And There Was Light

Our weekend was a good bit busier than we had anticipated, but this was a good kind of busy. I got up Saturday morning, planning to get the Christmas tree upstairs for trimming. The phone rang at about 11:30 AM, while I was in the basement and unable to answer. As I returned to the kitchen, I caught the end of a message from Joyce that she and Bobby had just left the house and were on their way. Er, what? I called Sandi to make sure she knew about this, and the explanation was quite simple. Whilst in North Carolina for Thanksgiving, Bobby had us take a look at a loveseat he thought we might want. Since our sleeper sofa (lovingly donated to the cause by my cousin Lori) has all but disintegrated under the onslaught of the Big Bazooka, we decided to take it, but neither of our vehicles would allow for transporting the piece. Joyce and Bobby were able to arrange things such that they could deliver the new seating this weekend. They brought along B.J. (who, by the way, has eyes like Tony Curtis) for moral support.

While he was in town, Bobby took a peek at the lighting in our kitchen -- or, rather, the lack thereof. You see, the overhead light fixtures gave up the ghost within a couple of months of our moving into the house. Due to our highly restricted access to the attic and our general cluelessness regarding wiring, we had done nothing to address the problem. With his advanced electrical acumen, Bobby was able to ascertain that the only problem was a faulty switch, and thus our kitchen is again well-lit.

After our guests left, we spent the remainder of the day trimming the Christmas tree. We have a new (to us) tree this year, which is a good deal thicker than our longtime greenery. This complicates the ornamentation, as getting hooks onto the tuftlike branches can be a bother. Following our longstanding custom, we prepared snack foods like Chex Mix® and little weenies in barbecue sauce. It should be noted that little weenies are more likely to tempt me to lawbreaking than pretty much anything else on earth. The finished product -- the tree, not the weenies -- looks impressive; Sandi will get pictures posted at some point.

I wanted to mention that Ranger did just fine at Paws & Claws while we were gone. The ladies there had taken to calling him the Lone Ranger; whether that is a reference to his lodging in a single gimongous kennel or simply the classic television hero, I cannot say. Due to B.J.'s somewhat diminutive stature at present, we decided to board Ranger for our next trip home as well.

Eventually, we might get to actually rest on a weekend. Have a great week, everyone!

Live From Winston-Salem

I apologize for the massively delayed update, but my days have been -- for lack of a better word . . .

stuffed.

Hot on the heels of my last batch of tests, I had to give another in all four of my classes, thanks to the aforementioned short time between the holiday and final exams. This meant that I have had to write and grade fifty papers on wildly varying subjects. In addition, I was responsible for filling out assessment forms for the quantitative thinking portion of the college's core curriculum.

Complicating the situation further, Thursday evening held the final waiting families meeting of the year. You may notice that the day is off from our previous jaunts to Knoxville; the Bethany folks had arranged for a special speaker from Emory University. Dr. Karen Kuehn Howell is a specialist in the longitudinal effects of prenatal drug usage. We got a metric truckload of useful information from her lecture, which has produced some rather surprising results. Would you believe that the two drugs with the most profound long-term effects on children are legally obtainable by anyone over the age of 21? She kept her material fairly general-audience, and for almost everyone in the room, that was just fine. Leave it to the academic in the back to want more statistics and fancy terminology, eh?

I neglected to mention that the trip on Thursday almost got the hook. After one last trip to the doctor, Sandi is back to normal. She had been put on an antibiotic dosage normally reserved for people with stuff like pneumonia, and her body did not take kindly to it. She finally returned to work on Friday.

We spent the weekend sorting through our Christmas decorations. For the first time since we were married, Sandi actually parted with some seldom-used holiday items. We also did a spectacularly lousy job of packing up the stuff last year; four or five whole bins were either empty, almost empty, or filled with miscellaneous packing materials and no actual decorative goods. While the gear was unpacked, we went ahead and put everything in its place for the season to come. The tree and its trimmings are pretty much all that remain. If someone asks really sweetly, Sandi might post a photo collection.

As the title suggests, this post is being generated on Joyce's computer rather than our laptop. For (we think) the first time since 2004, we were able to visit the mother country for Thanksgiving. Although Sandi still has to work on Friday (who knew that banks are open on Black Friday?), the lack of crack-of-dawn attendance required by the retail business meant that we could steal away this afternoon. Joyce and Bobby have a new puppy named B.J., and Sandi is cooing all over the little guy. The initials stand for the new parents' names; I, however, will most likely call him Bazooka Joe. Due to the whole 'new puppy' thing, we decided to board Ranger for the first time. We picked a place called Paws & Claws, and they let the dogs play and socialize. I think he will enjoy his time there, provided his usual hyperactivity in the presence of something new does not get him ejected.

At last, I have you up to speed. Hey -- wake up! Hey!

Are We Better Yet?

To add to the ongoing medical drama that has been the last couple of weeks, Sandi went back to the doctor on Monday and was promptly put on another dose of antibiotic. She went back to work this morning; she was there for almost fifteen minutes before coming back home. She actually looked a bit worse when I got home from school today than she did last night. I presume that the high dosage of azithromycin in her system is messing with her body. She will make another stab at going to the bank tomorrow. Hopefully she will be able to make it, for she is close to going stir-crazy in the house.

