Category Archives: Morning Blogging

Music

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I spent yesterday digitizing albums and collecting the music I had already done from the three laptops I’ve got.  At one point, I had all four of my macs, including my 12-inch iBook, running.  I used Final Vinyl to divide them into tracks and today I’ll import them into iTunes and add the information.

I’m also going to experiment with The Analogue Ripper to see how it works.  I installed Final Vinyl on my desktop but it only works if I have my iMic in the USB port.  It does do a decent job of dividing the songs and naming them in sequence.

Right now, I’m listening to Nick Drake.  Seems like the perfect calm music for a Sunday morning.  Not so calm, however, since the squirrel discovered the blue feeder that Bob hung up yesterday and is noisily sucking down the bird food.  He only moves away a foot or so when I tap on the window.  An afternoon and a few peanuts and I could have them trained.

Heard back from my advisor about revising my proposal: mostly just a few methods pieces have to be done before IRB approval.  That’s good news since I’d like to submit all that first thing next week.  I’m using Thursday as my deadline to send the draft back to her.

I’m still giving myself the day off today…maybe we can go to the property, or wait until tomorrow afternoon when it is going to be 70 degrees!  Or, go both days.  After all, I am on vacation.

All the snowmen and leftover Christmas regalia is up in the attic for another year.  By the time I put it out this year, I should be done with my degree.  Then, what?  Who knows?  But I want it to look a lot like it looks now.  Working for a few clients both on the road and at home.

So, just ten minutes until Tim Russert and Meet the Press.  I just checked and it’s a press round table today with Matlin, Carville, Shrum, and Murphy.  Should be lively and fun.  I really can’t seem to get enough of this year’s election process.  I actually made a difference with my vote in Virginia this year.

On Vacation

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My defense is over, and it went fine.  A few suggestions and some literature to examine, but I’m ready to start my research.  Step one is the human subject paperwork.  But, I’m giving myself a day or two off before tackling that.  Next week is spring break for WM so I’ll have plenty of time.

Last night, I boxed up the last of the winter decorations and they are now waiting in the hall to go up to the attic.  Now the dust really shows!  But my guests aren’t coming until Friday so I may wait until Thursday to dust.  There’s plenty of other work to do around the house, including piles of laundry.  And, of course, taxes.  I’m going to install Turbotax and dive in.  Everything is mostly organized so it’s generally data entry for now.

Part of the reason I stopped the morning pages was that they became all about my weight and my pathetic attempts at dieting.  But, at least when I wrote about it, I thought about it.  The past two days have been very bad in the food department…cheese, chocolate, wine.  So, it’s March 1 and I’m back on the wagon.  I figured out my online weight watchers login and will start using it again.  I started before VSTE but then had to give it up during the conference.

Bob rearranged the bird feeders and now the squirrels can get on the sunflower feeder.  He is hanging by his back feet and eating away.  Yesterday, I scared him and he landed in the pond.  For now, I’m letting him eat but in a minute I’ll open the window.  I’ve got the video camera set up and I washed the window so I can get some video of the different birds arriving to eat Bob’s  peanut butter suet.

Here’s the best news: with the exception of a meeting next Thursday, I am home and on vacation!  I’m going to digitize record albums, watch The West Wing reruns, and just enjoy being home.

Defense Day

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We got back from the school board meeting sometime after 11 PM then stayed up until 2 or so.  Hence, just getting around to writing at 9:20 this morning.  My defense begins at 3 PM and I have a couple errands to run before then.

Tina Turner has figured out how to get out of the yard.  I usually walk the dogs but this morning I just let them out of the back door into the fenced in back yard.  When I went to let them in for breakfast, Tina was over at the neighbors.  She came when I called and I let her back in, but we need to figure this out.  We tied her to the picnic table yesterday since we put them in the back yard for our trip.  But I don’t want to have to tie her up every time.  So, once I finish this and go let the chickens out, I’ll do some investigating.

