Showing posts with label nontraditional student. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nontraditional student. Show all posts

Working Outside

>> Saturday, July 11, 2009


I've pretty much made my deck my new office this week.... got everything set up just right - my laptop is on its stand on a chair in front of my chair; a table to the right for the mouse and my ashtray and drink (I'm drinking a lot of flavoured water these days) and another chair to the left has my stack of books and so on...

Scrooge spends most of the day out here with me, either lying on the deck, or wandering out to the other deck to sunbathe. There are hummingbirds too, that come to the feeder on and off all day, often sitting on the clothesline between dips into the feeder.

It would be nice to have the summer off and not have so many papers to write and so much work to do - but since THAT isn't happening, this is about the next best thing.

Read more...

Home Again ... for a bit

>> Saturday, May 30, 2009

Well, I'm home again ...actually ended up at home a day earlier than I expected - which, while a tad stressful at the time, was very nice.

Not that I got much WORK on my papers done in that extra day .... I didn't... but I got some work done on our new pest control business which presumably means that now I shall be better able to focus and get down to work on my stuff. At least that's the plan.

Tamara is here to help Ross with all things pest-related (how appropriate) and I'm going to spend today catching up on some blogs and getting Chapter One of my Major Research Paper written. And then tomorrow will be Chapter Two and the next day Chapter Three.... ha! Not likely to actually get all that done in only three days ...but I can try :)

I actually feel like I have pretty much everything I need. I've done my interviews, read scads and scads of resources, and written several essays related to my topic... it's all in there... it's now just a matter of spitting it out and making it sound academic enough ... to be a major research paper. Funny how once you DO all that research and spend a year talking and thinking about one topic, when you sit down to write it, it just doesn't SEEM new & interesting enough to bother.

But that's just me. The rest of the world, presumably, has not spent the entire last year focused on this one topic... so now is my opportunity to pull it all together and tell them all about it. Of course, on the other hand, I could decide that they haven't spent the last year focused on it because they didn't really shive a git...but that seems counter productive :)

Alrighty... time to quit thinking about writing it and actually get to work.

Read more...

Congress 2009 Day 1

>> Saturday, May 23, 2009

Well, not day 1 for Congress, actually ...they started without me...can you imagine the nerve?

Anyway...drive here wasn't too bad except that for about 2 hours, through a whole lotta rock up in the Muskokas and so on, I was entirely without cell phone service - and no cell phone also equals no Roger's Internet, also. No big deal though.

We stopped at a place called Moose Inn outside Bancroft for lunch; it was good enough... nothing fancy - not in the decor or the menu ...but the food was good and reasonably priced. Some things were actually way cheap compared to most places.... adding extra bacon or an egg to a breakfast would only cost an extra .50 for example... wouldn't find that anywhere in Barrie or Midland.

We got to Ottawa at about 4 p.m....stopped at a Home Depot that we happened to see on the way in. We had actually spent altogether WAY too much time in the Midland store last night and walked out empty handed after we couldn't find anything we needed - or anyone with a clue who might have been able to help us sort through the millions of possible pipe fittings to get the right ones for what R. wanted to do.

The Ottawa store is bigger - AND they have staff that actually have a clue! We got all the WMD R. needs for his new business... at least all the stuff he's going to start with. He'd got a really good deal on a sprayer elsewhere, but the hose that came with it was way too short... now he's got 100ft to play with. And his own extension pole and so on. He headed home after I was all registered and checked in so that he'll have tomorrow to ~play~ with his new stuff.

Me, I'm looking forward to attending several sessions tomorrow ...some of them are going to be pretty tight...they are in separate buildings and one ends at the time the next one starts, but still... hope to be able to duck out just a few minutes early and get to the next one on time. Usually there is time for questions at the end .... and those, I often dont mind missing. In my experience, those questions often turn out to be more than a little self-serving... people ask questions not because they want to know something but because they want to show off what THEY know.... and if they can claim to know more than the presenter in some way, they are often all over that.

I have little patience for those sorts of games anyway ... so ducking out and heading off to the next session might work.

Sure wish whoever is in the shower would hurry the hell up. I want to go to bed...but now with all that running water.... someone was in the second washroom too when I checked.

Residence living is SUCH fun. Not.

Read more...

A long day ....

>> Friday, April 24, 2009

bat hanging on curtain
And it is far from over... didn't do so well at working en route today - I have a lovely little Aspire netbook and I did get SOME work done while hubby drove me to Peterborough and back ... but not really work on the essay I need to write (by tomorrow) itself - mostly I just futzed around copying & pasting bits from various resources that I expect I will use in one way or another.

Picked up my students' exams and marked some of them while we drove to visit friends of hubby's who live up that-a-way ... really hadn't thought about going there seeing as how I have this essay to get done - but the last time he wanted to go I also had an essay due and we ended up not going because of it.... so this time I said it was fine, let's go - even though it really wasn't fine and I have no idea how I'm going to manage to get it all done now *sigh*

It was a very nice visit - just really aware the entire time that I had SO much work yet to do. Left there shortly after 5 pm, got home just after 8.

Anyway, I'm home now, and the bat visitor we found in the house when we got home has been ejected, so it's time I was knuckling down to get some work done!

Read more...

Weekly Update

>> Saturday, March 14, 2009

So far so good! I have been able to meet my goal of posting a daily article on both Flitting on Fiction and Back to School for Grownups... and to drop my daily 300 Entrecards as well.

On Flitting on Fiction, articles include


Back to School for Grownups
has mostly been about

Have not got to flitting.org....will try to get an update about our ongoing difficulties with TD CanadaTrust up there sometime this weekend, though.

Another new blog that you might be interested is Ask Me Anything, which is Stephanie, the rocket scientist's latest .... well worth a visit.

Also, if you happen to be a grad student ... or might want to be one someday, why not stop by The Grad Cafe? I'm really enjoying the interaction there...and learning a lot about universities in the US in the process, which I think will help me to do a better job of Back to School for Grownups.

Read more...
Blog Makeover by LadyJava Creations