A visit home

The weekend started wet but ended up beautiful. I have been feeling like Jabba the Hut from too many restaurant dinners and too little exercise, so I hiked down to the Safeway store--a little over a mile--bought a few groceries, then made a few more stops to shop. I hauled it all home on foot. Things got pretty heavy before I arrived back at the condo, but it was worth it. I spent the rest of the weekend working on the computer and watching football.

My project is finally picking up steam. I have finished the pilot testing of my process and I am starting to send out requests to the remaining 108 schools for the documents I need. Hopefully, it won't be too hard to get responses. Then I just have to analyze all of the documents!

Tomorrow I am going with Lucinda Maine to visit a new school of pharmacy in Baltimore. It is a Catholic school in their first year of operation. It's always interesting to see other schools and how their programs operate. On the way back to Virginia, Lucinda will drop me off at the airport so I can catch the direct flight home.

I haven't been to work at the UKCOP since August. I'm looking forward to seeing all of my co-workers. The college accreditation visit is Wednesday and Thursday. Hopefully, all will go smoothly. I will spend the rest of my time at home finishing packing up my office for the move to the new building in December. My office moving date is December 4th--four days after I come home from Virginia. I'm glad to be in the first wave of moves but I don't have much time to get ready. Fortunately, I spent a lot of time cleaning and throwing away old files during the summer.

It's time to finish packing my carry-on bag for home and get a good night's sleep.

More Company

I have become very popular since I came to Virginia. This week my sister-in-law Joan and her husband Joe came to visit. They arrived Tuesday night and are leaving today. While I went to work during the day, they came over from their hotel and parked at the condo. Then they jumped on the Metro to go into DC. In two days, they got to see most of the things on the National Mall and Arlington Cemetery. Joe has a reputation for taking lots of pictures (emphasize the word LOTS), so it was slow going for them. As of last night, he had 400 pictures.

They came over every evening and we went out to dinner. I took them to some of my usual places. Last night, thanks to Brad at AACP, we ventured off the tourist path and went to Arlington to eat at the Capitol City Brewing Company. I was glad to find a new area to explore and find a number of new restaurants. Our most interesting dinner was Wednesday night at Joe Theismann's. We had a new server who was very enthusiastic but very slow. Tables all around us turned over and we were still waiting for our check. When the check came, Joe gave the server his credit card and, after a wait, the bill came back. Joe signed it and we were about to get up when Joan noticed that it was not our bill. We figured up what our bill should have been. It was about the same total, so Joe said, "he brought me a bill and I paid it." We left. I think he figured if we told him about the mixup it would have taken another half-hour to straighten it out.

On the work front, this week was a little frustrating. I had software problems for two days that disrupted working on my pilot project. The outcome was good though. I got my computer back yesterday and I had Adobe Acrobat added. That will facilitate some of my work. I think I have finished working with the 5 pilot schools. Now I need to start collecting documents from other schools. That will probably be the most frustrating part of my project.

I have the weekend here in Alexandria on my own. Of course, there is rain coming in today. That will be OK since I have some housework and lots of reading to do. I have to reread parts of the Kentucky self-study document for my trip home next week to participate in the ACPE visit. I also have documents from the accreditation visit I am participating in next month in Wisconsin. Finally, I have the board book from AACP to read for the board meeting right after I get back from home. So I guess rain might be a good thing.

I will make time to watch some college football tomorrow if I can find Kentucky on TV. I will also watch OSU, but with some trepidation. They have not been impressive in recent weeks.

I hope this catches everyone up on the latest news from Alexandria.

Rainy weekend

The rain continued Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mike arrived on Friday to spend the weekend with me and wisely rented a car. I had looked into getting a zip car. Those are short term rentals that are parked around the DC area. When you sign up for an account, you get a card that unlocks any of the cars. You just look on-line to see where the nearest one is parked and go get it. It seems like a good idea but the sign-up process costs $75. So it is just cheaper for me to get a rental car at Reagan airport.

We went to the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport. It was awesome. There are many more planes than they can house at the museum on the mall. I posted pictures of my favorites--the Enola Gay and an SR 71 Blackbird. It was amazing to see the actual plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I liked the Blackbird because it travelled from California to Washington in 1 hour, 4 minutes. I wish it was a commercial airliner. I could get home in 15-20 minutes. They also have a space shuttle and a plane developed by Orville and Wilbur Wright. It was airplane sensory overload. I can hardly wait for Chris to come visit. He will love the place. We also went over to the Air Force Memorial so Mike could see it, but it was raining too hard to stay.

It was good to have a car for the weekend since it would have been hard to travel on foot in the rain. I did some grocery shopping and cooking. Otherwise, we just tried to stay out of the rain and watched football. Unfortunately, all of my teams lost this weekend except the Wildcats who had an unexpected victory at Auburn. Perhaps there is still hope for a bowl game?

Just nine days until I go home for the accreditation site visit. I will also need to finish packing my office for the move to the new building since I will be moving about one week after I get back home in December. Thanks Jeff for putting our suite in the first wave of moving so we can get it finished. I can hardly wait.

