Little forward motion

I know better than to let myself begin the day with WCOB stuff! I've been working on the "sad story of fun at work" section of the Barcelona irony chapter in the back of my mind, and it just hasn't bubbled up enough to take over other tasks. I really need to force myself to work on it-- that's the only way it will get done.

Today, however, I avoided this task once more by tacking the AACSB Tables. Finally -- at 2:30 PM -- they were in relatively good shape. Good enough to eamail to Steve before we set out for a sail.

The new "Orr flag" suggested a reasonable breeze, and even though my intuition said it was not as good as it looked, we set out because we haven't been sailing in several days. Once beyomd the anchorage, we discovered that the breeze was indeed fickle and the flood tide was strong (in an adverse direction to the wind.) At one point Jack started the engine -- sacrilege! A few minutes later he realized what he had done -- violated one of our basic philosophies as "raggies". So he turned it off and we enjoyed several short tacks close to the shore to avoid the current before a broad reach back to the mooring. Not one of our better sails!

Now I must force myself to complete may part of the discussion of last year's progress towards meeting our strategic goals so I can dup it back on Steve's desk before he goes on vacation on Tuesday.

This Friday's garden tour

First thing this mroning, before other interruptions, I worked on th Barcelona-Irony paper. I wrote the narrative for the "Dramas of teamwork training" section, and pasted in the slide with photos of SnugAdapt. I'm counting on this section to be the model for the three other sections I need to write about the stories in the book chapters. It's really hard to give a sense of the story, explain the irony, and describe how the author "did irony" in three short paragraphs! Tomorrow it will be "sad fun at work." I need to find a new image: Dilbert needs the copyright. I spent the rest of the day cranking out various parts of my AACSB annual report. Another day's work and it should be finished -- I certainly hope so!

Absolutely no wind, all day. The flag hung limp on the new flagstaff up on the rocks. We had a few drops of rain, but none of the promised thunder.

It's Friday, so, remembering our tour of Stonington gardens last week, here's a tour of our"garden" -- rather, photos of "featured flowers" in various spots. Jack's the gardner -- at least he likes deadheading-- not me! I just advise based on my knowledge of English gardens!


In the front of house (facing south), the big rock on the corner where the teenagers used to congregate now has a rosebush to rival David's "driveway rose" (but his still wins!).



The small flower bed has portachella -- not quite in full bloom. Thanks, Deb, for suggesting this plant. We added just one flat this year; the rest has grown back on its own. Another few days and it will be a mass of blooms.

The east side is the fragrant side -- there's a "beach rose" hedge against the road, and honeysuckle close by the hydrant.











On the west facing wall we have some fine clematis. The color of the purple one is not good in the photo -- it just looks blue, which it is not.


The ornamental grasses to the west of the drive always threaten to take over the lawn ("just "grass" really.) I added two varigated plants this year and they seem to be doing well.

Now we're back to the front of the house again, with new plantings in the "small triangle" of inidgenous plants. There's a type of butterfly bush and a species of gernaium. I'll take another picture later if this bed "grows in."




By the front door we have the "dueling pots" -- Jack's begonias and my colorful annuals. Both are thriving -- neither one "wins!"


Finally, my herb garden by the back -(kitchen)-door. It includes a splendid patch of mint grown from a cutting my father brought from England when we first bought the house (1970). The mint thives, knowing that it's purose is to provide the garnish for gin and tonic!

That's it -- I hope you enjoyed the tour!

New reference points

It comes to something when the most exciting news I can think of is that I located the interactive inking tutorial on my new tablet laptop! However, to balance this exitement, I spent a long time trying to follow the instructions in the email from HP support on how to load my printer "solution center" so I can scan documents. The instructions didn't make sense, so I called computer science professor son-in-law. "That doesn't sound right," he said, and went on to say that it may be Vista -- he can't scan either and he has a much newer printer. I'm glad I didn't do what I was told!

I have a new postcard -- it's "Big John and party shooting the Lachine Rapids, Montreal." Everyone is wearing a dress shirt, waistcoat, and trilby hat! Thank you, Lynda, it's really great.

The picture (top left) inspired a collection of "rough water postcards" -- but I could only find five. At first I thought I would leave the other two pockets blank, but then I found two pictures related to rough waters in a symbolic way. One was of the ornate stern of the Vasa -- the ship built to convey the prestige of the Swedish King Vasa II that overturned in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage, and lay protected in the mud for 333 years until 1962. The other is a collection of carved wooden figure-heads at Mystic Seaport -- a reminder of what every ship going into rough waters needs! I enjoyed the collection so much today that I will keep it up tomorrow.

I didn't get much further on the text of the irony chapter, though Ulla and I Skyped to check on the other's progress. I did teach myself how to insert a slide into the text and make the text flow around it -- the process was much different from the way I had previously approached the task, so I'm glad I've conquered that part of the submission. It needs to be camera ready, and I was beginning to think that we were doing all the writing for naught. I really don't have that much more to do, at least for this draft, so I hope that college affairs will stay quiet tomorrow and let me finish!

