Beautiful Weather in DC

Tomorrow it is supposed to be 70 degrees here and 80 on Thursday. The cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. This weekend is the festival. Since it is Easter, the office is closed on Friday and I will be going home for a 3 day weekend. I hope the blossoms last another week so I can go in to the mall and enjoy them.

I haven't posted for a few days because I made an unexpected trip home last Friday. Friday morning Mike called me and suggested I come home for the weekend. I went on-line and bought a ticket for the direct flight at 8PM. It was a good decision. John and Brittany came over on Saturday and we all went to Sal's for dinner. I won't mention a certain sporting event that was on TV that night. After we took John and Chris off suicide watch, everything was fine. Chris went back to Colorado Springs Sunday morning for his last 2 months of college life. The next time we will see him will be graduation week and he will become a second lieutenant.

Today at work I organized my data in the excel file so I can import it into SPSS and start doing some data analysis. I also reviewed what I wrote for background and methods and started making some revisions. I'm quite anxious to see what my data reveals. I'd like to get a lot accomplished before I leave for home on Thursday night.

It is almost April and I just have one more month left of my sabbatical. In some ways, it has gone very slowly. But in other ways, it seems like I just arrived. I think I am achieving my goal of learning some new skills and have started a line of research that I can continue when I get home.

I've Been Busy

I have not posted since Monday. Lots of things have been going on here. On Tuesday, I finished my review of tenure documents and started getting things organized for data analysis. In the afternoon, I went to Reagan to pick up Mike and Chris for a two day visit. Since Chris always looks forward to homecooking when he comes home from Colorado, I made chicken parmesan. I noticed that his appetite is bigger but he is thinner. He is training for the Derby Marathon and is at the peak of his training. Next week he will have his 20 mile run and then start scaling down toward the marathon. We walked around Alexandria and showed him the places of interest.

Wednesday I took the day off from work and we got an early start. We went to the Supreme Court and got in line about 8:30 in hopes of being admitted to hear the justices hear two arguments that morning. They let in a group of people and that left us standing about 15th in line. Around 9:45 they let us in. Only about 6 people behind us got in. We were far in the back but it was still a great experience. The building is beautiful. Even prettier than the new COP! But in a more sedate way. The first thing I noticed is all the wasted space in the building. They could put lots of offices, labs and classrooms in that space. Sadly, a sign of the times is the two security checkpoints you have to pass through, the need to put jackets, cell phones, basically everything but pen and paper in a locker and the security guys circling the courtroom throughout the proceedings.

Fortunately, Chris looked up the cases we were going to hear and I read the summaries. Otherwise, I would have been lost. In the transport case, we couldn't tell who was winning. In the habeus corpus case, we were pretty sure the state of Alabama was going to win. We will be interested in the outcome of the cases. Watching the judges question the lawyers was interesting.

We walked around a bit and took the Metro back to Alexandria. We had lunch at Five Guys, one of Chris's favorites. It is ironic since he didn't even eat hamburger 4 years ago. Then we got in the car and went to see the Air Force Memorial over by Arlington Cemetery and the Pentagon. I think Chris enjoyed that quite a bit. He knew a lot about several of the people listed on the memorial.

Then it was naptime since we had gotten an early start and done a lot of walking. In the evening Chris and I got back on the Metro and went to the Capitols-Penguins hockey game. I am not much of a hockey fan but the Caps have Alex Ovechkin, the leading scorer in the NHL and a reputed "bad boy." The Penguins have Sidney Crosby, the boy wonder of the NHL. The game was pretty interesting. We were almost the only people not in red or wearing a Caps jersey. Chris said he would really like to see a shootout. Guess what happened? The Caps were down with a few minutes to play and scored to tie it. The game went to a 5 minute overtime and we were rooting for no goals to be scored. The overtime ended without a score and the shootout began. There are three shooters for each time. The first two Penguins scored and the Caps needed both of their remaining shooters to score. They did and the game went to sudden death. The Caps scored and the crowd went wild! We had great seats and made a quick exit to the Metro. I was amazed how quickly we got home to Alexandria.

