Monday musings

On the beginning of a work-week. Diana and I spend an hour or so checking my data entry and refining the code book for our project. We made some important decisions about rules for removing charities from the database, and at the same time made our research questions simpler. Not very exciting work, but absolutely essential to do "up front."

Then I was on the road to Fairfield. A traffic alert warned me of an accident between exits 71 and 70, so as soon as the traffic crawled to standstill I headed off the highway and used a combination of following the stream of cars and using my GPS until I rejoined I95 just before the bridge over the Connecticut river. The detour took about half an hour -- but I assume it was faster than staying in the stop-and-crawl mode. I had plenty of time to get to school, but the experience served as a good reminder of statsitical variation.

Then meetings, chatting, meetings, pondering, meetings, and so on, till the workday was over. I still can't get a grasp on the daily workflow, yet alone a week at a time, and I know my time horizon needs to be longer than that! Maybe I should give up trying to create a mental schema for a while, and just let things settle down.

On the other hand, maybe I need an A-Dean Troll! Which of my troll-family -- ranging from one 45 cms high from an Ikea in Sweden, to a little 3 cm high 'angel' -- would best fit my needs? Or maybe some of them would like to visit others who are in need.

Enough! Tomorrow is another day, and according to advice given me by a Dean of another SHU college, my list will grow even longer -- never shorter. I think I'll watch the Olympics sailing competition, then settle down with my free-reading book for a while.