Spring Break

Very excited to be heading into Spring Break. Not much respite, work-wise, but a hiatus from teaching and a chance to dress badly...
Beginning of the week will involve getting all the student info for our new Siberia study abroad program together and ready to send to Russia. On Wednesday I go to New York for meetings in my new role as a member of the Executive Committee for the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. Craig has a big week coming up of kicking some butt at tax court. And then he swears he is going to "start on the floor preparation".... Oh, and we got a new dishwasher.

me working and children studying

This is the nerve center....




Various incarnations of lunch...






what you get when you buy cheap Ikea clocks, they don't keep time.








We love homework.

life's little pleasures, or necessities

Over the last weeks our dishwasher has been showing its age. First, dishes not so clean, then even more not so clean. Craig, ever the handy husband pulled it apart and cleaned all the filters and hoses etc, but still, not so clean. Finally he determined that of the three cycles per wash, it was only filling with water on one. So, you could use it if willing to fill manually with jugs of water on the other two. Today we bought a new one which will be installed this week. Yippee.

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....

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.

are you sick of me yet?

More ski pictures and since I cannot get anyone in my household to go with me - they are just scenery and weird self portraits.
This was up Millcreek Canyon - quite the steady uphill climb and I had forgotten the hair raising nature of descending. Of course the only time I fell was right in front of my PhD student Anna, the only known person I saw the entire two hours I was out. Figures.

skis

What a difference a week makes. These are my new skis and the scenery today which was brilliantly sunny unlike the overcast shots in the last post.