Danielle Blog

Summary of a few weeks in early January

As you will have noticed if you are reading this, I haven’t posted anything in a while. I was doing most of my posting during breakfast.
However, during break and after Christmas, I started using my breakfast time to read Diana Gabaldon’s latest two books – A Breath of Snow and Ashes and Echo in the Bone. I’d read Breath of Snow and Ashes before, but I had never gotten around to reading Echo in the Bone. I had decided that I’d better read Breath of Snow and Ashes before Echo in the Bone. They are huge books and quite engrossing. Thus, my blog posting fell by the wayside.

Summary of events:
Break was really rejuvenating. I had time to sleep in and read books (aforementioned) a little bit. I also watched some movies, something I hadn’t done since the summer. I missed my chance to see Harry Potter before it left the theaters. Texas Seestor and I were trying to coordinate time to see it and just never managed to do that before it left. Oh well. I’m sure someone will buy it on DVD when it comes out again and I/we can borrow it.

I spent a BIG chunk of break trying to design my Genetics labs and write the lab manual. I’m using some of the lab exercises that I’d done in MN, but I’m trying to use some of the labs that have been done HERE in previous years too so as not to reinvent the whole wheel. I managed to write up the first three weeks of lab exercises before the binder needed to be printed for the students. They’ll get the rest as I finish editing/writing the others. I did look over all of the exercises for the semester very carefully, and I tried to coordinate them/time them with lecture topics. That can be rather challenging, since the info they need for about the 4th week in lab is chapter 19 in the textbook and I had hoped to go through the textbook mostly in chapter order. But I’ve got a plan; now, I’ll see if it works.

The first lab this week was half good and half bad. I had intentionally planned for the first part of lab (1st exercise) to be a “fun” one. And I think that it was. I’m bummed about the second half, but it was one that I’d borrowed from the person who taught it before, and that doesn’t always work very well. I think that they will still learn something from it.

In other news, my mac hard drive began deteriorating those days when I was prepping the lab manual; this was about 1 week prior to the start of classes. It was functioning, but randomly freezing and would require me to do a hard reboot. I was visiting Texas Seestor and family when I tried to reboot it and it wouldn’t reboot properly a couple of times in a row. My iPhoto wouldn’t load either. When I told Texas Seestor and Trainwreck about the issues I’d been having, TS convinced me to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple store in the nearby mall within the hour. THANK GOODNESS she insisted. It turned out that the hard drive was failing (it had 470+ bad sectors in it). It was working well enough for me to take it home and transfer all of my school files onto my school computer, but I didn’t shut it down for fear that it didn’t reboot. That ended up being a lifesaver, because when I shut it down before taking it into Apple to be repaired, it wouldn’t reboot again.

They would have replaced the drive in the store, but I told them that I’d had spotty performance on my DVD drive (officially called an optical drive) and USB port (one of the two). It got shipped off to the place where they do more intensive repairs. It came back with a new hard drive, optical drive, logic board, and optical cable. All of this was while it was still (just barely) under its 1 year warranty so everything was free. Labor alone would have been $310. Believe me, when I found out I could buy 2 more years of warranty, I jumped on it.

When it came back, we used my external hard drive to put everything back on it. It looks exactly like it did when I did my last back-up a day or two before the diagnosis. Time Machine, the back-up program for macs, is really amazing. Macs are cool. Having a place to go and get personal service without paying out the butt (like the Geek Squad at Best Buy) is worth any extra increase in cost, to me.

I go through all of this as a cautionary tale to back up your hard drive regularly. AND because it impacted my life quite drastically for the past couple of weeks. Working on my school laptop was really annoying – the screen is small, poorly lit, and the resolution is bad. It does what I need for lecturing, but I really don’t like working on it. Making powerpoints on it really wore my eyes out.

Otherwise, only a couple of other things occurred this month of note.

1) I got to see a high school performance of Les Miserables. It was really amazing. The friend of the family who had a role in it actually had a LEAD role and sung almost the entire second half of the show. He was just fantastic! All of it was really amazing. The depth of talent at the school is really phenomenal. Also, I’d never seen Les Mis before; I hadn’t realized that there is absolutely no dialogue – EVERYTHING is sung. Unlike opera, I could understand every word of it; their diction was also amazing.

