January 6, 2012 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
I’m still wishing everyone I see “Happy New Year.” So, I send you that message of joy as well.
I truly hope that this year is a good one for all of us.
It has been about a week since I posted, and since I’m still ON BREAK (*hip-hip-horray!*), I feel like I can have a leisurely breakfast and write up some thoughts about the past week.
Last Friday, Texas Seestor was off of work and we got together with some friends and saw the Muppets! It was SUCH a fun and funny movie! It had a huge number of 80′s references and comments sort of making fun of itself; I love that they weren’t taking themselves too seriously.
New Year’s Eve was really fabulous. I had a migraine for most of the day, but it went away enough by the evening that we went to a dessert and drinks party that some friends were hosting. They have this party annually, but it is the first that we’ve gotten to go, because Mom and Dad stayed home with my nieces and babysat so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and I could go to the party.
The desserts were SO YUMMY! And then we started playing Rock Band.
OMG was it ever fun!
I’ve never played it before, but they had a microphone, so we started with Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock And Roll” and I sang the lead. I wasn’t sure ahead of time if it would be in my range, but it was! I rocked it out! There was a bit of a weird time-delay/echo that I’ve noticed with gaming systems that do karaoke, but I pretty much just tried to ignore it and focus on hitting all of the pitches and slides correctly. It was SO COOL!
I did not try to play any instruments; I was having too much fun either singing the lead, or singing along with Texas Seestor whenever she or someone else was singing.
It makes me want to go out for karaoke sometime.
How often do I think that?
In other music news, the new band I’m in had our second practice on Monday after New Year’s Eve. I shake my head at how quickly songs are coming together; it is really remarkable. The lead vocalist’s voice has such texture and richness to it. And man does he shine on John Denver songs!
We are working on a song that has only been recorded once, and we are doing it more like it was originally written, so I ended up recording it with my iPhone in order to learn the new rhythms and phrasing. I’ve listened to it a lot this week in order to learn all of those things, but also to just have the sound wash over me. Listening to it again the next day really surprised me. At the time when we were singing it and I was recording it, I was working so hard to match his phrasing, that I couldn’t really appreciate it. But listening to it after the fact let me revel in the moments when our phrasing, slides, and sounds were matched (especially toward the end of the song).
It is a good one.
We’ve got 6 songs that are ready to go with just two practices. I’m working on learning an additional 10 songs this week to see if we can take some songs that do not typically have a lot of harmony parts in them and add harmonies to them.
The challenge is finding songs for acoustic guitars with 3 part harmonies.
I’ve realized that a lot of songs with harmony that I’ve always loved have keyboards, electric guitars, and drums (and are usually 2-part); sometimes they sound fine scaled back to 2 guitars, but other times, probably not. We’ve got some Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Eagles, John Denver (as mentioned), James Taylor, and the Beach Boys. I’ve got the other 2 guys ready to do an Indigo Girls song (Power of Two)! We’ll see how that one goes this coming week. I’m working on convincing them to consider Dixie Chicks, Rascal Flatts, and Lady Antebellum. I’d love to find a good Corrs song that would work for our voices!
Anyway, it has been a nice part of my break to be working on this. I need something to channel my energy into.
I’ve also cleaned up my apartment, and hung some artwork.
I teamed up with a friend at Trivia Night on Wednesday night and we won! It was mostly due to his knowledge, because he wins a lot, but I knew a few questions that he would’ve missed if I hadn’t been on his team. He let me have the bottle of wine that came with the winnings. It was the wine that I had been drinking that night, so I know it is a good one. He kept the little certificate thing to add to his montage of certificates.
If you are wondering: One of the questions I knew (that he didn’t know) was about the city that had the first subway.
Of course I knew that answer! Boston! You can’t exactly live there for 7 years and not hear about that at some point.
We got an extra point for guessing the year it started. 1897!
cool, huh!?
