Travel

The week after Jonathan's birthday, I was away at a conference in the south of France.  The setting was spectacular:

The above photo was taken about a 40 minute walk from the conference center.  I didn't take the picture, because I didn't bring a camera.  I tried to take a picture using my tablet, but it didn't work.  So I stole these off the internet instead.

You see why I haven't been blogging?

(To be fair, the conference center itself was actually not so spectacular.  Mid-sized auditorium, large window looking out into a lot of trees.  But the view from 40 minutes away was spectacular.)

On turning eight

Jonathan turned eight this month.  For his birthday party, he invited friends to play laser tag and mini-golf at a local establishment.  He invited four boys and four girls, including two brothers and three sisters (triplets), ranging from age seven to age nine.  

We forgot to bring a camera.  Oops.  So no pictures of the party this year.  (It was pretty dark in there anyway -- probably they wouldn't have turned out so well.)

The kids did have a fun time, even in spite of the lack of picture taking.

Just days later, we received our local city summer recreation guide, and there was Jonathan, smiling on the middle of the front cover.  You can see him here: http://www.calameo.com/read/000565733623811038374

So even though we forget to take pictures, at least someone is taking them.

Stuff that's been happening

I already told you about how we made it through graduation at my university.  That was an event.  I came totally prepared this year, with pen and paper and stuff to think about.  By the end of Thursday's ceremony, equipped only with pen, paper, and time, I had discovered a new result.  By the end of Friday's ceremony, I had disproved Thursday's result.  Good times.

Our tulips bloomed.  Nearly two years ago, I planted 260 of them -- remember?  For my birthday?  This year I think 500 tulips bloomed.  That is, they seem more densely packed -- already.  Every three years, I read once, you are supposed to dig up your bulbs in the fall and separate them and thin and re-plant.  It hasn't been three years yet.  Not until fall 2013.  We'll probably be in a different locale in fall 2013, because I am planning a sabbatical.  So my tulips will just have to wait.  Poor things.

The fruit trees also bloomed, all except the Bramley apple, which was finally large enough to grow fruit this year.  Only it didn't bloom at all.  So no Bramley apples for us.  This is a major disappointment to Tim, who has been anticipating Bramley apples for the last three years.  Maybe next year.  Except we won't be around in fall 2013.  Maybe the year after.

With spring comes yard work.  Yard work is still fun in the spring.  Jonathan has his own garden and has been enjoying yard work this year.  He has planted a circle of large rocks, and lots of mud.  No plants, but lots of mud and rocks.

For the boy, it is the end of third grade.  I remember third grade.  I played jump rope and went to speech therapy, in which a speech therapist explained that the "s" sound should be made with your tongue behind your teeth, and not on top of them.  I remember being bewildered that no one had bothered to tell me this before.  Once the speech therapist pointed this out, I didn't have any trouble with the "s" sound again, that I remember.  But I still got to be excused once a week during singing time for my private speech therapy sessions.  This is also where I learned the difference between an oven and a stove.  The oven, it turns out, sits inside of the stove.

I also remember having my first crush in third grade, on a boy named Nick.  Two girls in Jonathan's class have professed their secret love for Jonathan.  He seems to take it pretty well -- happy to remain friends with the offenders without appearing to make a big deal about it.  There are only five boys out of 26 kids in Jonathan's class.  Luckily, Jonathan seems to be friends with both girls and boys in third grade.

This morning, Jonathan found a snail in our garden, named it "Snail-y", and carried it all the way to school, talking to it and declaring it was his new pet.  He left it in a pile of leaves just inside the school grounds.  Moving snails to someone else's garden seems like a humane way to dispose of them.  Tomorrow, we will see if he would like to have a few aphids as pets.

Last story.  On Saturday, I gave Jonathan a haircut.  He collected a lock of cut hair and divided it into little paper pouches he had made, along with bits of shredded tulip petals, grass clippings, and cat nip leaves (the stuff grows rampant in our back yard).  He declared the mixture was his poison.  And if you would like, you can buy a paper pouch of the stuff from him.  Price lists are posted on his door.

The little guy still makes me laugh.

Happy May.

Graduation

Classes ended.  I wrote finals.  Proof read them.  Proctored them.  Graded them.  Submitted grades.  And attended graduation, Thursday and Friday.

It's the end of my fourth academic year at G.O.D. University.  Three of the students graduating in my department were students who took that first year class with me back in 2008.  *Sniff*.  They get so big in such a short amount of time.

I knew people at the department reception -- graduating people this year.  I smiled and shook hands and congratulated, met parents and in-laws.

One of my students plays the carillon.  After the reception, he invited me and a few other professors to climb the bell tower with him, where he played a few pieces for us on the bells that ring out over the entire city.  The top of the bell tower gives the best view of campus.  Who knew?  You need a special key to get in.  I wonder if I'll ever make it back, now that my student has graduated?

I was supposed to finish a project.  One small key piece was missing, and I was going to think about it during those boring graduation talks.  And I did think about it, and I ran into trouble.  So then I climbed a bell tower, and picked up Jonathan, and did a lot of yard work, and read a long novel, and finished an epoch video game (die, Orphan).  And I never did get that project finished.  My collaborator is seven hours ahead, which means he'll be waking up to Monday in a couple of hours, wondering what happened to me.

What did happen to me?

Do you think in heaven we will get to play epoch video games all weekend long, without guilt?

Right and wrong

Jonathan has learned a song in church with a line that goes, "There's a right and a wrong to every question."