2) Our school had a retreat right before the start of classes. I got to know another prof better who started this year who is relatively close in age to me (comparatively – she just turned 30 while I am 36, almost 37). Better yet, she is also single AND lives in my town! We are hoping to go out to supper together and/or maybe check out the night life in our town or in Austin. That will take some planning. But I’m excited to have the beginnings of a friendship here in TX. There are some potential people at church too who may become friends, but not much has come of that right now.

Speaking of church, I should probably get a few things done around my apartment before I head off to sing today. It is so easy for my place to fall into disorder; entropy is definitely at work.
Oh, and also thinking of church, with all of this computer mess, I was testing out various programs on my computer yesterday when I got everything reinstalled. In order to check my Flickr Uploader, I uploaded a photo of me that was taken for the church directory. I got a free 8×10 which I gave to Mom and Dad. The pic is on my Flickr account, because, it worked! yay! It is a good photo of me, I think.

I hope things are going well with you! I send a hug and or good thoughts in your direction.

ill (again)

I have had about 5 sick students per week for about 3 weeks who have had to miss class because of H1N1-like symptoms. Which I suppose isn’t many, considering that I teach over 100 students. But the bad thing, of course, is that when these sick students are “better,” we meet one-on-one to go over what they’ve missed.

I had 2 students who thought they were better and then relapsed really badly. So, I suppose it was inevitable that I’d get sick too. Not to mention that HB appeared to get it. The first time, I thought I’d gotten off easy with a mild case of just headache, sneezing, cough, sore throat and no fever. But this second time, I’ve had the fever part too. Yuck, I say.

I definitely feel more run down this round too. I pretty much slept for most of the day Saturday and Sunday.

I know no one really wants to hear the complaints of someone who is ill, so let me see what else I can tell you….

1) I’ve rediscovered my cache of herbal teas. They aren’t something that I drink much until it gets to be winter. So, it has been nice to delve into them again.

2) I just barely started Dan Brown’s book on HB’s Kindle last night. He had it with him for the weekend, and he had to do some work stuff over the weekend.
The Kindle is interesting. I really like that it is lightweight and I don’t have to use 2 hands to “hold it open.” This is a big advantage when reading while I eat. Usually I have to find something heavy (I use a stapler) to hold open my paperbacks when I eat. I used to have this multi-tool, which HB jokingly referred to as the “book tool”. When I would misplace it, I would utter something along the lines of “Have you seen my book tool?”

It is nice on my lap too. I haven’t quite figured out what happens if the computer chip goes wonky. I think that the books for an account are stored on Amazon…
…. but that always makes me a hint nervous.

I really like that HB isn’t collecting more and more paperback and hardback books that need physical space in our home. We are out of bookshelves. We already have whole containers of his books in our basement storage area. I think we need a library.

Anyway, I’m not very far into the book, so no news on that front. I’ll give you my general opinion without giving anything away once I’ve read it.

3) I have Thursday and Friday off! These are our “free days” which I suppose is like the equivalent of fall break. I will be spending it making sure my job application for the permanent position at school is up to par. oooooooooooo.

Now I just have to get healthy.

And stay healthy!

Feelin’ good

Remember that list of things I was hoping to do over these 4 days? Well, I was a bit derailed by my head.

I ended up with migraines on Thurs and Friday. At first on Thurs, I thought it was just a headache and it would get better. But just before I needed to go to the salon, it really intensified. I still went – I just wore earplugs and didn’t talk to anyone. And when I got home, I took my super-strong medication and rested, and tah-dah, it went away. But when that happens, I’m pretty much house-bound with reading and minimal computing.
Then the same headachey feeling came back on Friday!? This reminded me of what happened a month or so ago when I stopped using my humidifier (because it needed to be cleaned). This time, I’d stopped using it, because I couldn’t seem to get it working. However, HB came to the rescue. Before he left for work Friday morning, he got it working.

Today, after sleeping with my humidifier again, I’m headache free.

I usually don’t like to talk about my health, but this whole humidifier thing has been rather eye-opening. Minnesota must be particularly dry or something. It is odd, though, because I don’t have this problem in TX when I visit there (and don’t use one). Puzzling, I say.

Anyway, yesterday, I went ahead to the movie theater and saw Earth. It was really good. They did a really nice job of starting in the Arctic in January and then progressing through the year and the globe and ending up again in the Arctic in December. It had its usual sad predator-prey moments, and another sad moment (I won’t say, in case you watch it), but it had a joyous ending. I got chills watching parts of it. Some of the shots that they got of migrations were just incredible. I don’t know how they manage to be up in the air at just the right time and place to film them – particularly the birds. They had some shots of birds trying to migrate over the Himalayas that were just spectacular.

