Last Weekend in Virginia

Of course, the last weekend began with lots of packing. I kept bringing stuff to Virginia every time I went home. Now, it all had to go back--all at once. On Saturday morning, I met Whitney and Jake at Table Talk for a late breakfast. I like going there because it makes me feel young when I look around at most of the tables. They brought me some going away gifts. I reallyliked the "Final Four of Everything" book. I picked Chris up at the airport and we hustled back to the condo, got on the Metro and went to the Nationals game. We only missed two innings and we still saw lots of action. There were 3 home runs and the Nationals won. I wish we had been able to see Pudge Rodriguez catch. He was one of Chris's baseball idols when he was a young catcher.

On Sunday, we went out to Dulles to the Air and Space Museum. He really liked the SR71, space shuttle test module and the Enola Gay. We talked for a few minutes to a retired Air Force pilot who had over 5000 flight hours in about 6 different aircraft. That was interesting.

We were anxious to get the drive home completed so we packed the car before we left and went on the road from Dulles. There were some interesting country roads on the way to the interstate. The drive took about 8 hours and we amused ourselves for a long portion of the drive with the Final Four book. Of course, we turned it in to a competition--StrengthsFinder at work! With the distraction of figuring out the final fours of all the categories the time flew by and we were back in KY before we knew it.

It was good to sleep in my own bed. But the unpacking was awful!

The Last Day

Yes, I know it isn't really my last day. Things got hectic at the end and I didn't get anything posted, so I am going to pretend and catch up on my posts. Friday was a quiet day at AACP offices. A number of people were out at meetings and we previously had a little goodbye celebration on Tuesday when I presented my project to the Academic Affairs group. Other than a box of books, I had already moved most of my things to the condo. I cleaned files off the computer to bring home and said my goodbyes to those who remained. At the end of the day, I invited Diane, Brad, Danielle and Whitney to happy hour at Joe Theismann's. We had a good time and I finally got my picture taken with Joe.

Two Days to Go

I just arrived for my second to the last day at AACP. I have started packing up my stuff. I sure have accumulated a lot! Today I am having lunch with Arlene Flynn and Whitney. Arlene is in town to move the rest of her belongings home to Chicago. It will be good to visit with her. I have missed seeing her around the office.

Today's AACP profile is Whitney. She is the first person I have ever known with two Z's in her name! When I first arrived, Whitney was my closest cubicle mate. She, along with Diane and Brad, helped me learn my way around the office and around the area. After Mike left in late September, my weekends in Virginia were pretty lonely. I appreciate that Whitney and Jake invited me to go out with them. When March Madness arrived, Jake was my basketball buddy. That worked well for Whitney too because she didn't have to watch the games with Jake if I was available. I like Jake even though he has an unfortunate connection to College of Charleston. John, Chris and Mike know the two reasons why I consider that a negative. When I returned to AACP in February, I found that Whitney had moved from her cubicle to an office down the hall. I assume it wasn't to get away from me.

Since Whitney moved out of the cubicle, I have had two new neighbors. For one month, my neighbor was Alison, an APPE student from Minnesota. I enjoyed her company and getting to know her. My current neighbor is Vickie, a new employee at AACP. Vickie is from England. I love listening to her talk with her British accent. I have given her some advice on non-prescription products and I really like the way she says "vitamins."

I will miss all of my cubicle-mates when I go home, but I will be glad to see Melody, Doug, and the lab instructor group who are my closest hall-mates back in Lexington. I hope they have turned my office back into an office from the faculty lounge they threatened to create during my absence.

Too busy to write

I've been so busy working on my manuscript that I haven't taken time out to post an entry on my blog. I also made a trip home over the weekend for the Derby festivities. Missing Derby day in Kentucky is like missing New Year's Eve in Times Square.

Mike and I had fun at Keeneland on Friday watching the Oaks and at the Andover Derby Party on Saturday. It is always fun when you pick a winner!

I thought I was ahead of schedule getting finished in Virginia and packed up for home. Now I feel like I am way behind. Today I am presenting my project for the academic affairs group. That will give me some additional feedback for improving the manuscript. I appreciate the comments of the five people who read the draft for me and gave me some good suggestions to improve and clarify the manuscript. I have read it so many times now, that I have lost any ability to look at it objectively.

