Quick Successions: New Mexico Edition

Well I am smack-dab in the middle of my 30s as of yesterday. I have a lot of things to look forward to this coming year. I have a book I edited coming out in the fall. My dissertation should be done in the spring. The other day I got an official acceptance on another article I co-wrote. Hannah is almost 4 and doing well. Travel is coming my way too. At the end of this week I am headed out to visit my sister in Indiana. In November I am going to give a presentation in Minneapolis and then I am making my way to Washington DC in the spring, with other potential trips in the works. I have been sick and I had to go to the doctor yesterday but it was still a good day. Hannah found some cupcakes at the grocery store last week and saved them for my birthday. She even blew the candle out in my behalf. She also got me some good gifts and helped me by opening them. I have a feeling birthdays are going to be fun indeed with her looking out to make sure they go well.

Hannah is a big fan of Peppa Pig. She has adopted a lot of her favorite activities and uses British expressions. For example, she calls a shopping cart "a trolley" and a stroller is a "push chair."  Hannah, just like Peppa, likes to go and splash in muddy puddles so I take her out and let her and then we clean up and dry off. I won't let her wallow though.  Here is a particularly good splash. We have matching rain boots. I found them online. Our neighbors like them too. On the show, Mommy Pig goes out to splash too. When Hannah isn't splashing she is running a repair shop in the garage while I exercise in the mornings. Here she is fixing up her bike. Sometimes she is riding it and she "runs out of petrol" and so she has to go the station and fill up. This morning we were watching and Peppa talked her mother into making pancakes. We couldn't resist. Just like Peppa and Mommy Pig we used flour (ours had blueberrie...

I have worked every summer since I have been in graduate school. In the past I worked three long days and then had the the rest of the week and weekend off. This year, I had to work four days, usually five, for shorter periods of time to keep various projects going. Some days are full of meetings and working at research sites and some days I just have to go and write so I dress more casually.  Here is Hannah and I before work on a casual day wearing our Wonder Woman shirts. My sister gave Hannah hers and then Hannah located one to match in a store so I bought it.  Hannah likes to get stuff in the mail. So I set it up so that she gets a small inexpensive book every week during the summer. When there is a package, the postal employee leaves a key in our smaller box to a bigger one at the bottom of the rows of boxes for our street. She goes out to look for a key every day. Sometimes I find other fun stuff too, like these great minion goggles and yellow beanie. I thin...

If I have done my math right, we celebrated the 168th anniversary of the Mormon Pioneers' initial arrival into the Salt Lake Valley on Friday. On Saturday, the members of the LDS church in Topeka, Lawrence, and the surrounding communities had breakfast and activities at Clinton Lake State Park. I woke Hannah up early and she and I went. She warmed up to the situation by going down the slide and playing in the sand. Then she had a pancake. After breakfast, she was ready to go play games and do crafts while I ushered her around. She didn't understand what we were celebrating, but she did like doing the stuff. Lots of people were there.  Playing in the sand.  At the doll making station. Riding around in a handcart. The handcart was her favorite. She actually took several rides and was a bit fussy when I told her it was time to go.  It has been really hot around here. Temperatures over 100 degrees and heat indexes at almost 120. We left the part...

I am a member of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA). This is a group interested in labor issues and instructional practices regarding the teaching of writing at the university. This year their annual meeting was in Boise, Idaho. I booked my ticket about two months ago and I realized that it was the first time I had bought a plane ticket to Boise since 2001. I lived in the area for the first 19 years of my life. I think I was due in for a visit. In order to save money, I went by myself. I actually had a really good time at the conference. There is a huge focus on networking and so they feed us all of our meals at the conference at tables where people can sit down and talk. They also do what they can to pick venues where all the sessions can be in the same building and that the hotel is the conference site or isn't too far away. In Boise, that meant that the Grove Hotel and the Boise Center were the sites. The other thing they do is give us "recess...

It was a really rainy spring and there are still storms every week. Here's the storm coming in about 4 p.m. today at the edge of Lawrence.  About 20 minutes later, here is the view looking straight up from my house. Soon after this, it started raining. When I went back inside the tornado warnings were on the television. The picture below is from last week when a twister touched down in a Kansas City outskirt called Lee' Summit. Apparently a tornado did touch down about five miles from us. It headed east. When I looked on the Internet to find a picture, there was this one below. I don't know if it is one from our area today for sure. If I find something better I will take it down and repost something.  This does look like the right highway though. Independence Day was spent reading, working on the dissertation, and making a little shopping trip. Brian made some hamburgers on the grill and we had blueberry, whipped cream, and raspberry layer parfaits ...

Hannah went to see Inside/Out. She liked it. I didn't think it was aged right for her. She said her favorite character was ANGER. Here she is inside the theatre waiting to go in. No trace of anger anywhere.  There was also tornado scare this past week. You can see the tornado path if you expand the image. Hannah slept through the whole thing. The warning lasted about about 2 hours from midnight to 2 am or so. After that, it was just a severe thunder storm warning.  When it wasn't storming, it was hot, hot, hot. Hannah and Brian broke out the "puddling pool" as it is called. This is a very inspiring summery shot, I think.  Our wedding anniversary always falls between Father's Day and the Fourth of July. Each are cake baking occasions in their own right. This year, I decided to make a Fourth of July cake, but a week early. Hannah helped with the mixing and the frosting. She can read the back of the box to tell the ingredients (because...