last class - yippee

Today I taught my last class of the semester -- a welcome event. The course, for those of you not following my schedule, is in phonetics and phonology and I ended the semester with a great little story I recorded from a Canadian radio program a couple of years back. The segment is called "The Funniest Accent" and is an interviewer with a "comedy researcher" (I want to be one of those) from the University of Abderdeen. She was talking about her study to identify the funniest accent in Britain. Turns out it is the Brummie accent (Birmingham). It was also deemed the warmest and the stupidest. All in all, probably fun people to drink a pint with.

another bad mother moment

So, yesterday Sam woke up with what looked suspiciously like pink eye. But, I don't have time for that nonsense. I have a department and a middle east center to run; so, had him pop an ibuprofen, told him to buck up, and sent him to the school bus. After school, his soccer game was cancelled due to snow. [Did I mention that we all got sunburned on the weekend!] So that left time to pop into the nurse practitioner at our local Smith's Marketplace. No pink eye, just raging spring allergies that have caused him to him to rub his eye lid raw on one eye. Today it was just freezing cold with the odd snowflake here and there so they played a soccer game up in Bountiful (don't you love those mormon town names...). I sat in the car and reread an article that I had assigned to my class for tomorrow. I'd forgotten how challenging it was so I'm sure we will have loads of fun with it. Tuesday will be my last class of the semester and not a moment too soon. I thought I was doing a pretty great job of juggling everything, but now I cannot see my desk for all the papers, cannot find things students have handed in, keep driving and driving until the little gas light comes on because I don't have a moment to waste at the pumps. Still, I'm in better shape than an unnamed colleague who ended up in the ER last week because the doctor thought he might be having a stroke. Turns out it was just a bad reaction to stress.

The life of a soccer mom

This past weekend was spent in the lovely city of Boise, Idaho at a soccer tournament. Basically this entails a long drive on Friday and Sunday afternoon and much time in between sitting in folding chairs shouting "Go Firebirds!". There was a burst of brilliantly hot and sunny weather which I was completely unprepared for so we all ended up with sunburn.
Here are two pictures:

Sam on the sidelines




The team receiving their second place medals.

Middle East Saga continued

So, the Dean of our college finally decided to respond to the Middle East Center faculty's slanderous comments. he issued a choice four page statement yesterday and was interviewed by the Salt Lake Tribune. Yours truly appears in a box at the end of the online version as part of the "interim governance team." I don't think I've ever been in the newspaper...
http://www.sltrib.com//ci_8847462

the really choice rhetoric from the statement doesn't appear in the article, but was much enjoyed by us all. Some favorite words: mendacity, posturing, hopelessly divisive... and so on.

Losing it

This morning I couldn't find my wallet, then got to work and realized I had forgotten my lecture notes. I have been reduced to wearing a pair of children's sunglasses because two pairs of mine have gone missing. I think I am officially stressed out! I can't bear the thought of canceling cards and getting a new driver's license so I've been checking my card activity online today making sure that I am not suddenly purchasing trips to Mexico or flat panel tv screens... so far so good. I just know that once I've cancelled everything the thing will turn up.

Pictures

So I realize that I haven't posted any pictures for awhile. Here are some recent shots.

implosion

Work got exciting yesterday. Some of you may recall my lamenting the debacle that was our search for a new faculty member in Arabic. Most of us thought we had found someone terrific only to be torpedoed by the Middle East Center who opted for a less-qualified (less-threatening?) candidate. The search was scuttled due to lack of agreement. This past weekend as a result of some "reassignments" from higher up, the director and associate director of the center resigned. Everyone is high drama mode - personally I hadn't expected such a shift, but think we might actually be able to work at bringing the place into the modern age. I am at work bright and early to meet a former student who is coming in to do a recording for me to use in my phonetics class. This meant I actually laid eyes on Catherine before she went off to catch her 7am school bus. Last night I popped in to her room to say goodnight and make sure she knew her lunch was in the fridge. Her response: "Go away, mom. I don't need you anymore." I thought this day would never come -- those of you who know her well, remember the years of her being the extreme cling-on child.