Continuing my profiles of the people I have worked with at AACP, today I would like to talk about BEM. I promised I wouldn't use his name. He is another of my cubicle-mates and he is very quiet and hardworking around the office. However, it is always the quiet ones you have to look out for. I think B really works for the CIA. He is very concerned about security, keeping a low profile, and never having anything posted about him on the internet (I guess he won't like this blog entry). If I catch him coming out of a phone booth in blue tights, I will have the answer to the mystery.

Counting down the days

It's hard to believe that I have only seven more work days here in Virginia. Like most things in life, the days have gone slowly and the weeks have rushed by. Yesterday I felt that my manuscript draft was advanced enough to print and edit. I just might meet my goal of having a manuscript ready to submit when I leave here. So beware those of you who foolishly agreed to read the draft and give me comments. Watch your in-box today.

I met Diane (one of my cubicle-mates) and her husband, George, for dinner last night at the Macaroni Grill. It made me really miss the one in Lexington. When it closed, I was hopeful that they were just moving to Hamburg. Haven't seen one yet. George is an interesting guy. He was a Navy man and now, as a civilian, he works for the Navy. He is in charge of some system on all the submarines--too technical for me to understand. He is an engineer who went to MIT so you can see the problem I have in figuring out what he does.

As I count down the days, I will feature some of the friends I have made during my time at AACP. I don't have enough days to feature everyone so I will focus on those with whom I have spent the most time. Today's feature is on Diane. She works two cubicles over from me so I can easily hear her phone conversations. She works with the PharmCAS system (pharmacy school applications for those non-pharmacy types). She fields lots of calls from potential applicants and parents. She is infinitely patient answering their questions and is a wealth of information about schools, pharmacy as a career, and lots of random stuff too. Her experience as a parent of college students comes through in the empathy that is evident as families go through the trauma of choosing a school and hoping for acceptance. I really like Diane, and I did even before she brought me her homemade strawberry jam, but that sealed the deal.

Motherly Pride

I am struggling with my writing this morning so I thought a good avoidance behavior would be to make a blog entry. The weekend was pretty boring for me. Even though it didn't rain a lot, there was a threat of rain all weekend so I didn't do the sightseeing I had planned to do. I switched to some indoor activities--primarily shopping for a new derby outfit for next weekend. It doesn't rain inside the stores!

Since my life has been pretty boring lately, I thought I would make a post full of my motherly pride. Last Thursday, Mike and three of his friends got to have a dream golf day (see the photo). They drove to Louisville and played Valhalla. Just to show how upscale the place is, you have to have a caddie when you play there. Rough life! Then they went to Cardinal Club where John works and played some more. With his connections from working at Valhalla, John had arranged the day for them. What a great son! Mike said he encountered several people at Valhalla who found out he was John's father. They all told him what a great guy John is. I think so too.

Thursday night Chris flew into Louisville in preparation for the Derby Marathon on Saturday. He has been training since January for this. There was some rain in the morning, but for the most part, the rain held off and Chris finished in under 4 hours which was his goal. He looks pretty good in the picture for what he had just been through. Chris, John and Brittany celebrated on Fourth Street after the race. I would like to have been there, but I think I made a wise choice not to go to Louisville for the weekend. I worry less from a distance.

I guess I have procrastinated (and bragged) long enough. Back to my writing.

TGIF

Today looks like a nice day but the weekend will be rainy. That is too bad because it is my last weekend in Virginia and I wanted to do some sightseeing. I thought about making a last minute trip home to support Chris when he runs the Derby Marathon tomorrow. The plane tickets start at more than $600 and the only convenient itinerary is $900. I guess I will support him from afar. It is supposed to rain or thunderstorm in Louisville. I hope it holds off till afternoon for the runners.



Yesterday I made some progress in writing the discussion of my manuscript. I have so many ideas from the related literature and my own data that it has been hard to sort it all out. It is also hard to stay on the topic and not stray into other, but related, areas. I had a conversation with a consultant who was here yesterday working with AACP on their strategic plan. In the course of the conversation, he mentioned that the BPS, Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties for you non-pharmacy types, is looking for evidence of the value of getting board certified. I mentioned that promotion and tenure documents address this issue. He was interested and is going to discuss it with the BPS folks. Maybe another collaborator!



Today should be quiet in the office. Several people are travelling--some to the ACCP meeting in Charlotte. I will try to make good use of the quiet atmosphere to get a lot of reading and writing accomplished.



Rain, rain go away.

Sports Update

Things are somewhat quiet for me at work these days. I am primarily writing a manuscript and getting things wrapped up to move home. So I thought a sports update might be a nice diversion. Here is what is going on in my sports world.