My other friend is back in town after being gone to Colorado for the holidays. We went out to supper last night. She will get to join us for trivia next week too. She and I are going to attempt to be “good” and continue getting a lot of work done next week for school, so we are limiting our plans to mostly evening events.
Yes, I’m on break next week too. Meetings start on Thursday of next week (Jan 12th) and classes start on Wednesday of the following week (Jan 18th).
But this whole break is sort of a working break. I worked up until Christmas Eve and I worked some the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I’ve mostly ended up doing a “slow down” when I’m at my apartment and not visiting family. Although there was nothing slow about doing that curriculum proposal last week. Whew! That was a hard one. But I got it in, and I heard back from the chair of the committee this week that it looked really good! woooot-wooooot!!!
Okay. And with that reminder of work, and since it is now 9:30 am, I ought to write a recommendation letter for a student who wants to go on a Study Abroad trip or maybe work on my syllabus for Genetics.
Catch you later!
December 29, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 3 Comments
I just finished watching X-Men First Class in Blu-Ray. What an amazing movie. I loved getting to hear the back story on Erik/Magneto, Raven/Mystique, and Charles. It was really cool and had some neat twists and turns. It is too bad that there wasn’t more of Hugh Jackman in it (Wolverine), BUT the fact that James McAvoy was in almost every scene made up for it.
I’m such a sucker for any James McAvoy movie. I fell for him when I saw him in Penelope and it blossomed into a huge crush when I saw Becoming Jane.
But I digress.
The X-Men movies are really great; I highly recommend them.
I had a lot of fun with my family for Christmas last weekend. And here we are, on Wednesday, headed into New Year’s weekend, which I’ll spend with them again! We are starting to make plans for more movies and meals together.
Yesterday and today, I’ve been trying to tie up various things on my work to-do list. The letter of recommendation I needed to do for a student was relatively easy. Of course, today I got another request from a different student. The curriculum proposal for a new Developmental Biology course has taken quite a bit more of my time and energy. But I got a pretty good draft completed tonight. I’ll talk to my department chair about it tomorrow and hopefully have it wrapped up and submitted tomorrow. It is officially due on Friday at 5 pm, so if I can finish it on Thursday, I can take Friday OFF and not think about work.
I DID go for an exercise walk yesterday in our gorgeous 60+ degree weather. It was really fabulous. I’d wanted to go again today, but I was focused and trying to get the proposal done by supper, so I skipped it.
I’ve also managed to run some errands, which included boring things like grocery shopping, and getting food for Max, but also included fun stuff like stopping in at Dress Barn to check out their sales. I did find one cute top and one sweater; both have some frills and ruffles and have purple in them!
I also found a new, fitted exercise (dry) t-shirt in purple too (at a sporting goods store). I’ve been wanting to buy some new clothes since the weather has turned cooler, and just haven’t managed to find the time. I’m hoping to get to some more stores in the upcoming weeks. Everything is pretty picked over, so it is a bit challenging, but this is when I finally have time, so this is when I’ll go!
I finally saw “The Blind Side” with Texas Seestor and Trainwreck last weekend. It was a really good movie. I can totally see why it won awards.
I also rented “Crazy, Stupid, Love” which I do NOT recommend unless you are a Ryan Gosling fan and just want some eye candy. I’d gone to redbox a bit spontaneously (and had not scouted the availability out ahead of time) and had wanted to rent X-Men. When it was empty, I just picked a “romantic comedy” instead that I’d thought had good reviews. Not the best choice, and it taught me to plan ahead, for sure! Oh well, two out of three movies is pretty good.
