Shutting Down for the Day

Posted Mon Sep 5, 2005 in

My how a day can go quickly by! I woke early this morning and started out with a cup of coffee and a read of what’s up in Fairbanks. I wrote some here on my weblog, some on my current letter to Daughter, and some in my off-line journal.

Young Son’s school starts tomorrow, so I started, belatedly, working on his workplan for the next few weeks. Work has kept me busy lately, so I was behind on this duty. Nonetheless, I laid out work for him in Math, Reading, English, Geography, and P.E., then ordered two books to get him started on World Geography and Physical Science.

He’ll get a quick start using David Attenborough’s The Living Planet. That should set the stage for a more formal treatment when his text arrives.

While I was at it, I planned the next three years as well. They aren’t completely laid out yet, but I have a plan so it will be a matter of selecting materials and working the details. While still a lot of work, at least the big-picture work is done and I can deal with the details.

This exercise took a lot longer than I expected and was quite intense. But it’s done now.

Frustrated with the condition of my home workspace, I cleaned stuff up, discarding papers I no longer need, shredding others, and generally putting things away. My workspace is much tidier now and the things I need are at hand.

That completed, I reviewed my class notes for this week and worked on them some. They need more work, but I ran out of time. I’m developing my notes for my graduate surface water hydrology course (already in digital form) and migrating my notes for my undergraduate hydraulic design course notes from paper to the TabletPC. Again, this work is requiring more time than I expected this semester. Time is something that I’m short of.

I have a couple of books I want to work through. I’m going to finish Lamott’s Bird by Bird, then read Seize the (Work) Day (using the TabletPC), finally I want to read the introductory books for the R and Octave computational environments.

In all of my spare time I need to prepare for a new course in the spring semester, Statistical Methods in Hydrology. I want to use the R language as a teaching tool for that course. I also have three research projects going and two Master’s students who will be finishing their theses and a Ph.D. student who needs guidance as she works through her program.

This week I’ll leave on Friday for San Benito/Harlingen, Texas, where Young Son has his first Kung Fu tournament experience. I’ll have a short week, but plenty in it. The Faculty Senate meets on Wednesday afternoon and we have a university faculty meeting on Thursday afternoon.

You know what? I think I’ll go to bed now. The kids just arrived home from kung fu class—they all earned their white sashes during the examination held this evening.