Blowing & Drifting

When I headed off to another townhouse-association board meeting on Thursday night (with luck, my next-to-last one), Vivi lost it – crying and grabbing me and begging me not to go. When I came home, I found this on the kitchen counter: Dear Daddy I miss you at the meeting I love you too. Just [...]

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Today, I submitted the final grades for the online course I taught this summer for Metro State University in St. Paul, “World War II – A Global History.” This is the twelfth time I’ve taught for Metro State since fall 2003, and the third time I’ve taught this particular course, always online. I felt like [...]

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This evening Vivi and I were  drawing when she looked over at me with big sad eyes and asked, “Is amorrow a weekend day?” I shook my head. “No, honey, tomorrow is just Tuesday. It’s a few more days until the weekend.” Whereupon she burst into tears – heavy, gasping, wailing tears – and leapt [...]

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The customary quiet of campus during the summer is gone, gone, gone this year. In addition to (seemingly) larger-than-usual contingents of high schoolers and others attending various summer camps on campus, a number of construction projects are underway in virtually every part of campus. Take the visual tour! (For realism’s sake, you should watch this [...]

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Wednesday was, I’ll understate, quite a day. It wasn’t exactly “one of those days,” since I didn’t spill my coffee on myself or ride my bike into a tree or walk across fresh asphalt. But it was a draining, topsy-turvy day at work. I knew the day was going to be intense, since my boss [...]

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I saw lots of great stuff in or near Grinnell today, both during an excellent tour of the Conard Environmental Research Area, Grinnell’s natural preserve, and afterwards, around campus. Oak savannah on the south side of Conard. Ants on the underside of an oak leaf, harvesting sugar-rich fluids secreted by the tiny aphids which the [...]

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Tonight, I ran out west of town, stopping at this road, just west of Grinnell, Iowa. Gorgeous. I wish this photo did justice to the incredible purple-white sky – and that I’d had my bike, because this road was begging to be ridden.

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I love that I played a (small) part in this: Carleton College Announces Completion of $300 Million Fundraising Campaign (July 1, 2010) Northfield, Minn. — Carleton College has announced the successful completion of its largest-ever fundraising campaign. Breaking Barriers, Creating Connections: The Campaign for Carleton has exceeded its goal, raising more than $300 million from [...]

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The lovely view out my office window of a tree and passersby on the sidewalk was been lost for the summer by this view, of the scaffolding necessary to do some loud and smelly repairs on our building. As one of my coworkers said when we were sharing mild complaints about the noise and stench, [...]

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All the construction outside Goodsell Observatory at Carleton means that the College has finally begun the construction of our long-awaited death ray. Once installed, sometime next month, we will conduct preliminary tests on people who’ve let their dogs off leash in the Arb. When the instrument is properly calibrated, we’ll burn a clown nose on [...]

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Today was one of those days on which all the undergrads take themselves – along with their odd clothes, their work ethics, and their unusual hairstyles – away from campus on the big white Northfield Lines buses. Sad. On the plus side, though, there’s no competition for space at the bike rack now. I think [...]

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This sign, on a trail in Carleton’s Arb near the Rec Center, has borne this bit of editorializing about Carleton’s now-retiring president, Rob Oden, for as long as I’ve been working at Carleton. I wonder if the author of this graffito will return to modify it for the new president, Steve Poskanzer? (Click through for a more [...]

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Like a lot of people, my weekends usually end with a feeling of being pretty much totalled. Many of the reasons are predictable: the pulls of any weekend’s errands and miscellaneous activities, the demands of being an involved parent to the girls, the need to stay current with work. The end result, though, is that [...]

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Today, Carleton named its eleventh president: Steven Poskanzer, J.D., the current president of the State University of New York at New Paltz. The College’s search for the new president was fast, but very effective, and everyone seems to be immediately pleased with the choice. At a short event this afternoon – one which was attended [...]

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I usually keep my office moderately tidy, neither at the “clean desk = sick mind” end of the continuum or the (in)famous “Geologist’s Office” end of the continuum.* But on deadline days like today (especially like today, with two big federal proposals going out), all bets are off. Click through for notes. *This photo by [...]

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