In other news, the new band that I’m in had our first practice last week. We are mainly working on songs that are designed for 2-3 part harmony and acoustic guitars (Crosby, Stills & Nash, Eagles, Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver), sort of a country/rock cross. We had some really gorgeous chords during some of our very first run-throughs on songs. I got goosebumps a couple of times! We have a lot of potential. We’ll see if anything more becomes of it than just playing for someone’s surprise birthday party in late January. I’d like it to become something more. But for now, it is just good that we have any kind of goal; it will keep us practicing regularly and getting a bit of a set list down. I’ve had fun learning harmonies on all kinds of new songs and resurrecting harmonies I’ve sort of learned but haven’t been able to sing with anyone (like the 80′s songs such as “More Than Words” or “Hole Hearted”). I’m also stretching into country a little bit more than I’ve ever done before with a Wynnona Judd song and Sons of the Pioneers. It has been really interesting to branch out a bit more.
Okay. It is 11 pm, so it is definitely time for bed so that I can be bright and bushy-tailed for my work on my proposal tomorrow. Later!
December 19, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 1 Comment
Things that have been going on lately:
- I am really close to being done with grades for this semester! I ought to be able to wrap them up by noon today (Monday).
- our school (work) Christmas party was Friday. I bought a great new dress at Dress Barn for $40! Accessories cost more than the dress! I’ll wear it for Christmas Eve and get someone to take a photo of me that night and post them on Flickr.
- The party was a lot of fun. I realized just how many people I know at school now! I know a LOT more than last year at this time! I also had an opportunity to talk to some people about music and I may be in a new band/group now as a vocalist. We’ll see how that pans out.
- I went to see the touring production of Beauty and the Beast on Saturday! It was amazing! The vocals were just perfect. The set pieces/staging and design were really intriguing. The costumes were fun and gorgeous. I took my binoculars this time, so we were able to get a really close view of the costumes.
- I haven’t upgraded my camera or purchased any accessories for the 6 years that I’ve had it. Until now. I was thinking about buying the most inexpensive speedlight (flash) that is available. BUT I found out that it is strictly an on/off flash and doesn’t have the ability to do TTL (through the lens) light monitoring. I bit the bullet, splurged, and bought an SB-700 from Nikon. It is an AMAZING flash. I’m still learning how to use it. So my photos are in a bit of a transition state right now. It will be good to have this break to try to learn more about it.
- I used it for the birthday party for my nieces who are now 2 and 5. I also used it for the children’s Christmas program at my church. I never would’ve been able to get the photos I captured at the Christmas program without it.
- speaking of church, I sang a solo yesterday. “Precious Promise” by Steven Curtis Chapman (from his Music of Christmas album). I sang it in my soprano voice instead of my low alto/tenor range, which is always a little trickier for me. But this song called for it, I think. Anyway, the first verse was a bit shaky, but I closed my eyes, tried to think about the message of the song, said a mini “God help me do this!” type of prayer, and the 2nd verse, bridge, and third verse really turned out well. I may try to record it later once I finish grades.
- also with church: I’m on an email list for a daily scripture and interpretation. These last couple of weeks have been really amazing. A few of us have started some email discussions about some of the passages and how they speak to us, or where we struggle with them, and it has been really good for me spiritually. My faith journey and my spiritual growth sort of goes in fits and starts, it seems. This year, I’ve been on a steady rate of growth (and at least have not been flat), but this past month or so has been a bit more accelerated. So, that has been really noteworthy. I’m glad. They are also starting a new bible study at church in January which is finally going to be on a night that would work for me. So, I’m going to try to find out more about it! Yay!
Okay. I guess I’d better start going through this last stack of assignments so that I can finish grades.
October 11, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 3 Comments
I took this photo of my niece trying to carry a bunch of different balls as she walked across the yard, and it just seems like the perfect photo to be made into a poster about life and the juggling act so many of us do everyday.
Notice that she has managed not to drop any! Interesting that she has learned that at such a young age!
September 10, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
I keep thinking that I’m going to have time to finish posting about the rest of my vacation in Massachusetts, but I really don’t see it happening. So, I’m going to attempt to summarize (with the help of some photos) of the various things that I did this summer.