Sadly, I will be taking Mike and Chris to the airport this morning. Then it is back to work to start looking at my data. I hope there is something interesting to report! Tonight I will be watching the UK-Cornell game. Chris has been reading that the UK players are tired of hearing about how this will be the game between the smart guys and the dumb jocks that will make millions in the NBA. I hope that gives them lots of motivation. GO CATS!

Almost Done

Either today or tomorrow I will finish going through promotion and tenure documents for about 100 pharmacy schools. It has taken longer than I anticipated and has sometimes been mind-numbing. The biggest problem has been finding that I didn't have all the necessary information from some of the schools. Either they didn't send me all the documents I needed or I found a reference in the documents to something else I wanted to read. Searching school websites for what I need has taken a lot of time. I'm looking forward to seeing what the data has to say.

I spent some time working over the weekend but I also spent quite a bit of time watching basketball. Both of my teams moved on (actually all three counting the Kentucky women). I'm worried about Cornell. They look awfully good. I'm counting on the Buckeyes todd put Bruce Pearl and the Volunteers in their place!

On Saturday I went out to enjoy the great weather. Somehow I ended up at the mall and bought a few spring items --earrings, shoes and tops-- since I don't have much warm weather clothing here. On Saturday night I went to a gathering at my nephew Jeremy's house in Lorton. It is always fun to visit with him, Heather, Joel and Lacy. He had invited people over from work in honor of a coworker who is deploying to Iraq for 6 months. It turns out that he and his wife are from Louisville! Once again returning to my theme of what a small world it is. I drove my car there even though it meant getting on the dreaded I-495 and 95. How is it possible for there to be so much traffic headed south on I-95 at 5PM on Saturday. I don't think I will ever complain about traffic in Lexington again.

Well, I'd better get to work and get my P&T documents finished. I'm having company tomorrow and I want to take some time off to spend with them.

TGIF

It is another beautiful day in Virginia. I hope the weather is this good in Kentucky, Ohio and Colorado where all my blog readers are located. The weather is supposed to be in the 70s through the weekend so I plan to get outside as much as possible.

Yesterday was a good day for basketball-lots of exciting games and 100 points for UK! Today I will watch my other team, Ohio State. Wouldn't UK and OSU in the final four be a great way to finish the tournament? Georgetown's loss ruined my bracket but at least they won't keep Kentucky off the TV to broadcast the next Georgetown game.

My work is going well. I hope to have my review of P&T documents finished by Monday so I can start working on data analysis. This will be particularly painful since I am a statistics dummy. I guess it is time to learn to do this for myself. The early indicators are that I will have some interesting findings. I hope so. It has been mindnumbing work to read 100 sets of boring P&T documents.

I am invited to Jeremy and Heather's house tomorrow so I will set the navigation system and set out on another driving adventure. Last week I drove my house guest Gayle in to the convention center in DC because her meeting was early on the weekend and the Metro didn't start early enough. I decided that 6:30 AM on the weekend is the optimum time to drive in DC.

I hope all my readers have a great weekend. GO Bucks and GO Cats!!

The Madness Begins

This morning I slept in until 7 so I didn't get to make a blog post at the condo. The walk to the office this morning was great. The sun is shining, the air is crisp and it will be 71 degrees today. I definitely have to spend the lunch hour walking around Alexandria.

The NCAA tournament begins today and I love to watch the games. I worked ahead last night and reviewed two of my schools on the list for today. That will buy me a little time to check on the afternoon games. Kentucky doesn't play until 7:15. Unfortunately, that is the same time Georgetown plays. So Kentucky won't be on regular TV. I will either have to watch it on the internet or go to a sports bar if I can find someone to go with me.

I guess I'd better get to work so I can stay on my schedule to finish the document reviews before Mike and Chris come to town next Tuesday.

GO CATS!!

Back to Solitary Living

The APhA meeting is over and yesterday my visitor Gayle went home to Buffalo. We had a good time while she was here. I was glad to have company and a companion to travel back and forth on the Metro. I was a little concerned that we would not be comfortable living together in this small space for 5 days, but it worked out well. One reason was that we spent little time in the condo other than sleeping. Gayle brought me two books. I am reading "The No Complaining Rule." I'm sure my family and co-workers will be glad to hear that.