That world class marathon runner, Chris Piascik, will be arriving in Louisville this evening in preparation for running the Derby Marathon on Saturday. Go Chris!

My choice for a derby horse has got to be Homeboykris (for obvious reasons). He is the long shot. That means I only need to bet $2 to make a big profit!

I am moving up in the fantasy baseball league. This morning I have moved ahead of John in the standings. We'll see if it lasts. Family bragging rights are very important.

What is the world of baseball coming to? The Nationals appear to be good so far this year. They are expecting to bring Strasburg up to DC in about 5 weeks. I will miss him by about 2 weeks.

I guess that is it for today.

I missed him

You may recall that I made a post about Joe Theismann's restaurant a while back. I was complaining that his website makes it look like he is always around, greeting diners and serving food, etc. Well, a few days ago, Rebecca, Melinda, Maureen and Lucinda came back from lunch and announced that Joe Theismann was at the restaurant and they had their picture taken with him. I demanded proof and you can see what I received. Just my luck--I missed him!

I see that I have not posted for almost a week. I guess that shows how fast the time is going as I try to finish my manuscript and prepare to come home. Most of draft is in good shape but I am really struggling with the discussion. There is a lot I want to write and it all swims around in my head without any organization to it. I'm sure it will gel in time but I don't have much time to spare.

Yesterday we had a happy hour gathering with wine and cheese. Let's add that to the PPS department agenda. I'm sure the provost would be glad to find out we served wine at a department faculty meeting. It would improve attendance I think.

After work, I met Diane, Whitney and Jake at Bonefish for dinner. I had already eaten half of my dinner in cheese so I just had appetizers. It was quite tasty. It's too bad that I am just learning my way around here in time to come home.

Today and tomorrow there are strategic planning meetings. I know it is a necessary evil, but I really don't like strategic planning.

Nothing going on here

I haven't posted for a few days because there hasn't been anything to report about. I've been hearing more often from my Kentucky co-workers lately and yesterday got an email from one of the upcoming rotation students for May. So my real life is slowly re-emerging and I am seeing the end of my time in Virginia. It is too bad that I am just starting to get more comfortable here right before I leave. I am very familiar with the services I need now--post office, bank, grocery, etc. I bought the Wii Fit Plus so I can do some exercising in the condo. I got my car washed yesterday (note to self: don't go to Rt 1 at 5PM on a work day).

I guess the highlight of my day was finding a new smoothie place (Tropical Smoothie is temporarily closed and it puts a damper on my consumption of fruit). When I got back to the condo parking lot, there was a pickup truck parked in the NO PARKING area. The reason it is the NO PARKING area is that I can't get into my space if there is someone parked there. So I had to park over at the office for the rest of the day.

I missed a trip to Keeneland yesterday by not being in Lexington. Mike, John and Brit went out for the afternoon and then had dinner at Malone's. To add insult to injury,they texted me pictures. My revenge was that John planned to play some Big Bass Fishing on the Wii only to discover it missing. Don't worry John. It is coming home soon.

I have meetings today and tomorrow with staff here to show them my data and get some feedback on my project. I have done quite a bit of writing already. My goal is to have a manuscript ready to submit (or already submitted) when I get home. May will be a busy month with rotation students, my on-line summer course and Chris's graduation week. So it would be best if I can submit before I get home.

It looks like a beautiful day in Alexandria, Colorado Springs, and Kentucky. Let's enjoy it!

Sightseeing

Yesterday I visited the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. It is the most recognizable landmark in Alexandria. I see it every day and thought I should see the inside before I leave here. It was very interesting but not quite what I expected. I got there just as a tour began so I joined in. The main floor is sort of a rotunda with a huge bronze statue of George Washington and lots of murals and stained glass windows about GW. The building has 9 stories and we had to take elevators to view the upper floors. The building is somewhat like a cathedral with lots of stained glass and the feel of a chapel on some floors. The main focus of the displays is more about the freemasons than GW. There is a floor with many GW artifacts that has a resemblance to the Mt Vernon exhibits, a floor with the theme of King Solomon's temple with a reproduction of the Ark of the Covenant, a floor with a theme of the Knights Templar, a reproduction of King Solomon's throne, and an observation deck.

I overcame my fear of heights to go out on the observation deck and identify the condo building, the AACP building and a view across the Potomac to the National Mall. It was quite windy up there so I didn't stay outside very long.

