Another Rainy Anniversary

Wednesday was my and Dan's 31^st wedding anniversary. Last year we had to put off celebrating our anniversary because Sally was blowing in, and she made landfall very early on the 16^th. On Wednesday, Nicholas was making landfall in Texas, which is not very close to Alabama, but somehow we ended up with seven inches of rain just on Wednesday from him. It finally stopped raining around 4:00, which was perfect timing, because that is when Dan and I got off work and went to grab dinner at our favorite Mexican Restaurant. Here are a few pictures of the rain, the water-filled drainage ditches, and dinner.

I splurged a little more than I should have, lol. It's the chips and salsa that always get me, but the veggie quesadillas were pretty good too. It started raining again just as we got back home Wednesday evening and then it rained a little more yesterday. Today was dry, so Dan and I decided to go for a drive along the beach road.

We drove through Orange Beach and over to Perdido Key, FL just to see what is there. I noticed lots of shops that I'd like to visit someday, but since Dan isn't much of a shopper, I didn't suggest that we stop.

Do you all have anything fun planned this weekend? I have a student's paper to look over and give feedback on and then I may start working on the class I signed up for this week. It won't officially start until early October, but I can get a head start on the assignments. Other than that, I will probably do some cleaning and laundry. Oh, and my diploma was supposed to be ordered today. I never found out why it was not ordered after my degree was conferred, but I'm just happy it was a mistake. I had to order another copy of my transcript to be vetted for my faculty position, and it was delivered almost immediately. I remember the old days when they had to be mailed out and it would take weeks. Now with digital technology, it's almost instantaneous.

Well, it's getting late, so I am going to call it a night. I hope you all have a great weekend!

The Jeep Has Arrived

I have a few minutes before the virtual mini doctoral residency starts at CSU, so I thought I'd pop in with some updates. I am not required to attend, but I told my mentor I'd stop by for a bit. The kids are going to come over in a couple hours and we are going to the beach. It is supposed to be a beautiful day. Humidity is low, so it feels a bit like fall.

It's been an eventful couple of weeks. The day after I published my last post, we got a call from the dealership that our Jeep had arrived! We went to pick it up on September 1^st, and we have been really enjoying it so far. I would love to take the top off today, but I'm not sure Dan will feel up to messing with it. He had two teeth extracted yesterday, so he'll probably be pretty sore. He is still sleeping and I am going to let him sleep as long as he wants to. I haven't taken any closeup pictures of the Jeep yet, but I'll try to do that today and add them to this post later. After Dan's surgery, we went to the DMV and ordered a personalized license plate. It says PHDX2. The clerk told us that we could get any plate design we wanted and it would cost the same, so we elected to get Roll Tide (University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa) plates. I think they are going to look really pretty on the snazzberry red Jeep. It will take about 6 to 8 weeks for them to arrive, so we were given a temporary tag to display. I also got my official paperwork to sign for my new faculty position yesterday, and now I am officially a DBA faculty member. Yesterday was a really good day overall except for one little snaffu.

I called Trident because I still haven't received my diploma, even though it's been nearly 10 weeks since I officially graduted, and I found out there is some sort of hold on my account. I am not sure why, because I have no balance and my degree was officially conferred on July 4^th. The registrar's office is looking into it, so hopefully I will have it soon. I'm really glad I called, but I am annoyed that I had to. I really hope it was a mistake. I ordered transcripts and they were released, so I cannot imaging what the problem could be. In reality, transcripts are more valuable than the diploma, but I want to frame it and hang it behind my desk. I should frame my bachelor and masters diplomas too. My master's degree disploma is huge. I might have to special order a frame for it.

The only other piece of news is that I took the kitties to get spayed a couple of weeks ago. I hated to do it, but they are 5 1/2 months old now, so they could go into heat anytime. I had the vet give them their immunizations and microchip them, so they are good to go for a year. They are really good cats. They are very good natured, confident, sweet, and cute. I am really happy to have them in my life. They make me smile the way Jasper did, and they make it easier for me to think about him now.

I think that is about all that has happened since my last post. Oh, I just remembered--we also finally got our fence replaced. It fell down almost exactly a year ago when Sally blew through. Hopefully it will stand for at least 10 years. The guy who installed it did a great job! Well, I am going to leave you with a few pictures. I didn't finish this post yesterday, so I managed to take a picture of the Jeep, and I have to leave some kitties pics too. :) Whenever I bend over, Bella jumps on my back and lays down. She is a character!

