Thursday, October 15, 2009

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!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

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!