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7 years ago
Sunday, 15 February 2009
Baton Rouge Week 34
Hi there!
Well it is Mardi Gras time in Baton Rouge. There are tons of family friendly parades in the Baton Rouge area. Friday a couple organized a small party and we went to the local parade sponsored by the Atremis krewe of Baton Rouge. The Mardi Gras parades are held at night. They are composed of huge tractor trailers all decorated with lights with different organizations (all the same krewe) throwing beads, stuffed animals, and other trinkets. I will post some pictures on our blog. In attendance were the temple president and his wife and a member of the Stake Presidency and his wife. So, it is possible to have some family friendly introduction to the Mardi Gras traditions. It was fun. Saturday night we had dinner with a couple in the ward and then went to another parade. This time is was the Orion krewe. We haven’t quite figure out where the krewes come from. I guess we will have to be here a little longer to figure out all of the cultural ins and outs.
I hope to get some pictures on the blog.
Monday I found out that I had a paper accepted and it will be out soon. It is going to be published in Leaflet a publication of the New England Teacher Council of Teachers of English. The editor asked me if I had anything else to send. That’s good news but I need to get published in bigger journals as much as possible. I also had an abstract for a paper accepted. Now, I have to have the paper finished by March 5th. That is good news but a lot of work. It feels like lots of work that happened early in the school year is paying off.
I also gave a lunchtime roundtable talk for faculty and graduate students this Friday. Three of the full professors came and listened in. It was a good opportunity to share some of my work with them. I also think it is useful for graduate students to see a model of how to go about structuring their work.
Dana wasn’t able to attend because she attended a meeting for the dean. She has been traveling more because she is working with people who are training to be administrators. She has to visit the schools where prospective administrators are doing internships. She has seen a lot more of the areas around the greater Baton Rouge area than I do.
We are going to Boston this week to see Abbey. We look forward to having some time out. We are really looking forward to seeing Abbey and all of her work setting. It looks like we will be able to see Diane and Lant for awhile. There are some cool things to see in Boston. Abbey says that Lant might give us a tour of the Harvard library. That might be very interesting.
The weather is still very good. It seems like something is blooming all of the time. We have had more rain, but it hasn’t been very cold. The rain has also been cooperative; it seems to want to rain only when we are sleeping or when we are in a building. We will keep knocking on wood.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Well it is Mardi Gras time in Baton Rouge. There are tons of family friendly parades in the Baton Rouge area. Friday a couple organized a small party and we went to the local parade sponsored by the Atremis krewe of Baton Rouge. The Mardi Gras parades are held at night. They are composed of huge tractor trailers all decorated with lights with different organizations (all the same krewe) throwing beads, stuffed animals, and other trinkets. I will post some pictures on our blog. In attendance were the temple president and his wife and a member of the Stake Presidency and his wife. So, it is possible to have some family friendly introduction to the Mardi Gras traditions. It was fun. Saturday night we had dinner with a couple in the ward and then went to another parade. This time is was the Orion krewe. We haven’t quite figure out where the krewes come from. I guess we will have to be here a little longer to figure out all of the cultural ins and outs.
I hope to get some pictures on the blog.
Monday I found out that I had a paper accepted and it will be out soon. It is going to be published in Leaflet a publication of the New England Teacher Council of Teachers of English. The editor asked me if I had anything else to send. That’s good news but I need to get published in bigger journals as much as possible. I also had an abstract for a paper accepted. Now, I have to have the paper finished by March 5th. That is good news but a lot of work. It feels like lots of work that happened early in the school year is paying off.
I also gave a lunchtime roundtable talk for faculty and graduate students this Friday. Three of the full professors came and listened in. It was a good opportunity to share some of my work with them. I also think it is useful for graduate students to see a model of how to go about structuring their work.
Dana wasn’t able to attend because she attended a meeting for the dean. She has been traveling more because she is working with people who are training to be administrators. She has to visit the schools where prospective administrators are doing internships. She has seen a lot more of the areas around the greater Baton Rouge area than I do.
