What's Your Vote?

Here are 4 of the Fall 2009 pix of Callen that were taken at her school. Which one do you think would be best for the Christmas cards this year? Please vote soon!

Callen Turns 4!

Today was Callen's 4th birthday. I can't believe she is 4! She's growing up so fast.

We had a party at a local bouncy place this morning. About 16 or so of her friends came and they all had fun! We had a beautiful cake that was really yummy.

I so wanted to post pix on the blog and Facebook today but with the party and trying to finish getting ready to fly to DC this afternoon, it just didn't happen. I hope to have lots of pix up before the end of the coming week.

I have lots of blogging to catch up on:
- going to the pumpkin patch
- Halloween, trick or treating, and her cute witch outfit
- celebrating Callen's birthday at her school on Friday
- the party today
- and much more I'm sure.

Happy birthday my beautiful angel!

How Am I Spending My Fall Break?

I had originally planned that Callen and I would go to NC and visit with friends and family during my fall break. I also wanted to take her to the NC State Fair. I loved it growing up and as a young adult. I haven't been in years and I thought we'd have fun doing this. And, the Alabama one is tiny and a waste of time in my opinion. The Maryland one when we lived there wasn't much better either.

But, the reality set in and I decided there's no way we could do this trek to NC. It is a whole day in the car each way unfortunately. If Express Jet still did their non-stop flights to Raleigh (no airlines have direct flights to RDU from B'ham now unfortunately) I would have probably gone but without this it was just too much of a trek!

So, here I am on the first day of my fall break. So far today, I've:
- taken Callen to school
- bought bagels for home
- done 3 loads of laundry
- edited a job letter for a new undergrad research assistant I'm bringing on to my XO project
- reviewed and made comments on a report I need to give to the school system on my XO project
- checked email, Facebook, and Twitter (a few times!)
- and thought about the multitude of other things I need to do today.

I think I and perhaps other academics often think of fall break as a time to have a short break from our regular routine and a brief time to refresh before classes resume. Unfortunately, I don't think mine will be that way this year.

On the positive side though: It is good to work at home today, and I didn't have to get to my office at 7 in time to do some work before my 8 AM class. Sleeping a little later is always a good thing!

Maybe next year Callen and I can go to the fair!

My Little Drama Queen

The things Callen says these days just amaze me. We were in the car coming home from dinner last night and talking about a birthday party we're going to today. I told her we should make a birthday card for Emery when we got home. A few minutes later in the conversation Callen said: If I forget to take the card to the party, I'll be doomed! Now, where does an almost 4 year old learn the word doomed? I tried to get her to explain to me what the word meant but she couldn't or wouldn't. I told her that she wouldn't be 'doomed' if she forgot to take the card but she still kept saying it. Yep, broadway here we come!

Frenzied Fall!

I don't know why it is but fall always seems so frenzied. Part may be that many students in Callen's class have birthdays - so lots of fun parties to attend! We've been to 2 already in the past month and have 2 this weekend. Plus, my work always seems busier in the fall. I'm still not sure why this always seems to be the case.

I know this fall is bad because I'm trying to juggle too many things at work. I have 3 grants right now that are consuming lots of my time. One is just getting up and started so way too many details to handle right now! In addition to these, there is my class I'm teaching and assignments to grade; there's also other papers I'm working on with other colleagues, conferences to prepare presentations for and attend, and lots of other things.

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and was awake till 5. I should have just gotten up and done some work rather than just thinking about what I needed to do today.

Let's hope that things begin to calm down sometime soon!

Cyber Seniors and Health

As some of you know, I have an NIA grant to go into assisted living communities (ALFs) to train older adults to use computers and the Internet and to assess the impact on their quality of life over time. We finished 6 weeks of training in our first assisted living community yesterday afternoon. The 6 weeks flew by so fast! We learned a huge amount about best practices in training in ALFs. The participants were phenomenal! I hope the skills we helped them acquire will definitely positively impact their quality of life!



We did a debriefing with them at the end of class yesterday to find out their thoughts on ways to enhance the training, how it had impacted them thus far, etc. One person said: "You've made us feel like we're part of the world again." Another noted that "We'd opened up the world for them." They are an amazing group!



The UAB Media Relations rep had issued a local press release to see if any local TV stations wanted to come out to talk to us. I was asked to be on the local Fox news at noon yesterday to talk about the study. I haven't been able to find any online link to the interview but below is one that the local ABC station did. Watch the video if you get a chance. I'm also scheduled to be on Fox' Good Day Alabama Monday morning.



Cyber Seniors: How the Internet Can Affect Health

State of the Blogosphere

I came across this report today as I was working on a book chapter (that is due in 2 days!). Interesting to see information on numbers, demographics, etc. of bloggers and blogging in general.