It rained all weekend. Coupled with the melting of the snow, there was some flooding here. For those of you who have visited Alexandria, there was flooding down by the river. If you want to see what it looked like, watch the video from Channel 7 http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0310/716342_video.html?ref=newsstory

I am back to working on my P&T documents for my project. It is getting very old to read these very dry documents day after day. I am anxious to be done with this part of the project and get on to looking at the data and writing. I have set a goal of 10 school document reviews a day to get down by next week. It is tedious but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Happy St Patrick's Day to all. I don't have any green clothes to wear to work today. I hope I don't get pinched.

Weekend at APhA

It was a busy weekend--professionally and socially. This year the programming did not have a lot of topics of interest to me for teaching. I attended the sessions relating to personalized medicine and phamacogenomics, the pharmacy workforce, and a few miscellaneous things. I also like to stroll the exhibits and see what is new. I no longer collect a lot of stuff at the various exhibitors because most of it ends up in the trash later. One of the things I enjoy most about these meetings is talking to colleagues about things going on at their schools and catching up with friends.

My friend Gayle Brazeau from Buffalo stayed with me during the meeting and we Metroed in to DC for the day every day. It was a very cost effective way to attend the meeting (Think about $239/night plus tax times 5 days = at least $1300). The downside is that we have nowhere to go during the day to get off our feet and take a break. Since we have been going in to the meeting between 7-8AM and returning about 1o PM, they are long days.

This morning Gayle asked me what I learned about pharmacy at this meeting. I have been pleased to see that the chains were highlighting their patient care services and community residencies. They are either embracing patient care services or realize that today's new practitioners are trained for more than dispensing and are not looking for that kind of practice setting. I am not as pessimistic as many others that we are training too many pharmacists (at least not yet). Now that there are enough pharmacists to fill traditional roles, and students are seeking dual degree and residencies, I think we will see the development of innovative pharmacy services and graduates who are attracted to pharmacy careers that have been underserved--like academia!

I enjoyed having all my Kentucky colleagues in town because it gave me a chance to spend a lot of socializing time with them. I got to try some new restaurants in DC and expand my culinary horizons with some new entrees. We went to Old Ebbitt's Grill, Zenga, and Georgia Brown's. Of course, all the Kentuckians were at a sports bar for the SEC tournament. It was a little more exciting than we really wanted it to be--but the Cats prevailed and got their #1 seed for the tournament. I also experienced the beer tower. Since there were anywhere between 12-30 people at each game, there were a lot of beer towers purchased.

Today, there is only one session I want to attend. I am going to try to be time efficient and take some work with me on the Metro to get something accomplished as I travel. Hopefully, the rain will stop. It has rained for the whole meeting! More tomorrow.

Visitors

Today there will begin a large influx of pharmacists into DC for the annual APhA meeting. For me, it means company and people to socialize with. Gayle Brazeau from Buffalo will be staying with me. When we aren't at the meeting or socializing with other faculty, we will be working on our project that is a spinoff of my sabbatical project. We are going to take the promotion and tenure documents I have collected and evaluate them for evidence of service as part of faculty evaluation for promotion and tenure.

Historically, faculty were expected to be good "citizens" by participating in college and university service and participating in professional organizations. In recent years, this concept has expanded to include the scholarship of engagement. This includes working with the community either as community service or using professional expertise for the betterment of the community. That is an oversimplification but you can get the point.

I have been forgetting to send a thank you to John and Brittany for the letter I received from them. It was fun to get a handwritten letter.

Also, thanks to Chris for correcting me. Mike and Chris will not be coming to visit next week. It is the following week, March 23-25 when they will be here.

It is almost 8AM. I need to get to work since it will be a short work day.

Mid-week report

It is Wednesday already. This week seems to be flying by. That is probably because it has been a pretty busy week. I am making good progress with the P&T documents. I am also helping score the Wal-Mart scholars applications. Just about everyone in the office is reading a portion of the applications. The number of applicants is much greater this year. That would seem to be a good thing for academia since these students have all expressed an interest in a faculty career. The applicants are quite impressive too.

Tomorrow is the beginning of arrivals for the American Pharmacists' Association that starts on Friday. Last night I grocery shopped and started making some spaghetti sauce so I can host some people for dinner at the condo. There will also be plenty of sauce to have a pasta dinner when Mike and Chris come to visit next week.

