Wednesday, February 25, 2009

a day in the life

got up with the kids at 6:40, or rather I got up and then roused them; made lunches and put toast and strawberries in front of them. Went back to bed for an hour when they left at 7. Phone call from Sam a little after 8 - forgot his binders... - helicoptered those over to the school; returned for my standard coffee and toast breakfast. Dressed and headed to work. Opened email and then shut it when the new messages extended past the first visible page... meeting with director of Asian studies and the HIndi professor to strategize about offering joint courses with BYU next year; run into office and change to gym clothes for pilates class. AHHHHHH. That felt good. Back to the office, consume sandwich while finding files for someone in our secretary's warren of cabinets. wrote review letter of Russian adjunct faculty member (not good); met with PhD student to talk about the history of the Russian language; met with Assistant Dean of Students about student with rabid mother (see previous post); went to student social activity for our department and linguistics - ate too many chips; back to office. Put together agenda for next week's faculty meeting; responded to several emails; finished email response to snarky chair from another department regarding Religious STudies minor; headed home, stopping at store to buy frozen pizza for S and C's dinner; helped Sam with math homework; got changed and am now heading out to a fundraising dinner for Brazilian Studies. A nine piece Bosa Nova band is promised....

Monday, February 23, 2009

updates

Mum has posted a gorgeous photo of her spring garden. Round here, when the snow recedes as it has been doing for the past few days, we just see a shocking amount of dog poo.
On another note, a fun tidbit from the academic front lines. Arrived this morning to find a woman waiting to meet with me who turned out to be one of our students' mothers.... It isn't hard to speculate as to why said student has not managed to get through the program - one almost wants to give him a bad parent hazard exemption, but alas, it really means lots of careful language about how, no, he can't get a degree with only 7 of 11 courses completed.