Global Warming

Even though it's Jan and we've had the worst winter in all the years I've lived in the midwest, I can believe in Global Warming. We went from 40F to -10F in a 5 hr period. Crazy crazy weather.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesdays: Sophie's World

I'm discussing this book because of the description of The Gum Thief over here I have no idea why I picked up Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, but I'm glad I did. The book is a textbook of philosophy hidden inside a novel. Sophie - the girl in the novel - starts getting lessons by mail. The usually lead with a small question and then she gets a much heavier answer to the question later. Eventually she meets her tutor and they embark on a quest to answer a question. The philosophy lessons are really a historical review but the presentation keeps it engaging and relevant. The plot novel itself - Sophie trying to identify her tutor - really isn't all that fascinating at the beginning, except that it does a great job of illustrating the philosophical concepts in 'real' life. Eventually Sophie has to apply her philosophy lessons in order to determine the answer to questions about her own life and at that point the book does turn into a bit more of a page turner. Even though the book seems written for 5th graders or so in terms of writing style and plot, but the philosophy questions increase in complexity and eventually got pretty complex for me. Saying more would give away plot points, but it was a very nice way to approach a topic I'd like to know more about (philosophy). It's a clever book and worth a read if you like Meta-style books. Gaarder's other book, The Solitaire Mystery, is more subtle but has a very similar style.

Overwhelmed

Here's what my weekend was like:
Saturday
7:30 wake up
9-10 prep for RA training
10-1 RA training
1-1:30 chat with doc student/clean up
1:30 beautiful day so come home and walk my dog for an hour. Take pictures that I can't seem to post on Blogger for who knows why
3:00 shower, smidge of house work
4:00 pick up dinner, go back to work to finalize syllabus & lecture
8:30 come home, laundry, futz on computer, pack bag for tomorrow
11:00ish bed

3:30 am - my dog is barking (at ???)

Sunday
6:30 get up & dress
7:30 meet church person
8:30 church
9:45 kayak lessons til 12:30
1:00 shower/eat/email/nap til 3:00
3:00-4:00 dress/laundry/dog walking
4:00-6:00 pick up dinner, go back to work & code data for phone conf. tomorrow
6:00-7:00 still at work/prep for bible study
7:00-9:45 bible study
10:00 home (laundry, blogging)

One thing I know about myself is that I need a day of rest in order to go into the week feeling good. Even though some of the stuff this weekend was all about me (kayaking), I feel like I was a bit over scheduled. I certainly could have been more efficient about some things (not napping as long, bed earlier on Sat.) But I do know myself well enough to know that sleep is critical to my mental functioning. And I feel as if I put in nearly a day and a half's worth of work this weekend. Ordinarily working this hard on the weekend would compute to taking a half day off next week just to catch up on life & to make my dog feel loved. But here's what is still left to do (tomorrow):

Read student's attempts at responding to reviews (meeting with student at 2:30)
Code 2 more kids' data (before conference call at 11)
Within that, I Lecture in Class 1 (written, just need to do it) at 10
Lecture in Class 2 (written, but need to review/prepare) at 3:30
Have office hours from 1:30-2:30.
Wash last week's dishes
Fold (now clean) laundry
Grocery shop
Walk my dog

The rest of the week looks similar - wrap up house details, first round of job candidates, starting a new task with new RAs, supervising doctoral student's new RAs while he is off interviewing. I usually gaurd my time well, but this is a bit overwhelming.