Unfortunately the good weather will be coming to an end today and the rain will start tomorrow--just in time to travel in to DC by Metro for the APhA meeting. Time to get ready for work.

beautiful weekend in DC

Spring must be on the way. Mother Nature blessed us with a preview over the weekend. The temperature hit 60 and it was beautiful. Mike was here for the weekend having met me in Morgantown in Thursday with the car. I no longer feel trapped at the condo because I can go out whenever I want--no matter how far or what the weather may be. It was great to make a trip to a big grocery store and be able to bring back as much as I wanted not just what I could carry for a mile.

On Saturday we watched the St Patrick's Day parade down King St in Alexandria. This is the earliest parade in the country. I have never seen so many men in skirts (aka kilts) at one time. Interestingly, my favorite part of the parade was the group of Bolivians (now a part of Ireland?) The music was great and the girls danced and paraded in high heels (very impressive). The costumes were very colorful and the men had knee high boots with bells that looked like jingle bells all the way up.

I watched both the men and women's basketball teams yesterday. One had a happy outcome and the other did not. The women should get a good seeding in the NCAA tournament with their outstanding season.

Today I need to get my nose to the grindstone on my project since I missed several days last week. Right now it is just a matter of plodding through the documents. It is tedious but necessary to get to the more interesting part of the project.

I have some pictures of the parade. I don't have them with me at the office so I will post them later.

Cold and snowy WV

Blog followers, I apologize for my three day absence. The visit to West Virginia was busy and very tiring. We got picked up at the Pittsburgh airport on Tuesday and were transported to Morgantown, a 90 minutes trip. The days started before 7AM and Thursday we were not finished until after 11PM. This caused me to miss the entire UK-Georgia game. Fortunately, they were able to persevere without my support.

There is lots of snow in that area. I talked to a preceptor from the next county who said she has had more than 200 inches of snow this winter. What a great snow fort you could build there!

I am always amazed when I visit a school to see the diversity that exists even though we adhere to a common set of standards. I think those who say the standards are making us "cookie cutter" schools need to make more school visits. I also found it interesting that the preceptors strongly favor IPPE. They say the students have a better view of practice opportunities earlier and that they are better prepared for APPE when they get to that point.

Today I am back at the office working on my data from the P&T documents that I have collected. I also volunteered to help review and score the Walmart Scholar applications. There are four readers for each application so there is a lot of work to do.

Mike met me with the car in Morgantown and we drove back last night. We got to see the worst of life in the DC area. First we got caught in rush hour traffic (at 7PM!) on the beltway. We went 6 miles in about 50 minutes. Then we saw a police barricade near the Pentagon due to a shooting at the Pentagon metro stop. Stuff like that doesn't usually happen in Lexington.

It will be a fun weekend with Mike here and some warmer weather--predicted in the 50s. TGIF to all of you!

A new week begins

It is Monday morning of what will be a two day work week in the AACP offices. Tomorrow I fly out for the WVU accreditation visit. It will take longer to get from the airport to Morgantown than my flight to Pittsburgh. My reward at the end of the visit is that Mike will pick me up and we will drive the 3 hours back to Virginia together. He is staying for the weekend and the forecast is in the 50s. We might actually feel warm! I spent the weekend reading the accreditation documents. Having been on the other end of the process, I know how hard a school works on the report and agonizes over every word. So, I feel it is my responsibility to read every word of the report. This can be painful.

I also had a social life this weekend. On Friday, Alison, Whitney, Jake and I had dinner at Joe Theismans and watched some Olympics. Sunday afternoon Alison and I went out to Jake and Whitneys to watch the gold medal hockey game and see their awesome home theater. We watched Sherlock Holmes--type casting for Robert Downey Jr. Whitney and Jake live by the Springfield-Franconia stop--where the blue line ends (I felt like Shel Silverstein!). It was lots of fun--way better than reading accreditation documents. It was also wonderful to have some food in the condo. Thanks to Ken Miller for the ride to Safeway on Friday. I made some vegetarian chili and had lots of leftovers to freeze for later meals.

On the work front, now that I had some input on how to improve my coding for the data in my project, I am starting to pump out the data. It is tedious but I am anxious to get this phase over. I still have 8 schools that have not responded. It is time to get tough with them. Speaking of my project, it is time to get to work. More tomorrow morning.