The movie of Dan Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol, is set in Washington and there are some scenes at the Memorial. It will be interesting to see the movie now that I have seen the Memorial and have some understanding of the freemasons. I can see why people think of the masons as a religion. There are many religious overtones to the symbols and rituals. My visit was very educational and it was good exercise climbing up to the place.

I also did some errands, housework, Wii Fit, and watched the third round of the Masters. TV golf is not usually very interesting but it was pretty exciting yesterday. I'm going to work on my project this morning, go out for a walk and be back to see the back nine this afternoon. I like to see an American win the three U.S. major tournaments, so I will be rooting against Lee Westwood.

I saw in this morning's sports news that Patrick Patterson is 50-50 on returning to UK for his senior season. Keep your fingers crossed!

More visitors

I have been lucky this week to have lots of visitors to make the days pass quickly. I had dinner for the second time with my nieces Joyce, Jennifer and Amber on Wednesday night. We went to the Capitol City Brewing Company in Shirlington, a part of Arlington. I am starting to know how to get around in the car. Too bad I am getting good at it just in time to go home. You not only need to know where you are going. You also need to know how to avoid the most traffic. My first rule is to avoid any road that starts with an I.

On Thursday I rode the Metro in to DC at lunch time to meet my friend, Susan Jay, who moved to North Carolina a couple of years ago. Her husband Mike comes to DC occasionally to serve on NIH study section review committees. We had lunch at Chef Geoff's which is a few blocks from the White House. It was a beautiful but windy day so it was very pleasant to walk around DC. It reminded me that I only have a few weeks left here, and now that the weather is good, I need to take advantage of some more sightseeing before I go home. I think I will try to get out this weekend and see some things I haven't been to see before.

My project is going well. I am starting to feel the pressure of finishing a manuscript before I leave Virginia so I have my nose to the grindstone. I will probably work on the project with some of my weekend time. Speaking of my project, it is time to get to work. More news to come over the weekend.

I've been lazy

I logged in to make a post this morning and saw that I haven't posted since the end of March. I went home on April 1st for a long weekend and I never think of posting while I am there. Friday morning I went in to my UK office to meet with Mikael Jones about communications skills lectures. I appreciate that he and Mandy plus the rotation students are going to take over those hours for this semester. It will probably result in an improved schedule for the future too. I got to see a few other people and some students. It is amazing how easy it is to just jump back into my other life when I go home.

I used my time over the weekend to catch up on some things like a haircut and some shopping. On Friday we went to opening day at Keeneland. It was crazy! I wasn't surprised to see that it was a record crowd. You could not move because there were people everywhere. The weather was so beautiful. Spring in Kentucky is very colorful and always lifts your spirits after the cold, gloomy winter weather. It has continued to be warm and sunny on my return to Virginia. There are also lots of springbreakers around right now. Of course, you can't tell any difference on the roads here because traffic is always bad. But I see a definite increase in families on the Metro headed in to DC.

For Easter Sunday, we went to John and Brittany's house. Brittany's mother, Vickie, was there too. We had a great dinner and were very impressed with the home improvements they have made.

Monday morning it was back to Virginia on the direct morning flight and straight to the office. I have spent the last two days learning the basics of SPSS and getting my data organized. I have started the analysis and I am pretty excited that I will be writing results and discussion for my first paper pretty soon. I hope to get Part 2, a survey of department chairs and faculty, up and running before I leave here. That is an ambitious goal but I hope it is doable.

Last night I had dinner with Joyce, Jennifer and Amber. They were in town for Amber's spring break. We ate at Joe Theismann's. I must say that I have been there at least 6 times and Joe has never been there to take my order. On their website, he appears to hang out there a lot. This is very misleading to customers.

I'd better get to work. SPSS awaits!

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.

TGIF

We dodged the latest snow storm. That's especially good since the piles of snow are almost gone from the big snow three weeks ago. But there has been some really high wind overnight. Hopefully the weekend weather will be good and I can get out for some exercise.

Yesterday I presented my project to the staff here to let them know what I have been doing and to get some feedback. They had some helpful suggestions that I will work on implementing today. It should make my data collection go more smoothly and be easier to manipulate at the end. The biggest issue is how to track whether schools of pharmacy count scholarship of teaching as meeting the scholarship requirement for tenure. Hopefully, the new scheme will make it easy to determine.