We are going to Boston this week to see Abbey. We look forward to having some time out. We are really looking forward to seeing Abbey and all of her work setting. It looks like we will be able to see Diane and Lant for awhile. There are some cool things to see in Boston. Abbey says that Lant might give us a tour of the Harvard library. That might be very interesting.
The weather is still very good. It seems like something is blooming all of the time. We have had more rain, but it hasn’t been very cold. The rain has also been cooperative; it seems to want to rain only when we are sleeping or when we are in a building. We will keep knocking on wood.
We love you all. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Baton Rouge Week 33
Hi there,
Each week seems to get faster and faster. That might be because things at work seem accelerated. Articles that we have been working on are nearing their first stage of completion. Dana and I have one back that we need to revise. I have a small one back from the English journal that needs only minor revisions. The paper that my graduate student and I have been working on is in the first writing stage. I think we will be able to get it out for review by the first of March. I am also giving a faculty lecture based on my dissertation work this Friday. I am using this opportunity to structure my first paper from my dissertation. I will need to put in a lot of thinking work this week.
We went to two movies this week, both were pretty mindless. We saw The Pink Panther 2 and New in Town. They were okay but we had fun going out together and getting away from work. I heard a church today that we missed an early Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. Apparently, many neighborhoods have family friendly parades from now until official Mardi Gras. We hope that we can find one during this week.
The big missionary event, the photo display I wrote about before, starts tonight and then continues for two weeks. We hope to encourage a few of our friends to drop by sometime in the next few weeks.
I tried to get the young men over to our house for mutual. I made Dutch oven chicken and rice and cherry chocolate cake. We had three of the nine attend. The difficulty of the whole activity program is that all of these boys go to a variety of schools and all participate in a wide variety of activities. Sometimes I am not quite sure if they even know what they are doing from week to week. It was fun for those who came and we were able to get to know those boys better.
We did have our second video chat with Amelia’s group. It lasted about ten minutes until one of the computers broke the connection. Evie and Miriam both did some drawing and Miriam was wearing her LSU cheerleading outfit. How appropriate sense LSU was given the recognition of having the number one overall football recruiting class this last week. Maybe there is hope for the LSU football team to have a better year than they had last year. We need to attend more of the athletic events. We haven’t been very good about that yet.
We are thinking about changing our property management people here in Baton Rouge. We interviewed another group and the end of last week. We need someone who communicates more actively. We just don’t feel like we know what they are doing or if they are doing anything. We need to keep them rented.
Sophia, Curtis, and Deacon are coming to visit during the first week of April. We are looking forward to that. It will be great to see them. We will be planning some fun things to do and see. We have extra rooms and visitors might force us to buy and put up some drapes. Hope to see you soon.
We love you. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Each week seems to get faster and faster. That might be because things at work seem accelerated. Articles that we have been working on are nearing their first stage of completion. Dana and I have one back that we need to revise. I have a small one back from the English journal that needs only minor revisions. The paper that my graduate student and I have been working on is in the first writing stage. I think we will be able to get it out for review by the first of March. I am also giving a faculty lecture based on my dissertation work this Friday. I am using this opportunity to structure my first paper from my dissertation. I will need to put in a lot of thinking work this week.
We went to two movies this week, both were pretty mindless. We saw The Pink Panther 2 and New in Town. They were okay but we had fun going out together and getting away from work. I heard a church today that we missed an early Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. Apparently, many neighborhoods have family friendly parades from now until official Mardi Gras. We hope that we can find one during this week.
The big missionary event, the photo display I wrote about before, starts tonight and then continues for two weeks. We hope to encourage a few of our friends to drop by sometime in the next few weeks.
