The count-down

I am lucky. I still have another week before classes start. I have been relatively productive during break, but could have done more planning and prep before now if I had cared to. At the same time, I am definitely not going into the semester exhausted, which is a good thing.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it, but I am teaching a lecture/lab course plus one intro lab this semester. In the sciences we figure out staffing by contact hours, so I will be in the classroom teaching for 9 hours a week. The intro lab is no big deal - there is a person who preps the labs - but I will also be sitting in on the lecture so I know what the students are learning and also sitting in on a lab before mine so I know what to teach - that will add another 6 hours to my in-class time each week. The other class I am teaching I have decided to do from scratch even though I have my predecessor's materials, so it will be fairly time consuming to generate the course material. My knowledge is different from my predecessors, so it was either learn what she had taught and teach it, or draw on what I know and make up new labs. So I went with the latter.

Unfortunately I will not have my research set up before the start of classes, so I am not sure if I will be able to use my research in my teaching lab this year, but will down the road!

I realized last week that I actually have to be putting together lectures for the semester. Tomorrow, I start my one-lecture-prep-a-day plan. Over the course of the week, I need to outline the first few labs too. I am excited about the course, as it is upper level, and am trying to hold the self-doubt at bay. I know I can do it, I just need to do it.

In other news, I painted this. It will be fired and ready to pick up this week. I picked it as a pet dish, but we will see if she gets to use it or not. I painted the flower on the inside figuring it could be a water dish, and then I could still see my handy work. A few of us went for a ladies' night at one of those paint-your-own studios, and we all did completely different designs. It will be fun to see how they look after being glazed and fired!

In other-other news, I spent a fun couple of days in Philadelphia this weekend.

 The stairs Rocky runs on.

 The Liberty Bell, which I learned was cracked from day 1.

 Independence hall.

 The room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. George Washington sat in the chair in the front!

 Random alley...

I have also managed to run 3- 4 times per week, thanks to some friendly motivation. For some reason I don't feel like I am getting any faster or that it is getting any easier. I think I need to try running without music, as boring as that sounds, to figure out what my natural pace is. It is on my To Do list for tomorrow.

My motivation to keep on top of my work this semester is going to be more short trips like this. 7 days to the new semester and counting...

Expensive tastes

One of the stories my Mom has told goes something like this: at an early age, my parents opened a nice bottle of wine. This was before they regularly drank decent wine like they do now. I was probably 10 or so. I took a sip and said, "Oh, that's good." My mom jokes about how I had expensive tastes as a kid.

Recently, BIL guy invited me to tag along for some wine tasting with his friends for a restaurant/selling wine to make money deal with the sales guy. All the wines tasted completely different, but there was one in particular that I loved and was popular across the group. If I remember correctly it was a Cabernet. Not too dry. Had a caramel taste. Smooth. I wanted a brownie to eat with it.

It was the most expensive one there.

BUT, if they bought 10 cases they would get an AMAZING deal on it. BIL guy said he would buy one of the cases, then looked at me and asked if that was okay.

Um. Yeah.

Sciency office decor

I wanted a book stand for my office, but the only one I could find was this dark one at Target. The front tab used to be taller, but I had my dad trim it down.

I thought I took other photos along the way, and maybe they are on my camera, but I wanted to make the book stand more fun. I painted the outside sides red, and the front side white. Then I cut out a bunch of images from an old intro biology text book. Here is my cat after she made the final decision about what images I should use. She is always super helpful.

I did a layout to see what would fit on the book stand.

Then I decoupaged it all on there. Let me tell you, decoupaging textbook images is not a good idea. The paper is SUPER SUPER thing and becomes easy to tear and gets wrinkly. You can see the wrinkles in this image I think.

Yesterday, I finally put a clear coat on it so I could bring it in to work. It's super science dorky and great for my office!

Busted

As I was catching a friend up this evening on my romantic life, I was recounting conversations between BIL guy and I. Over the past, well, since NYE, we have talked about how this all came to be with he and I. Admittedly, I mentioned something in a drunken state about how I had wondered what was going on because we were doing date-like things, but I could not tell if it was dating. He commented that we were more dating at that point than we had been the day before. Funny.

Fast forward a week, and he is telling me that "there was one time when we were on a date...I mean when we were hanging out...when I knew I should've made my move and I thought I had screwed it up and lost my chance."