There's a new addition to the neighborhood! The Orrs have a new, huge flagpole on the rocks. It's just what we need for gauging wind speed and direction before going sailing. Jack has already started calibrating the angle and working surface area of the flag against wind speeds reported on the weather channel! But today it didn't tell us anything we didn't know already -- not enough wind for a sail!

Fragments

I had such good intentions this morning -- generated by to-do lists in both my research and administrtivia notebooks. And for inspiration I had a new group of postcards organized around two (of the three) old postcards Lynda had given me (on left, top and bottom). An auspicious beginning.

There were a couple of emails that I HAD to do -- so I opened the adminsitrivia list. Two and a half hours later I switched to the other list and had less than an hour to work on the "Barcelona irony chapter" before heading for Essex to spend an hour (I timed it) signing documents in the Bank Trust Office. I felt good afterwards, and this was certainly "productive work" -- but hardly qualified as research!

After a quick lunch it was Wind 'n Go -- and a good sail. The wind was good for a course along the north shore of Fisher's Island, but we'd forgotten the GPS, and were leary of the Clumps (a series of rocks of greater and lesser size running parallel to the shoreline) so just went around gong 20.

Back at the computer I tried yet again to install all the features of my home printer on my new laptop, without success. I hope HP technicians answer my email with a solution and I can make time to learn "inking" sometime soon. I switched gears to make sense out of the notes I had taken while meeting with Jeanie last week -- the paper isn't due till November 21, but there's lots to do before then! I have a good lead on literature of discourse analysis in composition research, so I have some work to do before Jeanie and I get together a month from now to write the zero draft.

I made the "Sake-Steamed Salmon" recipe from the wsj again this evening. It has a unique and nuanced Asian taste, but takes too many ingredients and is too complicated in proportions needed in different parts of the preparation for my approach to cooking. I'll file the recipe away and go back to Nigella Express!

My verdict of the day. It could be classified as "super" -- it had the proper content (see post of June 16), but I'm left feeling more fragmented than satisfied. Tomorrow's another day.

That will be easy!

Went to campus today to have my computer examined -- the operating system was not installed correctly -- and to participate in the A-sq meeting. The Provost came to discuss the interim dean position or roles. He has a plan!

We'd saved the champagne remaining from our midsummer celebration for a toast to the outcomes. Here I am celebrating Steve's graceful and timely exit and practicing what may well be my response.

Back on the roller coaster!

I started work early today expecting to work diligently through the various materials I needed to prepare for tomorrow's A-sq (Administrative Affairs) meeting. I envisioned arriving on campus with a packet for someone to make copies while I went to the Factory to sort out my laptop-relations problems, i.e., it won't do what I ask it to!

All went smoothly for the first couple of hours. One page of my Day Book was taken up with a list of tasks and no sooner had I finished one, than I thought of something else -- my suite of reports was expanding to SER-proportions!

Then Ulla Skyped me and we started working on our chapter for the book of the Barcelona Narratives and Rhetoric Conference. I emailed Ulla what I had started, we looked at it together while we chatted, and a while later she sent back her ideas and I had new reactions. MUCH more fun than AACSB reports! Finally we divided up the next stage of the work and agreed to share what we had done later in the week. I could imagine Ulla getting right down to her part while I regretfully turned back to my obligatory work.

So, many hours later, I really have no idea exactly what I've created. I only know that either I should have begun this work last week, or I have still a week's worth of work. I just need to decide on the plot of the story I'm going to tell tomorrow. Will it be a tragedy, comedy, or satire? An adventurer on a quest, or a maiden crying for help and needing saving? Which one will appeal most to my audience?

Duty calls

I spent the WHOLE DAY grinding on AACSB reports -- sufficiency, deployment, qualifications, intellectual contributions -- you name it, I've got an Excel spreadsheet for it! All in preparation for the A-sq meeting on Tuesday where my reports consume the greater part of the agenda. My task is ridiulously detailed -- not ridiculous that the detail is required, but ridiculous in that I am spending both good sailing and good writing time on a matter that could be dealt with "painlessly" through the Digital Measures Activity Insight database. Of course there will be pain involved in getting the relevant parts of the database up and running, and the first year the data will need to be cranked by hand as a check, but after that I will have no further worries ... OK, I can think of other ways to stop myself from "worrying" about these issues! In the meantime I have to print course data from Web Advisior, transpose it to "courses taught by program, location, and time" format, and calculate the WCOB satistics viz-a-viz the requirements of the Standards. The chairs are complaining that they don't know where we stand in relation on reaffirmation of accreditation -- they'll soon find out the realities of the situation!

No sailing -- flat calm early in the morning, then thunder in the air, followed by a brief window of sun and good breeze. We debated going out, but it was quite late and I was hunkered down over my keyboard. Better luck tomorrow I hope -- though I need to do my assessment report and the strategic plan audit. Urgh!

The highlight of the day was looking out my office window at the roses in the garden next door and at the tide coming in, going out, and coming in again in the cove by the marsh. My photo does not do justice to the scene.