As far as I am concerned, my day started on the wrong foot when my sleep cycle was disrupted. Have you ever had to awaken directly from REM sleep? Between punches of the snooze button, I kept sliding back into the exact same dream, in which one of my colleagues from King was hiding on the campus of Virginia Tech. He seemed pretty cheerful; he was just looking for a place to conceal himself and a couple of students I did not recognize. If you have any idea what that means, please make sure not to tell me. The rest of the day suffered from the poor beginning, but I like to think I can keep something like that from impacting my teaching.

That pretty much covers our last few days. Take care, everyone!

Happy Birthday, Chuck!

Sandi's older brother is officially thirty-six today. As a mathematical fun fact, that is the first number which is the product of the squares of two distinct prime numbers. We hope he had a total blast. Sandi had bought a birthday card for him a month or so ago, but we . . . well . . . forgot to put it in the mail so that it would arrive on time.

Sandi's antibiotic finally uncorked her congested sinuses yesterday. Unfortunately, this means that the unpleasantness has now migrated into her nose and throat, and a case of bronchitis is right around the corner. She has already decided that work tomorrow is not going to happen (clients at the bank like for their tellers to, you know, have a voice), which will give her the chance to visit the doctor for another round of medication.

Have a great week, folks!

Ahhh . . . Down Time

Our week was without many major incidents. Sandi got back the results of her ultrasound, which showed no abnormalities. This is good news in that her gallbladder is not a problem, but she is a little disappointed. As odd as that sounds, having a known medical reason for her issues would ease her mind a bit.

My week at King went quite well. In my analysis class, I got to work through a proof which used pretty much every important technique we have seen during the semester. I also did a short dramatic piece about how mathematics really works; there is a great deal of scribbling, quite a lot of papers get crumpled up, and periodically a pencil flies across the room. My other classes are going smoothly, albeit without aerial pencils. Due to the late Thanksgiving this year, I only have a couple of days of class after the break. I plan to have some student presentations during those final meetings.

We have a guest this weekend -- our fried Beth drove down to Bristol from Salem, Virginia. She and Sandi are scrapbooking buddies; they drove to Sevierville today to check out a big scrapbook supply store. This gave me the opportunity to head to the office and actually keep up with my grading for once.

I think that pretty much covers what has happened up here for the past week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Is It Over Already?

I cannot speak for Sandi, but this weekend has been a blur for me. We accomplished quite a bit, which is never something my lazy streak likes to admit. Sandi came home from work yesterday with some wood and brackets to put up some shelves over the doorway to our office from the living room. Unfortunately, we had to run back to Lowe's to buy another piece of wood for one shelf, due to a mishap in drilling for the brackets. Ranger also got a new rug to cover the floor of his kennel, and it almost made it a full day before his teeth found their way through it.

This is but part of an overarching plan to get the house arranged for our Christmas decorations; today, I moved two end tables downstairs to open up the office floor. In addition to lining the new shelves with books, we dropped off a load of stuff at the Salvation Army and deposited a rather massive pile of recyclables. On our way home, we bought a bale of straw for Ranger to use as a bed in the back yard. Finally, I was in desperate need of a haircut; Sandi thinks it is the first I have had since the school year began. That would explain the ridiculous mound of hair which resulted.

Have a great week, everyone!

Can We Borrow an Apple or Eight?

Since yesterday was election day, Sandi and I hit the polls for the first time as residents of Tennessee. We had to vote on electronic machines which look like touch screens but are actually worked by a bizarre wheel system. My dislike for the gadget was palliated when I learned that we are apparently returning to paper ballots in the future. After our rollicking participation in the electoral process, we went to the grocery store for a much-needed restock of our foodstuffs.

As I think I have mentioned before, Sandi has been under the weather for the last few weeks, and she went to the doctor today in an attempt to figure out what is wrong. She was prescribed an antibiotic for a sinus infection, which is about as surprising as a loss by the Duke football team. Beyond that, she will also be having an ultrasound to check out her gallbladder. She spent the rest of the day at home, and she went to bed early tonight. This gave me the opportunity to watch Big Trouble in Little China, one of my all-time favorite 'guilty pleasure' movies (Army of Darkness is the other). On a serious note, please keep her in your prayers.

Take care, everyone!

See -- Not a Week!

Well, I managed to grade one class' tests by the end of the week, thanks to some forgotten meetings I had to attend on Friday. I also went by the post office to mail an application for an adoption grant through Shaohannah's Hope, Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman's adoption awareness organization. We will let you know what comes from our efforts there.

During the week, one of my former students asked me to go to the play being performed on campus. Not like a date, mind you -- she is a theatre major and was on stage. I had meant to attend one of the performances last year, but funds were a little tight. Sandi and I went to the show last night, and we were quite pleased with the performance. Another of my students also had a starring role. The play is called Alabama Rain, which is described as a 'Southern gothic comedy' for you theatre buffs. It is quite funny, although a little weird at times. For instance, a character dies in the opening scene but appears throughout the remainder of the play; moreover, everyone else keeps talking about how she stinks. My students did very well, including a hilarious scene where one delivered a dialogue while pausing to spit every three or four words when she says something about someone's dying.

We went to Johnson City today, because Sandi had a burning desire for food from the Olive Garden. After stuffing ourselves, we went to the mall to get a yoga mat for out Wii Fit sessions. After the return to standard time, we are as recharged as we can get for the coming week. Hopefully you feel the same way, since you have no real choice but to move forward.

Have a great week, everyone!