When I got back from my vacation and scientific meeting in Boston, I started summer research with an undergraduate student. His project involved working with RNA which degrades really easily if it is exposed to the enzymes (RNases) in dust. So, I was able to convince him, by showing him some highlight and tip sheets about working with RNA, that it was worth it to spend the first few days cleaning the lab spaces.
We ordered chemicals and primers for doing PCR and the supplies just barely arrived before I headed off to Port Aransas (TX gulf coast) for a family vacation. When we were planning the vacation, I was thinking that I wasn’t going to be doing summer research this summer. This meant that I basically had to get him up to speed and able to do the experiments by himself (or with minimal emailing/phone calls) in a short period of time. The great thing was that we did a quick RNA extraction, RT, and PCR, gel, and photo. We got a PCR result! That meant that he had a stock of RT (cDNA) to go back to while I was away and keep trying new PCR conditions. It was good for him to have to learn to work more independently and do some trouble-shooting. AND that allowed me to go to Port Aransas and hang out in the pool with my nieces, Texas Seestor, Trainwreck (bro-in-law), Mom, and Dad.
We spent all day at the pool, because my nieces were a bit afraid of the ocean again. The pools are incredible! I had a ton of fun there.
A couple of times, after supper, we went out to the beach to play in the sand.
All of the photos from that trip are on Flickr in a set.
When I got back from vacation, I went back to working with my undergrad all week long on research. I also wrote a Letter of Intent for a grant proposal. It was basically a 1 page summary of all of the parts of the grant; I think I had 2 pages of references for that one page (single-spaced) of writing. It was rather intense. But I did get it accepted and am now trying to find/make the time to write the full grant! (due October 10th which is really soon! – I really need to turn it in about a week or so early)
As an aside, science writing is one of the things that I really dread. Once I start, I’m usually okay at it, but it takes me a long, long time. This is one small part of why I decided I didn’t want to be a full-time PI at a big research institution where all of the funding depends on grants and publications. It just isn’t my passion. However, mentoring students IS my passion. So, a small school setting makes so much more sense for me. But I am finding that the funding is really an issue when it comes to doing molecular biology research. We only had $1200 this summer for a 10 week RT-PCR project! We spent 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the RT and 1/3 of that on the enzymes to do the PCR! That didn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room for chemicals for the RNA extraction, filter tips, RNase-free tubes, etc.
However, we did find out that we could cut all of our reactions in half to make them last longer. And we found other ways to stretch our small amount of money. But that isn’t going to be enough to do cell culture in future summers; which is why I’m writing a grant. We are also trying to get some local businesses to donate some money. I’ll be spending more time on that this year, I believe.
Anyway, around the time that the letter of intent was due, I went to the 4th of July parade in our town.
Towns from towns all around had floats to promote their local festivals and show off their festival queens and festival princesses.
There were a fair number of horses (drill teams) and cars (car clubs) too.
More photos are in the set on Flickr.
Other summer activities included going to the annual ice cream party hosted by some friends.
There were 17 flavors this year!
They have a really great pool, so I spent most of the party with my nieces in the pool. It was such fun! I was so glad to be invited. It is hard to fathom that they make 17 flavors of ice cream and host such a huge party each year.
We also saw Footloose at an outdoor park in Austin. Next year, they are doing the Sound of Music. Some of my friends (neighbors of Texas Seestor and Trainwreck) are organizers of the musicals and perform in the musicals (the very accomplished teen in the family), so it is always great fun to see the show. There is a wealth of talented performers in Austin, so the local productions are just amazing.
At the end of the summer, I went with them to see Hairspray – another summer Austin musical. And it was fabulous too! Seeing those shows were definitely some of the high points of my summer.
Near the end of the summer, and just before school was starting up, Mom and Dad baby-sat my nieces so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck and I could see the last Harry Potter movie. We saw it in 3D IMAX, which was just incredible!
