What I've Been Up To

I've been up to a lot lately and while I'm a bit sleep deprived and certainly lighter in the wallet, our many projects are moving along nicely.

You wouldn't notice too much action in the bathroom and that's because they've been patching the bathroom below us from all the damage in the wall. They've started on the plumbing and reframing some of the walls. We now have all of the fixtures (sans toilet) and tile waiting to go and I think have made all the major choices.



At work, we launched a website . When I pitched my vision for this department, no one said anything about a website. I'm a big believer in digital outreach and a well curated list of resources but building a website from scratch with a major deadline was not what I signed up for with this position. Luckily, I had a great technical team who was hugely supportive, patient, and willing to catch my typos and bad ideas. I now maintain a professional blog where I write about education and not my bathroom.


My stuffed staph infection that Ab gave me when I was sick a few years ago. Staph watches over meet and is an instant conversation starter that signals to people that I am not the serious, scientific side of the Academy.

Work has very much settled down and we are just executing all of the programs and plans that I designed in the Fall. I can legitimately say "we" because I was able to hire someone to run one of the programs in the department and that has made a world of difference. I feel a tremendous amount of pride in my after school program and often get a bit teary when I talk about it.

I've also read some amazing books since the holidays. Everyone is sick of hearing about the
Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan but I also read Susan Collin's Hunger Games Trilogy, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken; Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stonee; Hazel Rowley's Franklin and Eleanor (which was not nearly as good as Doris Kerns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time and many more. The Kindle app on the iPad has made me into an even more voracious reader, a feat I never thought possible. The weather has been so cold and dreary that the only true solace is a nest of blankets on the couch and a good book.



I also read Sam Kean's great book "The Disappearing Spoon" and then got to meet him at a talk he gave at work!

And for a bit of randomness, I wandered around on that freak 60 degree day and found this amazing homage to Michelle Obama on a shopping bad at Pearl River:



And we went bowling for a birthday and I found that the husband can really bowl.