Hey, guess what. I have not blogged in over a month! For those few who regularly check my site I apologize. When I decided to get a little down time I quite literally unplugged and relaxed. Never the less, I'm back in the swing of things and after a hectic first month I'm able to squeeze out a few lines again.
What?, you say. You were relaxing but had a hectic month? How can that be? Well kids, it goes a little something like this...
Over the course of the previous semester, I had accumulated a vast number of holiday projects that I actually
wanted to do. Things like: do some more training on my linux machine, get my videos into DVD format, hang some art that has been in storage since we moved into the house 2+ years ago. All things I actually wanted to do but could not justify when I was running like the
red queen last semester.
There was also the issue of gift purchases for the little missus and family on Nova Scotia (a country quite difficult and expensive to send gifts to I might add - who knew).
Another hectic element came from my wife and I finally biting the bullet and deciding to stop using her 30+ year old bedroom
furniture (click if interested) and become grown ups. We brought in the wife of a colleague who was an an interior designer and got her input on window treatments, bed coverings, reupholstery, wall colors, accent color, art, mirrors,
chandeliers, ceiling fans.... have left anything out here? I have to say it was a serious of fun, exciting, mind bending, heart wrenching roller coaster decisions. Then came the estimates and our dreams took a little smack to the gut. That's a lot of $$ for some paint, that's a lot of $$ for window treatments.... It was a LOT of $$. So back we went, making adjustments, spreading the cost over several installments and stages. We've finalized on most everything an the painters are in the house every day making our house beautiful! We've lived in apartments pretty much our whole lives and we so tickled to see color, any color, that was not flat white!
Before:
After/inprogress:
What made it even better is the architecture of the house is such that it lends itself really well to a cool contemporary paint scheme but still homey and warm and cozy.
They've been in the house for 2 weeks now and we expect another 3 but man are we crazy about the job these guys are doing. We are really getting what we paid for. One guy literally, yes literally , was down on the floor with an artists brush doing fine detail work along the baseboard to make sure his lines were straight and there was no bleeding of colors! WOW.
So, that's the kind of relaxing home time I had. When the semester began again I had a whole new set of challenges. 4 courses, 2 subjects, one of which was a new prep and the other a complete revamp since many of the slides and material is over 3 years old. So, I've got ~160 students that I have to entertain and get excited about biological psychology and contemporary theories and methods for studying psychological disorders. This is not a problem for me, I'm Mr. nerd geek and love this stuff but it can be like pulling teeth at times, getting the kids involved. As an added challenge, the vast majority are regular, church goin' folks who don't have much time or inclination to accept evolution as the reason we are the way we are. It can make it a tad difficult to discuss physiology and the use of animal models as good test subjects for new psycho therapeutic compounds when the first response is... uh why would they use a rat? Humans aren't like rats.
Well this post is getting a little long winded so I'll leave my cycling woes for another post but as you can see if you quickly glance to the right, I have not been riding and I'm very edgy right now.. So SHUT IT and GET OFF MY CASE. I've been a little busy fer chrissakes :)
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