Tuesday, April 29, 2014

I'm Done!

Saturday was the last day of classes for the western campus of Simmons GSLIS. I handed back the last homework assignment, the students finished giving their oral presentations, and they also completed posting to the discussion board.

Today, I reviewed my notes on the oral presentations and calculated the final grades, which I submitted. Several students asked for feedback on their oral presentations, so I wrote a brief review for each one and sent it to them via email along with their final grade.

Now what am I going to do on Saturdays (and Thursdays, my prep day) for the next 4 months? I'm sure I can think of something.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Changing of the Hats

According to the calendar, it's been spring for over a month. Last Sunday was Easter and now one can officially wear straw hats and white shoes. The temperature has warmed up (well, maybe not today, but in general) so today I put away all of my winter hats and brought out the summer ones.

I wear a hat whenever I'm outside; I have a lot of them. They're actually part of the décor in my front foyer.

Then I went even further and pulled all of my warm weather clothes out of the off-season closet. Cold weather clothes went to one of several places: the off-season closet, the laundry bin, or the dry-cleaning pile. It'll take a few days to get them all settled, but they're on their way.

Some of the warm weather clothes needed ironing, but not any more. I pulled out the ironing board, iron, spray bottle of water and went to work. This is a semi-annual ritual which I perform every spring and fall. Fortunately I have enough clothes that don't need ironing to get me through the season.

Now I'm all ready for spring except for one thing: There are flannel sheets on the bed and there will be flannel sheets there for at least another few weeks.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Where I am now

Well, obviously, it's not posting to this blog on a regular basis.

It's not that I don't think about posting, or that I don't have (what I think) are interesting posts, it's just that I haven't been motivated.

Let's face it, it was a rough winter. It was cold. There were lots of days when things were canceled due to snow. And did I mention it was cold? I wasn't motivated to do much of anything. Everything was an effort. And then I came down with a cold that lasted for nearly 3 weeks.

Fortunately, I have a somewhat regular schedule (when it's not disrupted by a snow cancelation) and even with my cold I worked on cleaning up the MassCat database, taught LIS415, and lead the senior exercise class. I also managed to do the laundry, cook dinner and vacuum the house, though not as often or as thoroughly as I would like.

There was also a mini-vacation in mid-January to New York City. We saw L'Elisir d'Amore at the Met Opera and took in a show at a fairly new supper club called 54 Below. Both were great fun.

I enjoy listening to the opera on Saturday afternoons, but during the academic year I am otherwise occupied (see LIS415 above). So for Christmas 2012, my thoughtful husband gave me a gift card to the Met Opera. Since the opera season is pretty much the same as the academic year, there's only a brief window of time to take advantage of a gift card and that happened in January 2014 just before the semester started.

Now it's April, the weather has warmed up, the days are getting longer and the semester is drawing to a close. I have great plans for the summer. Let's hope I can stay motivated.