The 3-D part didn’t matter as much as the IMAX. I wish I could see ALLL my movies in IMAX. It was the first time I’d seen a traditional movie (and not just an hour-long IMAX movie) on an IMAX screen. WOW! The sound was just incredible!
Mom and Dad also baby-sat right at the very end of the summer so that Texas Seestor, Trainwreck, and I could go to the Schlitterbahn waterpark for the day and stay until it closed.
There were two watercoaster rides that we rode that were just incredible. The Wolf Pack was the raft ride that we rode when we first arrived. Dragon’s Revenge is their newest ride and had EIGHT uphill sections where blasts of water shot Texas Seestor and I uphill (on a two-person raft)! It was AMAZING! Both of them had pretty long waits (about an hour), but we knew before we went that all of the big rides would have long lines (even on a weekday). We rode the Black Knight at the end of the day when the line was shorter; it is a black, enclosed tube, which is rather unsettling, but definitely adds to the adrenaline rush.
Other things about Schlitterbahn that I hadn’t realized was just how many inner tube rides there are! I was envisioning the type of waterpark that I’d gone to as a teen where we went on a lot of body slides and rode mats on the slides. Schlitterbahn is almost entirely raft and tube rides; it makes for many fewer bruises!
And I also discovered that a “tube shoot” is basically like going over a (small) waterfall on a tube. They are crazy fun.
Going to Schlitterbahn was the last thing I did before I started work again at school. We literally went on a Tuesday and I had all-day faculty meetings the next day on Wednesday. Classes started the following Wednesday for me. It was a great way to end the summer.
Speaking of classes, I’m teaching 2 sections each for 2 courses that I taught last year. That is helping me a lot with my course prep, because a lot of what I prepared last year (powerpoints), I can use again this year. But I’m also tweaking and revising things that I want to improve. Also, I’ve designed their workload differently as far as the type of prep they do before they come to lecture each time. It makes it so that I have to get their Incomplete Notes posted online earlier than in past years. But thus far, the students seem to be responding well to the new structure. Their first exam is next Friday, so I’ll see how they do!
In other news, I am singing regularly with my church Praise Band, and I have been encouraged by the lead singer to find some songs where I can do solos. We did a song by Casting Crowns (Glorious Day) which was in a perfect spot in my range. I did a couple of solo verses on that song, and I sort of surprised myself at how well I could sing it when it was in such a good spot in my range! I surprised some people at church too! That experience has helped me get some additional confidence in singing solo or in a more exposed setting where the instrumentals have backed off in volume.
I continue to spend most weekends (at least Saturday) with family. We played a lot of slip-n’-slide, baby-pool, squirt bottles, this summer in attempts to stay cool amidst the 100+ degree weather.
Dad got their used golf cart up and running, so one of the fun activities when we are at Mom and Dad’s is to go on golf cart rides. We especially go in the evenings when the sun is setting and it is cooling off.
That is a view of one of the first-ever golf cart rides as you look out across the golf course from my parents’ back deck. There is another road on the other side of the course.
When we are at Mom and Dad’s we also enjoy watching out for deer.
You can see how dry it is in their yard. They had to stop watering their grass a while back this summer when water levels dropped to a certain amount.
Mom and Dad also had a couple of owls that were living in their trees out front.
Here is a photo of just one of them.
As the tree got more brown, the owl became easier to spot.
Of course, when it sat on the roof, it was really easy to see!
Well, I think that covers the majority of my news from the summer. I hope to not go quite so long between posts. But with school and then with getting sick (I have some sort of cough right now), I haven’t had a whole lot of time to write long posts. Now that I’m more “caught up,” I hope to post small things more frequently!
I am still not on facebook. One of these days, I’ll get to it. But for right now, I need to go water my plants, prep some Incomplete Notes for lectures, clean my apartment, and work on my grant!
All the best,
Danielle
May 12, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 4 Comments
Well, I have given all of the final exams and graded all of them. I have one last lab report to grade for my Genetics class – all 42 of them. Most of them are 10 pages, because of their figures, but only about 3 pages of writing that I really have to examine closely. I am hoping to finish it up Friday morning.