I tried to get the young men over to our house for mutual. I made Dutch oven chicken and rice and cherry chocolate cake. We had three of the nine attend. The difficulty of the whole activity program is that all of these boys go to a variety of schools and all participate in a wide variety of activities. Sometimes I am not quite sure if they even know what they are doing from week to week. It was fun for those who came and we were able to get to know those boys better.
We did have our second video chat with Amelia’s group. It lasted about ten minutes until one of the computers broke the connection. Evie and Miriam both did some drawing and Miriam was wearing her LSU cheerleading outfit. How appropriate sense LSU was given the recognition of having the number one overall football recruiting class this last week. Maybe there is hope for the LSU football team to have a better year than they had last year. We need to attend more of the athletic events. We haven’t been very good about that yet.
We are thinking about changing our property management people here in Baton Rouge. We interviewed another group and the end of last week. We need someone who communicates more actively. We just don’t feel like we know what they are doing or if they are doing anything. We need to keep them rented.
Sophia, Curtis, and Deacon are coming to visit during the first week of April. We are looking forward to that. It will be great to see them. We will be planning some fun things to do and see. We have extra rooms and visitors might force us to buy and put up some drapes. Hope to see you soon.
We love you. Take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Baton Rouge Week 32
Well, we have started yet another month here in Baton Rouge. We had the two women that are in my writing group over for dinner with their two husbands. We did it on Monday night and then played aggravation for a while. It was a lot of fun. They were all pretty quick studies and picked up the game in a hurry. The Bishop came by to sign some welfare forms just as they were coming by so we got to tell them a little about who he was and what he did.
The big Reflection on Christ program starts next Sunday for two weeks. The Saturday paper had a photo blurb on the front page and then a couple of large pictures on the cover of the Life and Religious section. It was really a nice bit of coverage for the church. Here is the weblink: http://www.2theadvocate.com/features/38725227.html
I hope that this works for you all. The pictures are very nice. The ward also had an activity called a ward blitz. It was a bit like a census. The activity committee put together packets of people on the rolls that we don’t know much about. It was very interesting. Dana and I went around to about 11 addresses in a little over 2hours. We found some people and got some updates on others. Of the folks we found we were able to get some of them to accept more visits from home and visiting teachers. These are the lost sheep that maybe we can reactivate. It was followed up by a luncheon and some members stayed around and played volleyball. It is the kind of activity that a ward like ours ought to do every year. I wonder if it would be good to do a week or two before a ward dinner.
When we got home I then went to help my home teaching companion put some plywood sheeting on a shed that he is building. He has done most of it, but putting sheets of plywood on a roof alone gets to be a little tricky. I was over there for about two hours. I am not too sore all things considered. When I got home we went to the movie. We saw Inkheart. I liked it well enough.
It was a good week at work. I met with my writing group and finished up a small piece that I am sending to English Journal. It is always good to be in the English Journal, so I am hopeful for this article.
The weather has picked up a bit. I don’t think I needed a coat this week. Flowers are out all over the place. I am trying to put a few pictures on our blog.
I will be teaching a graduate class in late June and through July. I just this week posted some fliers in the English department and in the Education department. The good news is that I already have enough students to carry the class. This is great news. It is an 11% boost in pay to teach a summer class. That still gives us a most of May and most of June to take some time off. I think that we might do a couple of writing camps. We might go some place without a television and write for four straight days (8 hours-breakfast 4 hours-lunch -four hours- small dinner-long walk). Anyway that is something that we need to figure out.
We are going up to see Abbey in a couple of weeks. We are looking forward to the visit, but not the weather. I do really like Boston. I haven’t been there in the late winter. I am sure that there are things to do that don’t require people freezing to death. I am sure Abbey will have some ideas.
As you can see we are pretty boring. We do school work, church work, and then we try to see a movie and play games. We have been good about inviting people over. We will keep trying to socialize; it keeps us kind of normal. One of our new colleagues in the education department is having a few people over for the super bowl so we are going over there for a few hours.
We love you all, take care of each other.
Love Dad and Dana
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