As for my other plans, today, I may or may not weed. I don’t want to stir up my allergies. I need to have a clear head and throat to sing that mini-solo in church tomorrow.

I did call the garden center and they said that the official last frost date is around May 20. And she said not to plant anything before Sunday, because someone there had told her that there was a frost warning between now and then. So, my annuals will wait a little longer. That’s okay. I’ll have them soon enough.

That is pretty much my excitement. I just finished the last book in a Fantasy fiction series that my friend from my post-doc got me started on. It is the Summoning series by Robin D. Owens. It was good.

This week, my copy of Hearts and Bones arrived and so did the Spymaster’s Lady. I might read my library books first, though, and save them for later, since my library books have due dates. We’ll see.

I’ll keep you posted on how they turn out.

finals

Well, I give one final today at 3:30-5:30 and the 2nd one tomorrow at 8:00-10:00. Yes, 8:00 am. I think that means that I have to leave the house around 6:15. Which is do-able without too much rearrangment of my schedule – but will still suck.

THENNNNNNNN – yes, then. Ah, the weight that will be off of my shoulders.

I already have dreams of playing Wii, reading the first book in the series by Margaret Lawrence, going for walks outside, watching the new Star Trek movie in the theater. Watching Wolverine in the theater.

And of course, lots of grading. But grades aren’t due until the 18th. So, it isn’t like I have to kill myself to get them done.

I’m still planning on getting them all done in 4 days (3, if the students answer the questions concisely). But I’m not going to work on the weekend to do them.

*happiness*

I also attend graduation with gowns, hood and all on Sunday (Mother’s day). It will be the first time I’m on the “other side” of graduation. Should be interesting. I hear, rather boring too. But well, novelty usually helps keep at least some of the boredom at bay.

Well, time to go work on writing that final for tomorrow. *sigh* Going to be a long day today getting that one done.

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series of books

I finished the Twilight series of books by Stephenie Meyer’s a couple of weeks ago.  This it the post I wanted to write that prompted my blog change when I couldn’t post.

This is the vampire series that has been on the NY Times bestseller lists. The first book is being made into a movie that is expected to debut on 11/21/08. The books are intended for teens, but like the Harry Potter series, I found them extraordinary, even if they were intended for a younger audience.

Here is the summary on Amazon for the first book, Twilight.

“Bella Swan’s move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. But once she meets the mysterious and alluring Edward Cullen, Bella’s life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. Up until now, Edward has managed to keep his vampire identity a secret in the small community he lives in, but now nobody is safe, especially Bella, the person Edward holds most dear.

Deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight captures the struggle between defying our instincts and satisfying our desires. This is a love story with bite.”

I would definitely agree with the “deeply romantic and extraordinarily suspenseful” part of the description. All 4 books are extremely well done with driving plots.  I find that Bella’s thinking and the dialogue between Edward and Bella is more at a college level than high school.   So, it is more readable than a typical high school story.  I highly recommend them to anyone in the mood for a love story with an action-packed twist. And, of course, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief of anything supernatural. I know that these are the sorts of stories that some of my family and friends will probably enjoy too.  I know Amber is reading them and my sister is too.  My friend in CA was trying to buy them at Target last night, but was running into a situation where they were sold out.

The books are the main reason I hadn’t blogged much before my blog design change. I’d wanted to spend all of my free time reading them. I even suspended watching some of my favorite TV shows like Survivor and Dancing with the Stars in order to read them in the evenings.  And I skipped looking at blogs over breakfast and read the books instead.

I got interested in these books, because two women at church, another vocalist and a flute plater, started talking about them at one of my music practices for the church band.  Their daughters were reading them and they ended up reading them too.  Then, I watched an interview on Ellen!  which wasn’t very detailed, but was enough to pique my interest.  I went to Target and bought the first book.  Then after reading the first one for most of the day, I went back and bought the rest of the series.  Note that reading these books was my treat on a fall break that we had.  I worked on 2.5 of the 4 days off on lectures, etc. (the break entailed 2 days off from school and 2 weekend days ).  So, it was a joy to set aside my work and read a wonderful book.