This morning, after he sang the line, I argued that in fact, there is no right or wrong to most questions.  

Most questions?  Jonathan was skeptical.  Maybe some questions.  But most?

How would you determine whether there is a right or wrong to most questions?  We started making up questions.

*What should I wear today?

*What do you want for breakfast?

Then we started keeping track of the questions that naturally came up in conversation.

*Will you please clear your dishes?  (There was a right answer to that question.)

*Did you finish?

*What?

*Seven?

*Why?

*Were you going to put that away?

After I got to work, I was able to spend a huge chunk of the day dealing with grading, or rather, assigning grades.  Right or wrong to every question?  No.

*Is the common grading scale fair?

*Is that cutoff too strict?

*Can I give more A's without giving more C's?

*What should the average GPA our low level service classes be?

This evening, I got to grade my students' finals.  There was a right to every question, but fewer wrongs.  More questions were of the form:

*How much partial credit is this worth?

I stand by my original statement.  Most questions have no right and wrong.  

Day off

Classes ended at G.O.D. University on Wednesday.  And this week happens to be Jonathan's spring break.  So I took the day off yesterday and we drove to Salt Lake City to see the new natural history museum there.  It was a very nice museum, and I do recommend it.

However, Thursday mornings aren't really as good a time for a visit as you might think.  You do miss the weekend crowds, but you will be smack in the middle of the field trip crowds.  When we arrived, the parking lot was completely full, and three large yellow bus-loads of elementary school children were just entering the building.

Then once inside, the museum was an ocean of children, all about Jonathan's height and noise-level.  In our party, there were two adults (me and Tim), two seniors (Grandma and Grandpa), and one child, and the school groups swirled and spiraled around us, pushing forward and sucking back and making little eddies around the tall people.  I was sure that our short one would be swept away into the crowds and disappear forever with some field trip group from Tooele.  Luckily, he did not.  But purely in terms of mental stimulation, it was somewhat more difficult to appreciate the museum with the noise and swirling foam of children.

Although I did like the dinosaur bones, most discovered "nearby".

And the Great Salt Lake exhibit, with the squishy floor and live brine shrimp.

And the wall of giant horned dinosaur heads.

And the sandstorm-under-glass.

I do recommend the new museum.  It was very nice.

The view from the museum, all the way across the valley, was spectacular.  When we arrived, dark storm clouds hovered far away at the edge of the distant mountains.  They moved closer and closer through the morning, until we left in heavy rain.  We ran through the rain to the car, then drove to the other side of the university campus to eat at the Xi restaurant, Tim's favorite.  We put too much money in the parking meter.  I suggested a walk through campus?  Vetoed by the rain.  We went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house instead, and I read a book while the rain turned to snow.

Today I've been back at home, writing and cleaning and preparing for finals.  Days off are good things.

Dying batteries

The battery in one of our smoke alarms has been dying.  We knew the battery was dying, because the alarm was sending out chirping noises. In fact, it was chirping sporadically for days before we were able to identify the alarm with the dying battery.  It would chirp a few times in a row, and we'd go off on a quest to the basement to find it, and then it would stop chirping for the rest of the night.

Eventually we did find the alarm with the dying battery, and we replaced the battery and hung it back on the wall to do its smoke alarm thing.  But within a few days, it was chirping again.  Wrong battery.

I am a smoke alarm with a dying battery.

I was in Paris just a couple of weeks ago, attending an amazing conference, having the honor of speaking to a crowd of people, many of them well known internationally in my research area.  I returned home, jet lagged, to find myself a week behind in my grading, a week behind in my class preparation, a week behind in my administrative duties, a week behind in my family life, having missed a week of family work and family weekly ups and downs, a week behind in laundry and yard work.  Behind.  And there was no extra week of spare time in which to catch up.  So I crawled to bed exhausted, and woke myself up in a panic early in the mornings, to write research papers.  And in late night frustration, I turned back to editing my novel.  Ha!  That will show them!  And weekend video games.  New battery?

Chirp.

Our last day of classes is Wednesday.  That means I only need to prepare two more lectures.  I only need to grade 21 more assignments.  I have to finalize an exam for 650 and two exams for seven.  And organize lunch for 20.  And find a local hotel for the conference I'm organizing....  I can't even keep in my head all of the things I need to do this week.

Chirp chirp.

But I'm taking Thursday off, because this week is Jonathan's spring break.

And it one month, I am speaking at one more important conference, to honor my graduate advisor on his 60th birthday.  Many of the people who were in Paris will also be honoring my advisor, and so I need to speak about something new.  The something new I have in mind is a project I have been working on with a colleague in England, but that we haven't quite finished.  If I can get a good draft of a paper written within the next two weeks, I can comfortably speak about that project and impress my colleagues.  Otherwise....  Trouble.

Chirp chirp chirp.

Oh, and I need to pull together my file for promotion and tenure.  And a major grant application.

Chirp.

I need more video games.

In the book I read on the plane, flying through my sleeping time, the author reminded the world that it is boring to talk about how busy you are.  Because -- guess what -- the whole world is busy!  We are all busy, and your particular flavor of business is not particularly interesting.

I keep thinking about that, writing this post, and I agree.  My flavor of business is boring.  I'm bored myself, writing it, or I would be, if my heart would stop making that annoying chirping noise.  I have decided that I should probably delete the middle of this post and talk more about smoke alarms, and pull the whole analogy thing together that I started.

But I can't do it.  I can't delete the middle.  If I do, how will I remember all the things I'm supposed to accomplish this week?

Happy Spring Break to you, too.