Scared a squirrel off the sunflower feeder and he landed in the pond!  Lucky for him, it’s frozen enough that he could bounce off and head up the chimney to the roof.  The virds are lining up for Bob’s peanut butter suet.  There’s a red bellied woodpecker on the feeder, two blue birds, actually make that three, and either a goldfinch or a warbler waiting.  It’s amazing I get anything done with the view that I have.

I am forming my spring break to do list in my mind: the human subjects paperwork for my study, taxes, and spring cleaning.  I’m going to put the winter decorations away and give everything a good dusting and scrubbing.  I love the wood stove but it seems to crank out dust non stop.  My folks are coming to visit next weekend and I want the place to look nice.  The rug in the living room needs replaced, and I’m going to pull up the kitchen rug and scrub the floor.   I’m also going to hook up the record player and ibook to do some albums.

Aah, the first cup of coffee is finished.  Time for jeans and chickens.  Blessings for the day!

Getting a PhD

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Later this afternoon, Bob and I are going to drive over to the school district that I will be using for my dissertation research.  I have the approval of the administration but need to do a short presentation for the school board.  Then, tomorrow is my defense.  Wow!  After four years, I am very much in the home stretch.  I figure by April I will be collecting data and should be finished with the whole thing by October.  I’m using Halloween as my unofficial defense date.  After all, I am witchyrichy and I’m defending on Leap Day.  I’ve been saying that I’m doing the holiday PhD.

Trudi, the smaller Rhode Island Red, manages to get out of the hen pen every morning.  I almost saw her do it this morning; one minute she was on one side of the gate and then I looked up and she was running free.  She’s also the one who managed to get over the fence and into the newly tilled garden.  Guess there’s always one who wants to be free.  Bob said Tina Turner managed to get out of the back yard twice while I was away.  She got returned by the neighbors.  He thought she was still out when I got home Tuesday night but when I called into the darkness of the back yard, she emerged from the leaves under the azalea bushes.

Bob rearranged the bird feeders so he can see them from his chair.  That puts the big sunflower seed feeder just a foot or two away from my window.  I’ve been getting great views of chickadess, titmice and the mockingbird who likes the peanut butter suet that Bob made.  I need to wash the window so I can grab video.  The yellow throated sparrows have returned in force.  We saw a pine warbler for a day or two and there’s been a yellow-rumped warbler flitting around for at least a week.

I puttered around yesterday.  Talked to a few people on the phone, put away some of the stuff from the conference, did laundry, and hand-washed the baby clothes I’ve made for my charity crafters.   I have a nice pile of hats, booties, a preemie blanket and two kimonos.  I’m planning to ship them tomorrow.

Slow Day at Home

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Back from the conference where it seemed like I was moving every minute.  It is nice to be home without a huge to do list today.  Plus, If we can get the VSTE ning community going, I should be able to interact with the folks from the conference even though it’s over.

Today’s main job is to develop the agenda for my defense meeting on Friday.  I thought about it last night and I think it can be short and sweet.  My main questions have to do with how well it hangs together.  Does the rhetoric part make sense?  One of my committee members mentioned that it felt a little bolted on in an earlier summary but I think it flows better now.  And, it helps me think about it.  I also need to know that I am convincing as an interpretivist.  All my work in qualitative has been done in a constructivist paradigm, but my advisor suggested that I might want to be able to draw some generalizations.  That was the biggest rewrite of the proposal.  Then there are technical questions: software mostly.  And, by Friday afternoon, I should be able to bring them up to speed on my research site as well.  So, what does that look like as an agenda:

Research Framework

Research Paradigm

Research Site

Technical Questions or Concerns

Sounds good to me.  Does that mean I am done for the day?  There’s some emailing and blogging to do, but mostly I can kick back a bit.

