Still Here but RL is Very Busy
The university closed down for a snow day, today. It's a mixed blessing... fun to get an unexpected day off, but I'll pay for it later trying to catch up at work.
I've really been enjoying writing the monthly column for the Payne County Audubon newsletter. The latest issue is here. My column is called, At SunDog House, which appears on page 7. I don't care much for the logo, and eventually I'll get around to doing something better, but the short, 400-600 word format suits me well, and I look forward to writing new ones. It has rejuvenated my passion for bird watching.
I was asked to be the royal scribe for Jean Paul and Gilyan again, and I've found that to be very relaxing and fun (up until I got hammered at work... and more on that in a bit). It has taken time away from playing at other things (like updating LJ), but I enjoy the calligraphy a great deal. I also did the calligraphy for two new kingdom award charters. I finished Emma's Pelican scroll over Christmas:
I haven't been doing much with the Master Gardeners. Efforts to do things like start a Facebook page for the group fell flat. My last activity with them was to serve on a subcommittee trying to figure out why recruitment efforts were failing. I had a lot to say about that... including making suggestions like, "Maybe you should occasionally talk to the new people who come to meetings." It's a very dysfunctional group when it comes to new people, and I stuck with them for over a year (the only new person to stick with them from my class or the class previously), but it was painful going at times. Introverts don't make the best recruiters, and most of them are introverts. I hope I gave them some good suggestions for doing better in the future.
Sara, our dog with cancer, has been undergoing chemo, and she is doing well. We are hopeful she'll come out of it cancer-free, and stick around for a couple more years. She's 14, but in otherwise good health. She had half of her nose removed during the initial surgery, but we tell her she's beautiful every day, and she seems to have adjusted to it.
Dad is starting to lose his long-term memory, and his short-term memory is even worse. He can't figure out how to work the TV remote some days, so Mom has to change channels for him and turn it on and off. So far, he still recognizes people, but he's been having trouble remembering his dogs' names, past and present. It's just awful watching them both go downhill.
I got hammered at work. The deadline on the project I took over from someone else was moved up by several months (from a November release to August). Everyone in the editorial department has been assigned to the project now, and things are rolling, but I spent some sleepless nights wondering how the heck I was going to get it finished. Long stressful days. The silver lining is that I'll have it out of my hair very quickly. So, it'll be a few months of hell followed by a long stretch of a light workload until my next project starts up next year.
I've really been enjoying writing the monthly column for the Payne County Audubon newsletter. The latest issue is here. My column is called, At SunDog House, which appears on page 7. I don't care much for the logo, and eventually I'll get around to doing something better, but the short, 400-600 word format suits me well, and I look forward to writing new ones. It has rejuvenated my passion for bird watching.
I was asked to be the royal scribe for Jean Paul and Gilyan again, and I've found that to be very relaxing and fun (up until I got hammered at work... and more on that in a bit). It has taken time away from playing at other things (like updating LJ), but I enjoy the calligraphy a great deal. I also did the calligraphy for two new kingdom award charters. I finished Emma's Pelican scroll over Christmas:
I haven't been doing much with the Master Gardeners. Efforts to do things like start a Facebook page for the group fell flat. My last activity with them was to serve on a subcommittee trying to figure out why recruitment efforts were failing. I had a lot to say about that... including making suggestions like, "Maybe you should occasionally talk to the new people who come to meetings." It's a very dysfunctional group when it comes to new people, and I stuck with them for over a year (the only new person to stick with them from my class or the class previously), but it was painful going at times. Introverts don't make the best recruiters, and most of them are introverts. I hope I gave them some good suggestions for doing better in the future.
Sara, our dog with cancer, has been undergoing chemo, and she is doing well. We are hopeful she'll come out of it cancer-free, and stick around for a couple more years. She's 14, but in otherwise good health. She had half of her nose removed during the initial surgery, but we tell her she's beautiful every day, and she seems to have adjusted to it.
Dad is starting to lose his long-term memory, and his short-term memory is even worse. He can't figure out how to work the TV remote some days, so Mom has to change channels for him and turn it on and off. So far, he still recognizes people, but he's been having trouble remembering his dogs' names, past and present. It's just awful watching them both go downhill.
I got hammered at work. The deadline on the project I took over from someone else was moved up by several months (from a November release to August). Everyone in the editorial department has been assigned to the project now, and things are rolling, but I spent some sleepless nights wondering how the heck I was going to get it finished. Long stressful days. The silver lining is that I'll have it out of my hair very quickly. So, it'll be a few months of hell followed by a long stretch of a light workload until my next project starts up next year.