Another Month Down

Hello, friends. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe. I'm slightly past one month since my last post, but I guess it's better than six months, right? Life has continued to be busy, but things are finally going to start slowing down. Yesterday I worked really hard to finish my community health class. I wrote a seven page paper, which I finished this morning, a six-hundred word exam essay, and two 300+ word journals. Now that I have that behind me, I am going to take a break from school until after the first of the year. I'll write more about this later.

To follow up on my last post, the camper is sold. We got a decent deal on it, but we still took a loss. I am just happy that we do not have to worry about it any longer. It was a real dark cloud over Dan's head. He is much happier now. After we were sure everything was going to go through, we stopped by the Jeep dealership and ordered our Wrangler. It is a four door in snazzberry pearl color. We should hear something in about four weeks. Even though we took a hit on the camper, we will come out ahead on the truck and even sell it for more than we paid for it. The truck is a 2018 and only has a little over 4,000 miles on it. It's really huge. It's a Ram 3500 duelly. Dan has a hard time finding parking places for it, so we usually take my little Fiesta when we go places together. I have never driven the truck. It is just too big for my liking. I won't miss it much, even though it is a really nice vehicle.

The biggest relief about having the camper sold is that we don't have to worry about it taking damage from Hurricane Ida. Even though we are only taking a glancing blow from the storm, there was always a concern that something would fall on it or that wind would blow it over. We are supposed to stay below tropical storm force winds, but there is a tornado threat and we are under a tornado watch until 7:00 tonight. I really feel sorry for those in Louisiana. Sally hit us last year as a strong category 2 storm, and we had no power for several days. This storm will devastate the coastal communities for months. If you think of them, please say a prayer for their safety. Currently, the storm is a category 4. To put that in perspective, Katrina hit as a category 3. Dan and I went out and bought a generator a couple of days ago. I don't think we will need it for this storm, but eventually we will. Dan is going to have the electric company wire our meter so we can plug the generator right into it. That way, we won't have extension cords running all over the house. Last year during Sally we used our small camping generator. It worked fine, but there were some things it couldn't do, so having one that is more powerful gives me peace of mind.

I have some exciting news to share about the DBA chair stuff I mentioned last time I wrote. I hunkered down and finished my IRB courses a couple of weeks ago, and then I emailed the program director to let her know and ask her what my next step in the process was. Well, she went and talked to the director of my department, and together they agreed to share me. I was planning to do the dissertation committee stuff on my own time, but I have been given permission to work on it during work hours. My director, assistant director, and supervisor are all very supportive, and they know that there are not many opportunities for advancement where I currently am, so they are allowing me to perform my chair responsibilities during work hours in hopes that it will eventually open a door to further advancement. It turned into a bit of an odd situation. I was 'hired' to do chair stuff, but then this past week, Darlene asked me for my transcripts and a CV so she could vet me for the position. She said she was working with HR and that I had nothing to worry about on my end. On Friday, she emailed me to tell me that I needed to apply for a part-time faculty position that was going to be opened for me on the website and that I would need to 'interview' for the position. It is all formalities, but I have never gotten a job before I interviewed (at least never where I knew I was hired, lol). My interview is scheduled for Tuesday morning and Darlene told me not to prepare for it--that it is going to be very informal and last about 30 to 45 minutes. What is really exciting is that I will officially be considered faculty, so eventually, if a full-time faculty position opens, I may be able to slide into it. I have already been assigned my first two student and have my own class, although it will not be officially mine until next term when all the paperwork is processed. I will appear as the profesor everwhere except in the professor profile, which currently shows my students' committe member. I am not sure that the students will even look at that section of Blackboard, though. If they do, Jan told me that I can just tell them we share the class. I spoke with one of my students last week, but the other has not contacted me yet inspite of the fact that I have reached out to him twice. I have a feeling I am going to have trouble with him.