Just For Fun

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Finishing off my Wolfgang Puck coffee, reviewing netvibes and email, and I was rewarded. From a friend who just bought a Wii, a very funny video. It got removed from YT but was still working on MySpace. Let’s try again:

The video was done by Team Good Life and I’m still singing the song. I checked their MySpace page. Their tag is “Live the life you love, love the life you live.” I’ve got the latter going pretty well right now. Not sure about the future but for this moment, I am a happy camper.

I think the real challenge is the first part: live the life you love. How do you figure that out? For instance, I saw a friend at the conference whose daughter just finished her undergraduate education in English and is now entertaining a variety of full scholarships for graduate school. She’ll have her PhD by the time she is 30! It occurred to me later that that was my original plan. And, I got through the undergraduate part but as I moved into graduate school discovered that while I loved to read and write, I was not really cut out to be an English professor. Or, I may have been, but my personal life intervened and I took something of a detour. And, that detour, to paraphrase Robert Frost, has made all the difference.

But, the fact is that at the beginning, I did not have a plan. Instead, I discovered a new passion and have been following it. When people tell me they enjoy my presentations and workshops, I tell them that I’m just one of those lucky people who found my passion and get to pursue it. That’s the advice I’m giving my twenty-something nephew. But, the lesson from my life is that sometimes your passion may change over time. I think the biggest skill you can have is to re-invent yourself. So, I’ll end with my email signature:

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out. Warren Bennis

Greetings from Roanoke!

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My tradition with the hand-written morning pages had been to start writing about how I slept.  And, I must say, I slept pretty well for a hotel room.  I’ve already had a cup of in-room coffee (one of my favorite things about hotels) and am fixing to take a shower.  I don’t have to be anywhere for the conference until 10 AM!  A big thank you to the volunteer coordinator for that little gift.  I’ll wander down earlier to find real coffee and maybe some breakfast.  It’s going to be a long day once it gets started so I’m enjoying the peace and quiet right now.

I love Roanoke.  I’ve conferenced here and worked with the local school division on several occasions.  I can see mountains from my hotel room window and the downtown has an old charm.  One of my favorite bookstores–Cantos Booksellers–is here, and I’ve already got Tuesday morning planned out.  A latte at Mill Mountain coffee then browsing the books at Cantos.  It’s an independent bookstore and I make it my business to help keep them in business.  They could use some work on the website they set up…maybe I could recommend my husband.

Morning Blogging?

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Since December 2000, I have been writing morning pages, a creativity technique espoused by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. Three pages of long hand writing. First thing. And, it used to be the first thing I did. Then, I adopted two more dogs for a total of three and the two I adopted had different expectations about the morning than my old black lab who was content to sleep in. These two want a walk and breakfast and my morning routine has changed somewhat. In addition, I have found that after doing the pages for more than 7 years, they have become less useful, more like a glorified to do list than a creativity exercise. Oh, on page three, I do still occasionally have a revelation or two, but I find myself dawdling more and more as I write.

So, this morning, I fired up the computer instead. Of course, typing is against the rules for morning pages. But, what about morphing it to morning blogging? After all, technology has supposedly changed everything else, why not my morning pages? At least for awhile, I think. I’ll admit that there is a superstitious part of me that is afraid to let them go. They have seen me through some pretty major life change, given me a place to dream big, and just been an anchor for my day. But, they seem to have outlived their usefulness. I wonder what the average time is for people to continue to write?

This morning, I am up and dressed and ready to head to Roanoke for the VSTE Conference. I’m on the board and doing a lot of volunteering so it will be a busy few days. My bags are packed and I’ve just got to tuck my digital video camera back in the bag. As I sat at my desk, the unusual warbler that we’ve been watching since yesterday showed up again. I got some good video of him and the yellow-rumped warbler that’s been around for a few days now. The secret is using manual focus.

I am also exporting a last piece of video from my interview with Glen Bull. He’s an ed tech legend and one of the founders of VSTE. I finally got around to digitizing the video and have uploaded a few short clips to Teacher Tube. Here’s a sample: