Good and bad

Woke up this morning to crystal clear blue sky and a northwest wind. I quickly did my requisite "two hours" of writing, tackling the revision of the paradigmatic partnership paper, so I could go sailing with a clear conscious. We had a great sail round nun 20 (actaully a red bell for those who know their marker buoys).

This afternoon I drove up to Wellesley to Babson College for OBTC. It's a beautiful campus and I saw lots of old friends. However, I did not enjoy the first plenary session; I hope the sessions and workshops will be more stimulating tomorrow.

Summer doldrums -- already?

Hot, no wind, flat calm, all day. And the weather rubbed off onto my work ethic. I did finish the handouts for the OBTC presentation, clarified a tricky faculty qualification situation, and made some important decisions for my course next semester. But my research feels as if I have umteen partly completed projects that will never be finished. I've become too fragmented -- partly because I can feel myself getting sucked back into WCOB, and partly because I've let my timetable disintegrate.

What's to be done? I can sit here and pity myself, or apply myself to one of those projects. Which one will I choose?

Left Lord's Point for Fairfield @ 7:15 AM. Temperature 63 F.
Meetings all day.
Left Fairfield @ 3:50 PM. Temperature 92 F.
Arrived back @ Lord's Point 5:30 PM. Temperature 75 F.
Had a beer.

No research today.

First sail - round Latimer Light

Summer begins

After our first lunch outside on the deck I felt compelled to work on my MBA course for next sememster -- don't ask me why this desire came over me, probably it was because I've been reading Pfeffer and Sutton's Hard facts dangerous half truths & total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management, HBSP 2006. This book would make a good framework for the course, but so too would a couple of other texts. I set out a comaparison matrix for EBM against a competency approach, but the only thing I decided was that I couldn't use two frameworks. I put everything aside until the spirit moves me again! (August maybe?)

At lunch time Jack and I discussed going for our first "shakedown sail." But the surface of the water showed signs of "Indian wind" -- "a-pache here, a-pache there" -- and indeed, by 3 PM it was a flat calm. Maybe tomorrow.

The brown apron came out before dinner when we tried the shimp scampi (p. 386 in The 75th edition New Joy of Cooking) that Sue served last time we visited the Burlington, MA, gang. As promised, we experimented with different kind of shrimp. The verdit -- a good recipe no matter what the shrimp! The frozen bagged shrimp at 1/3 the price of that in the fishmonger's display case was almost as good as the higest priced ones. I tried to get a variation in shrimp size, but I couldn't tell the differenece beteween medium and large shrimp. Obviosly more trials are needed!

The striped apron

"The apron" (signifying the chef -- it's a striped one here at Lord's Point -- you'll have to go back to February postings to find pictures of the original chili apron) came out this evening to make 'Brick' Chicken -- a recipe from last Saturday's Wall Sreet Journal. It wasn't that difficult, and maybe not worth the fuss, but it was a good way of getting back to more relaxed habits. And it did taste good!

Work? Of course. Reading and notetaking for the paradignatic partnership, plus a Skype call with Ulla. Odds 'n ends of WCOB faculty qualifications, plus phone calls with Lynda and Steve. And a couple of email exchanges about the OBTC presentation. 'Nuff for this week.

Symbolism? My poscard display (not pictured) was seven "good vibes" cards picked at random. The Goog was decorated, and, best of all, it was a 'magic number' date -- 060708.

Official start of 2008 sailing season

Postcards of "tall ships" (and some others) provided a setting for toady's launch of Wind 'n Go. She left our "boatyard" by trailer, and returned under her own power (engine, not sails). The intervening part required some special manouvers -- the crane lift at Dodson Boatyard to move from the trailer to the water, riggers installing the mast, and shuttling of cars and dinghies. I look forward to our first sail.







Back at my desk (while Jack was in skipper role) I applied myself to organizing handouts and coordination for the OBTC presentation next week. I moved on to making the slides from the Barcelona Narratives Conference acceptable for publication -- I can make them balck and white, but several images culled from the inernet will need to be replaced due to copyright problems. I hadn't finished before I decided that I'd better spend some time on the narrative to accompany the slides. Enough for today! A walk round the block refreshed me.

However, the pile of needed AACSB reports seems to grow every time I think about it. I must stop thinking about them except on my designated AACSB day of the week! Tomorrow I will just choose seven nice postcards and work on the "paradigmatic partnership paper."