I did finish all of the grades for the seniors in time to submit grades for commencement. Can you believe that I gave a final Wednesday morning and had to have the grades done by Thursday at 5 pm? Normally, the rule of thumb is 2 weeks to give back assignments to students. Of course, we always aim for much faster than that. I like to try to get exams back to them after a weekend. Consequently, the exam had a LOT more multiple choice and one word answers as opposed to sentences that I needed to read.
I’m tired. We are all tired. I’m going to bed very soon (it is only 8:30 pm); but of course, I’ll probably wake up at 5 am even though I don’t technically have to wake up at 5 am. It will take a few weeks for my internal clock to shift to something that is more typical for people.
In happy news, I have found out that I’ve received all 3 internal grants that I wrote over the past couple of months to support my research and the lab experiences of the students! Each one took me most of a day. The biggest one took me over a day to write. But all in all, it was well worth it. I’m super excited. Now, I’m funded to do a small summer research project with a student!
I’m also meeting tomorrow with the development officer who is working with me to get the rest of my research funded. He has some interesting leads, I think. We’ll see. 
May 10, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 7 Comments
I never know what to call my posts. There is so much that I haven’t blogged about that I barely know where to start, especially since I need to keep this short. I leave in about an hour to go give my second of three finals. Yes, we are in finals week here. Commencement is Saturday. I have seniors in my classes and senior grades are due on Thursday at 5 pm. This makes it so that I’m in a time crunch right now. I still need to finish writing my final that I’m giving tomorrow morning; I would be designing questions right now, but until I’ve had a bit more tea and am fully awake, it is really hard to come up with exam questions (it is 6:15 am as I write this).
I’m mulling some things around in my mind about faith, divorce, marriage, and relationships right now. It will take me a while to formulate my ideas, more time than I have right now. But I think that I’ll be writing something about it within a few weeks. Right now, what I can say is that I’ve been praying for something for almost 20 years, and it has finally happened. Hallelujah! However, it wasn’t at all in the way that I was expecting, and I am still processing it.
The good thing is that I’m taking next week off, OFF. I will have plenty of time to mull. I, of course, have a to-do list of things that I want to accomplish. But I also want to spend some time in reflection. I know that if I do anything related to work, it will be to clean up my office and figure out my schedule for the scientific conference that I’ll be attending in early June.
Once mid-June gets here, I’ll be back up and running doing summer research with an undergraduate student until the end of July. We’ll spend time getting the lab space cleaned, unpacked and assembled. I hope that we can get some decent experiments done this summer. I’m still trying to get the equipment I need for my experiments. But, I’ve made some progress. Then, I’ll have a week or two to prep for the start of classes in August.
In the middle of the summer, we are taking a family trip to the Texas coast again. I’m really looking forward to all of the vacations.
For now, even though my tea is still not finished, I think that I ought to finish getting ready for work and then write some exam questions.
March 12, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 5 Comments
Hello!
Today is my birthday! AND it falls on a Saturday this year! AND, even better, it is the first weekend of Spring Break!!!!
You know what that means?
hmmm?
Well, I’m going to tell you, of course. 
I am not going to work this entiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire weekend!
AND, throughout the week, I’m going to take time to do some fun activities.
You can’t tell that I’m excited, can you?
Right now, I’m at Texas Seestor and Trainwreck’s place. I arrived yesterday at 5 pm just when Trainwreck brought the girl’s home from daycare – or PRE-K as my oldest niece exuberantly tells us. We played/I lounged while she played until about 6 pm. It was a great way to start the weekend. About partway through, the youngest finished her supper and bath and came up to play too. She is such a funny thing. She is at that stage where she loves putting things together and taking them apart and making them fit. Over and over again. Who knew that putting a plunger into the barrel of a syringe (all child-toys and not a real one) would be so fascinating?