Now it is back to work on my project. I am expecting more company tomorrow--my sister-in-law and her husband, Joe and Joan. I am more popular now than I was at home. I guess it isn't me--it is the location.

rain, rain go away

This was the first morning since I arrived in late August that I had to walk to work in bad weather. I guess I am spoiled. It was a good thing that Mike got a really good umbrella as a gift when he played in the ASHP golf tournament while he was here. It really came in handy this morning.

Today, I am going to talk about my project, so those of you who think I am just partying in DC can log out now. I have had a lot of frustration trying to get the methodology worked out for my project. I have designed four parts to it--more than I can accomplish while I am here. Of course, I think I can do parts 1-3 even though all of the people I have consulted here tell me that I can't. Yesterday, while I was rereading many of the articles I collected as background, I think if finally started to gel. Hopefully, I can get things off the ground soon. Part one is a review of promotion and tenure documents at schools of pharmacy to see whether there is evidence of the scholarship of teaching. There are a few confounding factors with this. Can I get the documents from all the schools who have them? (some of the new schools may not have documents yet) Do some schools have different criteria in different departments? Are the documents too general to provide the information I am seeking? Finally, is there sufficient consensus about what constitutes scholarship of teaching vs. teaching excellence to have a clear definition of what I am looking for in the documents? And that is just part 1! Parts two and three are surveys of department chairs and faculty to determine their perceptions of what teaching-related activities are valued toward tenure. Hopefully, the only difficult part of the surveys will be getting an adequate return rate. I should be able to use the same list of activities that I use in Part 1 for the surveys. I can ask these two groups of people to rate the activities related to their importance toward promotion and tenure. Then I can compare the three sets of information. Easy--ha!

I guess that is enought for this morning. Mike is coming to visit for the weekend. I am really looking forward to his visit.

I need a nap

For someone who was wondering how to spend three days alone in Virginia, I sure had a busy weekend. I have already described my visit on Saturday to Lorton to visit my nephew and his family. On Sunday morning, my son John called to say that he and his wife, Brittany "aka" Bridget (it is a long story for another day), decided to leave Kentucky that afternoon and drive straight through to Alexandria. They arrived about 11PM. We went out for a little while so they could unwind and got to bed about 1AM.

On Monday (Columbus Day - no one in this area works) we had a full day. We went to the Air Force Memorial close to Arlington Cemetery. It is small but very moving. You can see John's artistic pic of me and Brittany. He wanted to get the top of the spires and still have us in the picture. I think a more interesting picture might have been John laying on the ground shooting the picture. The second picture of John and Brittany in front of the honor guard is interesting. This picture makes John and Brittany look like miniaturized versions of themselves standing next to life size soldiers.

I didn't realize how much I have learned from Chris about the Air Force. There are panels with the core values and others with all of the Air Force Medal of Honor winners. I recognized Frank Luke, the class of 2010 exemplar, and Lance Sijan, for whom Sijan Hall is named. I think he was the first USAFA graduate to receive the Medal of Honor. I think Chris will enjoy visiting there next time he comes to Washington.

We spent the rest of the day shopping at the Pentagon City mall and we strolled King Street. We had happy hour and dinner at the Fish Market (Mike will be jealous of the 2 lb lobster that John ate). We rode the trolley back home and got to bed early. This morning John and Brittany left for New Jersey where John will be in a wedding. It was lots of fun to have them visit, but now I need a nap.

Unfortunately, it is a work day and I have many things to do. The nap will have to wait until tonight.

A visit to Lorton

Yesterday morning I was thinking about how to spend the three day weekend. I went over to King Street to do some errands about 9AM and while I was out, my niece Heather called. Heather, Jeremy and their children live in Lorton. They invited me to come spend the day with them. Heather picked me up and we headed to Fort Belvoir to pick up Joel, Lacy and Jeremy after Joels's tae kwon do (sp?) class. Our second stop was the grocery store on the base. Lucky me! I needed groceries and I got to shop where the prices were really good. Now I am stocked up on soup and turkey--the staples of my current diet.

Next we went to their house. I got a piano concert from Lacy, we played some games, and watched the Buckeyes beat the Badgers. I won my bet with Ken Miller, a Wisconian (Wisconsonite?), so I get lunch at Table Talk. We had tacos for dinner and I got to bring home some leftovers.

It was a great day. I forgot how much energy a 6 year old and 9 year old have. I was pretty tired when I got home so I fell asleep early. Today I need to clean up around the condo. John and Brittany have decided to leave on their vacay this afternoon so we will have the whole day tomorrow to be tourists. They should be here about midnight. I will probably need a nap today!

Anniversary

Today was my wedding anniversary. Mike and I have spent a few of our 32 anniversaries apart, but not many. Since I couldn't spend the day with Mike, Ken Miller and Buzz Kerr took me out to lunch at Table Talk. It was nice to celebrate with two dates, but I sure do miss my house husband.

It is hard to be a student

Yesterday afternoon and this afternoon I participated in an on-line conference about on-line teaching and learning. The sessions ran for 5-6 hours each day. The sessions were very interesting and I learned a lot about theory as well as on-line tools I didn't know about and practical tips to use them. I need to see if Jeff Cain knows about all of these things. I will be disappointed if he doesn't since he is a Web 2.0 guru.