Busted.

He could not remember when this non-date was, but clearly had hadn't lost his chance.

Lesson learned

The lesson: I know I should not put off the desire to write a post thinking I will get my work done first. What ends up happening is that I waste my day procrastinating, then write a post, then get way less work done than I intended. And I have a syllabus to try to finish, so I MUST post first so I have no excuses.

Not that you needed an explanation of that, but whatever.

Now on to the post...

One, I love Yogi tea. Particularly when the tea saying feels applicable to me. And "Happiness comes from contentment" feels true in my current life. I have been pretty content since September in work life and personal life. I ventured into the online dating thing around then just to get back into it, and just let a guy down who I had seen several times and shut down my account. I also started hanging out with someone with whom I have become friends thanks to my brother-in-law. I may eventually come up with another nickname for him, but until then he is BIL guy. It is strange to call him BIL guy, particularly because having known my BIL and sister is apparently what was keeping us in the friend zone. Past tense. It was one of the reasons I thought possible that hanging out was staying platonic, so it was good to have confirmation that it was not one of the other possibilities.

On NYE, I met the friends with whom he hangs out regularly and also briefly interacted with other friends at the restaurant where he and I had dinner. Apparently his friends like me and think I am nice. Duh. :-) He and I cooked an amazing venison tenderloin courtesy of said friends last night (with some roasted potatoes, mushrooms, and a port wine reduction). Thanks to said friends, he is in on a wine buying deal (the friends own a restaurant) that means we had some pretty darn good wine with dinner too. I am tagging along to the next tasting where other owners in the restaurant will be...apparently including one of the N F L* players here who is from the friends' same hometown. He has also been thinking of going to Philadelphia for a night for something to do, so that will probably be happening. Cooking, laughs, hanging out, good wine, flirting, someone to warm up my hands and feet, and whatever else may come from leaving the friend zone? I'm in.

In the meantime, I will try to ignore this distraction when I need to be getting work. Speaking of distractions, I FINALLY figured out how to transfer my iToons* library and keep the play counts and ratings. I spent way too much time with this, and in the end it was simpler than I thought it was, but the help posts for iThings was not that easy to find. Anyhoo...back to work now that it is is 3:00 in the afternoon. Oiy.

* Yes they are typed funny on purpose.

Let's do this

I cleaned out my email inbox at work.

I have a course syllabus to write. And a grant.

I am psyching myself up for my second semester. At the end of last semester, I jokingly wrote on the FB, "1 semester down. Approximately 59 to go," and I joked about it at work today. Two members of my parents' generation could not believe that I would count down. I guess they took it literally! Luckily I love my job and I am NOT actually counting down to retirement, I just thought it was funny to think about. I think maybe that generation is stressed out being in their late 50s to mid 60s in the current economic climate that they find it inappropriate that I might hope to retire some day, too. Hope my parents thank me for paying my taxes and supporting their fixed income post-retirement.

My student evaluations suggest that students either thought the course and my teaching were great...or not. . The large majority think there is too much material and that lectures move too quickly. They said my grading in lab was harsh, but honestly their lab reports were not great. And they certainly picked up on the fact that as the semester progressed, I was more comfortable in class. They are so unprepared for the amount of material they need to learn though. This spring I am sitting in on the intro course, so hopefully we can improve the students' appreciation of and performance in the course and not dumb it down. It is reassuring to know the woman with whom I team taught gave me feedback throughout that was positive and/or constructive. Only up to go from here!

I ran again for the first time in a couple of weeks with new running sneakers and just as it was starting to snow. Everything about it was great except the running part. (I did it, I just refuse to like it.) I have 11 months to be able to run a half marathon and MONTHS of hot and humid weather in the middle. I will have to get my butt up early this summer to keep up the running.

I have one boy to let down and one who, I am pretty sure, is not let down.

I have some gifts to sew, including a T-shirt quilt for my mom with her red and yellow t-shirts!

I have food in my freezer I need to eat up - I started with tomatoes and spinach in a delicious bacon, black bean, and veggie soup tonight (secret ingredient = ~1/2 c of beer).

I caught up on Downton Abbey and Parenthood. I am ready for the new seasons.

2014, here I come!