We watched a lot of the coverage last night on the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. How very awful and sad. My heart goes out to all of them.
I’ve been up for about an hour and I’ve eaten a small amount of cheerios or “pre-breakfast” to tide me over until we go out to breakfast. I think that we are going to go to one of my favorite places where I can get really good biscuits, sausage, and really good shredded, fried potatoes. I LOVE the shredded hash browns and biscuits at this particular place. Of course, if we don’t end up going there, the other 2 places we tend to go out for breakfast are also really awesome.
Other plans involve going out to supper tonight and having cake and ice cream at some point.
Then tomorrow, Texas Seestor got tickets for she, Trainwreck and I to go see a vocal performance (a Pops). I’ve been trying to find some sort of performance to go to in the upcoming months as a treat to myself, and voila! She surprised me with this! How perfect! Mom and Dad will watch the girls so that we can go out.
This week, Mom, Dad and I hope to go to the zoo. There is one in the area to which I’ve not yet been, and I’m really excited to go.
We are also talking about taking a trip out to another town that has artsy-craftsy type stores to spend part of a day.
I’ll have to be really efficient with getting my work done on all of the other days where we don’t have activities. But I should be able to do that. I’ve got incentive, because if I can get my stuff done, then I can take the entiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire weekend off next weekend too!
Don’t get me wrong. I really do love my work. But I’ve been working really long hours, and I’ve sacrificed a lot of “relaxing time” by having this type of job (and by wanting to do it to the best of my ability). And I’m just a tad burnt out right now.
hmm….
I think my older niece is up. I’d better go. The fun begins!
February 4, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 2 Comments
There is just enough snow accumulation here in my part of Texas for the roads to become potentially treacherous (if they are not treacherous already) and for schools to shut down for a snow day! In parts of the country where salt/sand/cinder trucks are available, this amount of snow would be nothing, because the trucks would have laid down enough salt/sand/cinders ahead of time to make the roads negotiable. But since small amounts of snow can easily turn to ice without those preparations, I think that the administrators are doing the right thing today by keeping buses and cars off of the roads.
Happily, I don’t really care at this point if I lose a day of lecture. We are on a schedule, but there is only one other prof with whom I need to coordinate the timing of our lectures which is waaaaaaaaaaay easier than the situation I had in MN. Also, in MN we were on a super strict schedule to get through certain chapters. Here, it is much more relaxed.
Thus, I will spend the day prepping my lecture for Monday and writing up a lab that needs to be ready to hand out on Monday too.
Part of me wants to just curl up with a book and read all day; but that is a luxury that I can’t really afford right now if I want to still take tomorrow off. I have been trying to be better about having one whole day off each week. It is better for me, and better for my students. My lectures are more creative and energy-filled if I’m not burnt out. Did I mention that on my evaluations last semester, my highest marks from the students were in the enthusiasm category?
Some of that is because now that I’ve been teaching the material for the 3rd (or 2nd time, depending on the class) it is easier to spend the time finding the “interesting examples” that make the material interesting at this basic level. It is tricky, because in biology, a lot of the things that I find inherently interesting require an understanding of concepts which they simply have not learned yet. However, one of the things I REALLY like about the genetics textbook that I’m using is that each chapter starts with an interesting situation that IS understandable to students with their level of knowledge.
Anyway, back to the snow day. I’m excited to have this change in scenery. The first snow of the year, even in MN or IN or MA, was always something that I found some joy in – as long as it didn’t make my commute bad that day. However, when that first snow occurred, part of me knew it to be the indicator of a long, drawn out winter that was just around the corner.
In contrast, THIS snow is simply joyous, because there is nothing of that impending sense of disruption and doom. I also have no need to go out and drive in it. At the most, I will walk around my apartment complex and look for things to photograph before it all melts away.
JOY!
and beauty!
January 30, 2011 - Posted by danielle- 2 Comments
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.