MRI

So, after continued back pain which I trace to the header off the inner tube in February, my doctor ordered up an MRI. I went in this afternoon. I had heard from others who have had them that it is 1) bad if you are claustrophobic, and 2) incredibly loud. It was indeed both, but I fell asleep during it... which I think attests to my end of term fatigue. No results yet, but having had to lie supine for half an hour, my back was really sore! Then I added a four mile hike during Sam's soccer game, and the last mile wasn't pretty. I was hobbling along muttering profanity. Came home, had dinner, Zoe (dog 1) knocked my wine glass over onto the carpet, Sadie (dog 2) vomited profusely after Ryan fed her a strawberry. Fortunately she had the good sense to go to a tiled area for this, and because the strawberry was so prominently displayed, Ryan had to clean it up. How was everyone else's day?

Ryan and Kaia

This is Ryan and his girlfriend Kaia at movie night -- student shorts were screened. They are currently in the dog house for trying to scive off school. Ryan impersonated her dad with the old "dentist appointment" story. The school, used to such shenanigans, called the real dad and the cat was out of the bag....

party

Friday night we had our departmental end of the year party and celebrated the retirement of three of our colleagues. I took some pictures and this was the only good one. The limes went into pomegranate martinis which were mighty tasty.

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.