Digging Out
Happy 2009! Hopefully everyone's New Year is off to a good start.
Classes have started back up here and things are going well. This semester I'm teaching a small graduate-level course (Metabolic Engineering). There are 8 students and the course material is within my area of specialization. So it's a nice contrast to the large undergraduate level course that I taught last semester. We are also starting to make some progress on my various research projects. I'm continuing to write-up and (and hopefully publish) my postdoctoral research and starting to work on proposals for my research here at ISU. It's a very exciting time.
It's also been exciting weather-wise for the past week. Like much of the country, we had a "frigid spell". We had several snow storms and then the weather stayed below zero for several days. It even got down into the -20's, with a windchill in the -30's. It's hard to believe, but life still goes on even when it's so cold. Thankfully my car started everyday, but my tape player wouldn't work. They canceled the local public schools due to the cold, but the university stayed open. Sheba had a hard time dealing with the extreme cold. Luckily, we seem to have pulled out of the bad weather. Today was up in the 20s and it seems absolutely balmy. I took Sheba for a long walk and ended up having to remove my gloves because I was getting too warm. After spending over an hour shoveling my driveway last weekend, I relented and subscribed to a shoveling service. It was sooooo nice when they came in the early hours on Monday and plowed my driveway and then two guys came around 7 and shoveled my sidewalk while I watched from inside, warm and toasty and drinking my coffee. Lovely. There are more pictures of the snow here. There's also a video of my cats trying out their new water fountain here.
I've started taking a once-weekly class at the local stained glass studio. We've had one class session so far and I really enjoyed it. In the first 6-week unit of the class we are making a paved "garden stepping stone". Kind of like a mosaic, but you need to learn to cut class into a pattern instead of using random small glass bits. Then there are additional class units where we will learn the copper foil and lead solder method. I will take some pictures of my work-in-progress for the blog.
Stay warm everyone!
Classes have started back up here and things are going well. This semester I'm teaching a small graduate-level course (Metabolic Engineering). There are 8 students and the course material is within my area of specialization. So it's a nice contrast to the large undergraduate level course that I taught last semester. We are also starting to make some progress on my various research projects. I'm continuing to write-up and (and hopefully publish) my postdoctoral research and starting to work on proposals for my research here at ISU. It's a very exciting time.
It's also been exciting weather-wise for the past week. Like much of the country, we had a "frigid spell". We had several snow storms and then the weather stayed below zero for several days. It even got down into the -20's, with a windchill in the -30's. It's hard to believe, but life still goes on even when it's so cold. Thankfully my car started everyday, but my tape player wouldn't work. They canceled the local public schools due to the cold, but the university stayed open. Sheba had a hard time dealing with the extreme cold. Luckily, we seem to have pulled out of the bad weather. Today was up in the 20s and it seems absolutely balmy. I took Sheba for a long walk and ended up having to remove my gloves because I was getting too warm. After spending over an hour shoveling my driveway last weekend, I relented and subscribed to a shoveling service. It was sooooo nice when they came in the early hours on Monday and plowed my driveway and then two guys came around 7 and shoveled my sidewalk while I watched from inside, warm and toasty and drinking my coffee. Lovely. There are more pictures of the snow here. There's also a video of my cats trying out their new water fountain here.I've started taking a once-weekly class at the local stained glass studio. We've had one class session so far and I really enjoyed it. In the first 6-week unit of the class we are making a paved "garden stepping stone". Kind of like a mosaic, but you need to learn to cut class into a pattern instead of using random small glass bits. Then there are additional class units where we will learn the copper foil and lead solder method. I will take some pictures of my work-in-progress for the blog.
Stay warm everyone!
posted by Laura at 5:42 PM
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