After finishing them, I was discussing them with one of the other girls in the band, our trumpet player, who had also read them.  I found out about  how there was a problem with someone in the publishing community leaking a draft of the first 1/3 of the next book that Stephenie Meyer will publish onto the internet.  There was a rumor that she was so upset, that she wasn’t going to finish the book.  In the process of looking up the rumor, I found Stephenie’s blog post about it on stepheniemeyer.com.  And she included the pdf of the draft in the post.  So, if you read the books and want to read about 1/3 to 1/4 of the next book,  you can find it on her blog here.  It is an amazing story.  It retells the Twilight series of events from  Edward’s perspective.  It gave me so much more insight into Edward’s character. We also finally got to learn more about his family, which was a real treat.

AFTER you’ve finished reading the books, I highly recommend watching a series of interviews with her at Entertainment Weekly when her most recent book came out.  For once, the questions were very in depth about specific parts of the books and not just the same old generic questions.  If you go to that link, click the ‘Twilight’ (11/21) pt 1 (through 5) videos on the side bar.  And work your way through all 5.

I hope you pick them up and read them.  I don’t want to build up your expectations too much, because like Harry Potter, they might not be your cup of tea.  However, you might pick up the book, read the flap and see what you think.  Happy reading!

Wheel of Time

Robert Jordan, the author of the Wheel of Time series, has died.

I think this means that we will never know the end of the story! ugh.

As some of you know, my biggest complaint about these books is that the first one is great and hooks you into the storyline, and then the rest of them seemed poorly edited. In general, they dragged on for too long. Sometimes I wondered if he was avoiding having to write the ending.

Well, anyway, I thought I’d pass along the news since I think at least 3 of you have read them too.

Discussing the book in the comments

This is a spot where I thought we could discuss the book in our comments.

That way, if you don’t want to read the ‘spoilers’ until after you’ve finished the book, you just don’t look at the comments. Then, when you finish, you can read them and comment to your heart’s content.

Got it!

I actually drove to a nearby Borders at just before midnight to be in a store with all of the excitement and to pick up the new Harry Potter book. Well, little did I know what a crazy amount of people had the same intention. I knew it would be big, but not THAT big.

They had a wristband system where they would call people to get in line when their wristband color was called. They were on the third color and when asked how long each color takes, they told me 1 to 1.5 hours per color. ugh. I promptly went back home to sleep and picked up the book, as originally planned, at Target this morning for $17.49.

NOW – no more delaying – MUST READ.

Flowers for Friday – deck

This is it! The long anticipated final book in the Harry Potter series comes out tonight at midnight.

I’ll be picking up my copy in the morning from Target. I will be under a media black-out until I finish reading it, because I don’t want to accidentally hear any plot details. So, if I seem like I’m hiding in a cave for a while, that is because I will be.

I’ve been debating about reading it particularly slow in order to stretch it out and make it last longer, but I imagine I’ll be reading at a medium to slow pace instead. I just want to be sure that I’m not reading so fast that I lose the magic of it. And after waiting all of this time, I want it to last for more than just a couple days.

And if you haven’t guessed by now. I still haven’t taken close up pictures of the flowers on my deck.

I do have a far away shot that I took when I was testing out some camera settings and then when I was testing the flickr uploader software.

If you look at the large view, you can see it better.

Unfortunately, at this moment the hibiscus wasn’t blooming. But it has just been a wealth of blooms lately. Its been really really gorgeous.

Well, I’ll be seeing you later. For those of you who read Harry Potter – enjoy the magic!

Favorite author Friday

I recently read my favorite author’s most recent book in the Wilderness series, Queen of Swords by Sara Donati. I love this series of historical romance. The stories are set in colonial America in New York. I’ve blogged about them before as one of the five books I’d take with me if I were stuck on a deserted island. I also recently got Amber hooked on them or at least on the first one.

This time, I actually took the time to get an autographed copy. It meant that I needed to order to book from Sara’s hometown so that she could sign it before they shipped it to me, but it was well worth the shipping cost. I’ve been wanting an autographed copy.

I don’t want to say too much about the story, because I could give away details to the family and friends who come here who read the books too, like Mom, Texas Seestor, SeaQueen, Jenski, and Amber.

But I did want to show off part of the beautiful map in the front of the book. It isn’t really necessary to understand the story (unlike some books where you are flipping back to the map constantly) but it sets a nice ambience for the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story. I’d say it is as good as the first one, or Lake in the Clouds (which is my second favorite so far). This one probably comes in as my third favorite.

If you are ever looking for an action packed story that includes a woman rebelling from her father’s idea of how her life should be lived, history, and enough romance to make for a happy ending (instead of a depressing one like all those books on Oprah’s list or those other popular lists), pick up Into the Wilderness, the first in the series.

Happy Friday, everyone!