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!
