I suppose there are other things I should be doing

t’s going into the single digits here today and tomorrow. I’m off on MLK day, but it’s the sort of day you’d like to go to work just to stay warm.

Yesterday was Kathy's mom's birthday. Kathy and her sisters were on the phone talking about her. They reminisced about past birthday celebrations, including the pajama party at the Embassy Suites for her 90th. Kathy and I went out to the cemetery where Kathy placed a single rose and a few M&M’s on the grave, since her mother liked both those things.

The director was in a meeting in Atlanta for most of last week. I was not in charge, except for Friday morning. There are so few people now in the office, with the ones who quit, a couple out sick and one on vacation, that on Friday there were only three people counting me who were working. Fortunately it was a slow day. Unfortunately, I get all the questions because there is no one else around to answer them.

This weekend I spent about eight hours working on a DVD project for the Education majors. We want to show them what to expect during the big interview event that we will have in April. I went through all the raw footage and wrote down the time codes for all the bits and pieces I wanted for the final production. Next, I want to work on the new site map for the web site for my professional organization. It’s something we were supposed to do two years ago and finally I said I would do it. I sent a draft to the web person at our management company and she liked it. I felt pretty good, considering I’d never done such a thing before.

Oh—I should also work on the third edition of my textbook, but maybe I’ll find some time during the holiday on Monday. I talked to the publisher the other day and they are happy with what I’m doing, and they are sending me another royalty check in March, so I am happy with what they are doing. We actually had to reprint the second edition to cover the spring and summer semesters, so I was very pleased about that.

The other night Max made S’mores for us, standing at the stove with one hand on his hip and the other expertly cooking the marshmallows in the flames on the stove. This weekend the temperature dropped into the single digits. Kathy asked Max if he was warm enough in his jammies, and he responded, “I’m as warm as a kangaroo in a pouch!” On Saturday, he and Shane went to the zoo. It was nice and toasty in the Rainforest exhibit, which is always about 85 degrees and steamy. They bought a battery operated tarantula that moves in a lifelike way. Max delighted in terrorizing Nana with it all afternoon.