The picture to the right shows my work area and the sign I printed out from the site to show that I was "attending" a conference. Whitney, my cubicle mate, took the picture during one of the 10 minute breaks because she thought it was funny. The sign says, "it may look like I am here but.......". As you can see, I am NOT here. I was taking a bathroom break.

My students are in big trouble now because I have lots of ideas about new things to try.

Yes, it is October 6th and I haven't posted in almost a week. Things have been hectic as my family hit the height of the celebration season. Last week Mike and I celebrated our birthdays (celebrated is probably not accurate--bemoaned is likely to be more accurate). On Friday I flew home for the weekend, Chris flew in from Colorado Springs and John and Brittany came over from L'ville.

Friday we went out after dinner and checked out the new hotspot in our neighborhood, Drakes. It didn't seem like we were out late but when we got home it was after 1AM. That would have been OK if we weren't planning on getting up at 7AM to head to Commonwealth Stadium to tailgate before the UK-Alabama game that kicked off at 12:20. John and Brittany had four lower stadium seats on the 30 yard line with a parking pass in the blue lot right next to the stadium. So Saturday morning, John, Brittany and I packed up the car, made a quick stop at Krogers, and headed to the tailgate spot. We found a great spot and started to set up our tailgate.

Unfortunately, something went wrong with our power source, and after troubleshooting and a trip to the store by Mike and Chris to get a replacement power source, we had to give up on cooking breakfast. The family next to us let us use their grill when they finished cooking, so we did eventually get to cook burgers. Things didn't get better when the game started and UK lost to Alabama. But it is always great to be at the stadium in October. Fall weather in Lexington is great especially when the leaves change. We continued to gorge ourselves in football the rest of the weekend and enjoyed being together.

I headed back to Virginia Sunday night for my first full week by myself. I am trying to finish my literature searching, background writing and develop the methods for my project. I will write more about my project this week to satisfy those of you who think I am only on sabbatical to have fun!

A busy day

Yesterday was probably the busiest day I have had since arriving in Virginia. I started the day at work trying to figure out my sampling strategy. Whitney was very helpful in thinking through what groups I needed to survey and I mapped out a draft of the sample I will use. It will need more work but I feel like I am making progress. It's hard to be patient in the early stages but I know it is important to get it right before I start the survey process or the end result won't be good.

At noon, Ken Miller drove me over to Bolling Air Force Base. My nephew Jeremy was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and I was invited to the ceremony. I have never attended this type of event and it was quite interesting. I think it was somewhat like a wedding because the ceremonial aspects were quite similar. There were greeters to get us to the right location. The family had reserved seats in the front with our names on the chairs. Before the ceremony started, the family met in a conference room with T-JAG, the "big cheese" in the JAG. I have heard a lot about him from my sister who has attended some of their conferences and seen T-JAG in action. When the ceremony started, the family came in first and then Jeremy and T-JAG. There was a narrator who walked us through the steps of the ceremony. Lacy, who is 6, played the Star Spangled Banner on the piano (no mistakes at all!) and Joel, who is 9, recited the Pledge of Allegiance. T-JAG spoke about Jeremy. It was impressive that he could talk about Jeremy's whole life history from growing up in North Canton, Ohio, his education, and his full military career. He also knew a lot about Heather, the children and Jeremy's parents, Lynn and Dick. After the promotion order was read and the pinning of insignia was finished, Jeremy said a few words (not as many as T-JAG). There was also a receiving line. There were more than 50 people in attendance including lots of people Jeremy works with, friends and neighbors, and the family. Then there was a reception. It was a very impressive ceremony. There were tears from the wife and mother, a cake and lots of pictures were taken. Very much like a wedding except no wedding dress and everything happened on time with military precision.

After the promotion ceremony, my brother-in-law Dick, drove me back to Alexandria where my niece Joyce from Cleveland was waiting for me. I quickly changed into spectator clothes and we took off on the Metro to see the Washington Nationals final home game of the season. I was a little concerned about the game because Joyce bought the tickets from a guy who advertised on Craig's list. They were really good seats in the lower deck between third base and home plate and he was selling them for half price. We were supposed to meet him before the game, but he was late, so we missed the first inning. They were giving away Nationals blankets at the gate, so we both got a souvenir from our visit. It sprinkled a little during the first few innings but the weather cleared up and the game was moving along quickly. Since the Nationals and Mets are two of the worst teams in the NL this season, there wasn't much action--until we got to the ninth inning. The Mets were leading 4-2 going into the bottom of the inning. A small group of loyal fans remained in the stands (including us). The Nationals managed to load the bases, thanks to a couple of walks. It was 4-3 with two outs and Justin Maxwell hit a walk-off grand slam to end the game and the Nationals home season. The crowd went wild as if they had just won the World Series. It was an exciting way to end the game.

Joyce and I rode home on the Metro and stopped at Joe Theismann's restaurant for a salad and to watch some more baseball. When we got home, we were both exhausted. Joyce is sightseeing today while I work. I'm hoping for a quieter day.