I mentioned taking a break from school for a bit and part of the reason is that I am contemplating changing my major. I elected to pursue the master of public health for personal reasons. I have been interested in health and nutrition for many years and I thought this degree might be a way to shift into the field. However, now that I will be working in the business college, I am contemplating pursuing an MBA instead. Business does not really interest me much, but my undergraduate degree is in human resources management, and there is an HR concentration in the MBA track, so that is what I am considering doing. The only problem is that I do not want to take the research methods class, so I am trying to figure out if a statistics class I took back in 2000 will satisfy the requirement. I took four research methods classes in my PhD program, but apparently classes won't transfer between education levels, meaning a doctoral RM class will not transfer into a master's level program. I think it's stupid, but if the stats class won't transfer in, I will petition for a substitution and argue that I could teach the RM class, which I could. Hopefully I will know something in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I am going to relax and enjoy life for awhile.

Well, I think that is all the news I have right now. All I really have on my agenda for today is a bit of house cleaning. I plan to stay inside since it's supposed to rain on and off all day. Fortunately, I did my grocery shopping yesterday, so I have nowhere to go. I hope you all have a great new week, and happy Labor Day early!

Time for My Monthly Update

Good morning, friends! I hope you are all doing well. Life is pretty status quo right now. It is summer in Alabama, and we have been getting rain pretty much every day for weeks. I don't mind at all because I love rain, but a lot of people are getting really tired of it. It has been much cooler than normal, and I don't think too many people are complaining about that. Right now I hear thunder, so I am guessing that in about a half an hour or 45 minutes there will be a downpour.

I am still waiting for my dissertation to be published. As soon as I got notification from the registrar that I had met all the degree completion requirements, I submitted my dissertation to ProQuest, which is the company responsible for publishing theses and dissertations. Everything happened really fast at first, but once it was actually delivered to ProQuest, I didn't hear anything, so I went to the Q&A page and found out that it can take 8-12 weeks for the dissertation to make it into the database. Regardless, though, my degree should have been released and I should receive my diploma in the mail before too much longer. My graduation ceremony is this weekend. I really wanted to go walk in person, but my university decided to hold another virutal ceremony, so I will be watching online instead.

Right after I passed my defense, Dan emailed a couple of the administrators in the DBA program at CSU and asked them if I could possibly sit on a dissertation committee, and the program director emailed me a couple days later and asked if we could talk. She called me and told me that she would send me some training links and that after I complete everything, she will pair me with a mentor, and eventually, I will be able to chair committees. I have a lot of training to get through, though, and it is going slow because I am also working on my class. I think after my class ends next month, I will take a month or two off to focus on the training and get that finished. I have to take three IRB classes (Institutional Review Board, which is the body that governs ethical research practices), and one of the classes has 34 modules. I am about 1/2 way finished with my first, five module class. I have a long way to go, but I was told that I could take it as fast or slow as I want to.

In other news, Dan and I have decided to sell our camper and our truck. We really enjoyed camping when we lived in Omaha, but after moving doing here, losing my birds, and starting work, neither of us really has much of a desire to disrupt our lives to go out with it. Right now there is a camper shortage, so we should be able to sell it pretty quickly. We plan to take it to a dealer this weekend and have them sell it on consignment for us. We are going to take a bit of a loss, but right now it is doing no good just sitting in a storage lot. It is a really nice unit, so I would love to see someone use it. After the camper sells, we are talking about trading the truck for a Jeep. I have never had a fun vehicle. We are also talking about a convertible of some sort, but we like the utility of a Jeep. After the camper sells, we will make a final decision.

My kitties are doing really well. I had to take both of them to the vet (one on a Wednesday and one the following Monday). I think they had some kind of infection. The vet gave them an antibiotic shot and two different dewormers. I am still giving them one of the dewormers. I swear that it is a never-ending bottle. I have been giving it to them for a week and the bottle is still more than half full. I hope it magically empties in the next few days. They don't really mind the taste of the meds, but the do not like being messed with, so giving it to them every night is a two person job.

My final news is that I plan to book my cruise today. My mom finally figured out who she is bring with her and we nailed down the kind of room we want, so I wam working with a travel agent friend to try to get a good deal. She said she'd let me know today what she figures out for us. April and I will be heading to Disney World for five days in about six months. I am super excited about that trip. Last time we were there, April was sick and had a badly sprained ankle, so I am praying that this trip is less eventful and much more fun.

I just got my downpour, and now the rain is falling gently. I love the tropical downpours we get here. I live about an hour away from both Mobile and Pensacola, and I heard that Mobile is almost a foot above average for rainfall at this time of the year. A weatherman in Birmingham who I follow said that next week is supposed to be drier and warmer, so the rain haters should be happy. I hope you all have a wonderful week!