want less width in the torso, so I think I'll take out the one sleeve I had done and take half an inch off of both sides.  And of course, the legs are too long, but I knew that was going to happen, and that's what hems are for.

Drat this skinny, big headed, long-torsoed kid.  It doesn't make the sewing easier!

Grading's on the agenda today.  I know you're surprised.

In the past 24 hours:

• Dalton has thrown up on me once and narrowly missed the second time.  (Which is good, since I was wearing my dryclean only wool coat that time.)
• I have been thoroughly skunked by trying frantically to wash a dog who came in skunked (also muddy), 5 minutes before we were supposed to leave the house.
• I have had 6 hours of sleep, 6.25 if you count a catnap after the second puking event and before I got up to write lecture notes.

But it can only get better.  Tim took D to the doctor this morning, and we've got a Z-pack at the pharmacy (to deal with sinus infection/bronchitis that it causing the coughing that is causing the puking).  And he picked up peroxide, so there's some hope that we'll be able to get the skunk smell out of TY tonight, since baby shampoo didn't cut it at all this morning.  In fact, I may go bathe my hands (my smelliest part) once these students finish taking their exam, so that I won't have to smell quite so skunky the rest of the day.   I /think/ it's mostly just my hands - I stripped before washing the dog, so it shouldn't be on my clothes.  But the house will undoubtedly smell bad tonight, given a skunky dog and several puke-soaked items that didn't make it into the wash last night.

Aside: you know you're a mom when your toddler pukes on you and you just strip off your shirt, wipe your hands, and continue lying in bed with him.  So there's puke on the blankets a little bit?  Who cares?  Changing the sheets WILL mean he'll puke again 5 minutes later.  Last night, my gambit paid off and there was no more puking in bed.  Tonight I can change the sheets.

You learn these things when your 6 month old has norovirus and pukes every 10 minutes.  Sometimes it just isn't worth changing the sheets.

I went to a pretty interesting workshop this morning (too damn early) called "Why do they read facebook but not the textbook?"  Actually, they didn't say anything about facebook at all, but there was some good stuff about textbook reading.  I came away with a few good ideas, although I didn't get to stay until the end - I had a study session scheduled for 9:30.  Of course, only one student showed up, and it wasn't one of the ones that could have used it, so here I am back in my office already!

It's going to be a busy term.  I'm teaching organic chemistry (again), I have a general chemistry lab (which is mostly uneventful unless I let the grading overwhelm me), and then I have a new course on pharmaceutical chemistry.  The pharm chem is the one that's going to keep me on my toes.  I have them reading and answering questions for every class, plus a homework set (short short) for every class, so I have to put out 6 assignments a week and grade 3 for accuracy and 3 for completion every week.  It's chaos of my own making, but still.

The pharm chem group is interesting.  Most of them are juniors and seniors, and since the course doesn't really count for anything useful in terms of degree requirements, the folks I have in there are actually pretty interested in the subject.  But it's challenging.  Selected student questions from yesterday alone:

• "So how do they know if you're in the ER whether you're ODing on amphetamines or something else?" (Related to discussion of elimination rate of various drugs - including amphetamines - depending on urine pH.  Me: Uhhh....)
• "So do the [drugs in the contraceptive] patch and the ring have a long half-life?"  I'd mentioned the pill earlier in a discussion of drug dosing schedules, and we were talking about half-life, so I guess it related.    Me: Nope, they're extended release, so it's absorption, not excretion that's slow.  (Go me.)
• "So what about the shot?"  (Yes, they LOVE to talk about contraceptives.)  Me: Nope, extended release again.
• "So what about Gardasil, where you have to go back 3 months later for another shot?"  Me: Gardasil's a vaccine, so it's teaching your immune system to recognize the HPV virus - it's not a half-life thing.

And I wonder why I feel wrung like a sponge afterwards.  Sheesh.

Today's agenda:

• Grade pharm chem homework
• Grade organic quiz
• Spend the afternoon in lab with gen-chem kids  And I'm off to it!
• Put in grades from organic homework (thanks to my TA)
• Fix tenure dossier, which really has to go over to dean's office by tomorrow! - or say the heck with it, I like it how it is, maybe.
• Plan tomorrow's two lectures one done
• Meet with advisees.  Rue having not gotten it together enough to bake cookies for them or something, since they're doing their annual evaluations (of me) today.

Ya'll have a great day!