I have a ride to the grocery store today so I can do some cooking over the weekend. I have been craving vegetarian chili. It is healthy, filling, easy to make and there are lots of leftovers for later meals. So far my healthy eating plan is going well. It's easy to be healthy when there isn't any fattening food (or any food at all!) in your kitchen. Now I just need to solve the exercise problem.

Since Alison, the student from Minnesota, is in the same situation as I am (no family, no car), I asked her if she wants to go to the movies tonight. We are going to see Valentine's Day (a chick flick) and go out to dinner with Whitney. That will be a fun start to the weekend. I also have a lot of reading to do so I will be ready to leave for West Virginia on Tuesday morning.

I guess I'd better get to work.

More bad weather on the way

Well I thought I had dodged the bad weather in DC by delaying my return for a few weeks. The weather forecast for tonight and tomorrow indicates that I was not successful. Rain/snow is supposed to begin tonight and continue through tomorrow night. Depending on the temperature and how it tracks, we could get snow turning to slush or rain up to 3 inches by tomorrow night. The worse problem is the 40-50 mph winds that will accompany the storm. Because the ground is so saturated, there is concern for falling trees and power outages. I'd better locate my flashlight, candles and matches as well as a quick walk to the grocery store for some supplies. I assume people here get crazy like they do in Kentucky and the stores will be out of bread and milk tonight. As long as I can access the UK-South Carolina basketball game tomorrow night, everyone will be OK.

I'm very busy this week getting ready for the ACPE visit to West Virginia next week and getting my project back up and running during the day. I'm going to present my project to the staff here tomorrow. I hope to get some good feedback for improving the project so I can crank out the data over the next 2-4 weeks. Then I will be analyzing the data, writing and hopefully moving on to part 2 of the project. It probably won't move as fast as I would like, but I am hopeful to be working on the data for part 2 by May.

Things should be OK tomorrow morning for a blog post. If I don't post on Friday, you will know the power is out here. Wish me luck!

Settling In

I finished unpacking last night while I watched the Olympics on TV. I am getting used to the remodeled condo. I really like all the new appliances and the fact that everything is clean and new. But I am a little cautious because I don't want to be the one who messes up the new decor.

The temperature has been in the 40s for a few days so the snow is melting away. I was amazed to see that there are still cars parked along the street that haven't been dug out of the snow and there are sidewalks that haven't been cleared yet. Some of the piles of snow are still 3-4 feet high even with the melting. The first wave of the snowpocalypse was February 5th so it has been snowy here for a long time! Schools were closed for 10 days and some of the bus stops are still not cleared. The commuters tell me that the roads are worse than normal (and normal is bad enough) because there are places on the freeway where they couldn't push any more snow off the road so the lane will end unexpectedly with a big snow pile. And people are constantly dodging potholes and swerving into other lanes. A few more days of above freezing temperatures should take care of the snow.

I am making a presentation to the staff on Thursday to update them on my project and the progress to date. So I am reviewing all my background materials and preparing a few slides to present my project. I am also still collecting documents for the project. There are 114 possible sets of promotion and tenure documents for my project. I have collected 99 sets as of today. When I hit 100 I will celebrate. There are 5 schools too new to have these documents so I only have 10 schools to badger into providing their documents. I think a few of them are also too new to have developed the documents but I wish they would let me know!

Everything else is going smoothly. There is a student here on an experiential rotation from Minnesota. She is newly married and away from her husband. I think I will invite her over for dinner one night, and maybe we can go out sometime on a weekend. I hope she likes basketball!

Back to Virginia

Today is my first day back in the AACP offices. It is a strange feeling because everything is familiar but nothing is familiar. I arrived last night at Reagan at about 9:30. Whitney and Jake were kind and picked me up with my extensive luggage. We got the first look at the remodeled condo. I will try to get some pictures to post so those who have visited here can see the change. My favorite part of the renovation is the bathroom. The kitchen also had a total makeover with new appliances. I guess I need to do some cooking and take advantage of all the new stuff.

I am back at my desk this morning with some new additions. I have my Piascik family calendar--a Christmas gift from my children. It will be nice to have the pictures and to have reminders for all the family events. The transition back to work on my project should be pretty easy since I spent the last 10 days working from home. I needed to reacquaint myself with the background work I had done and to reread some of the documents. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised with what I had already written. It was better written and more complete than I remembered.

One of my first tasks today is to follow up with the 20 schools who have not responded to my first two requests for promotion and tenure documents. I have about 90 sets of documents already so I certainly have plenty of work to do while I am trying to gather the rest of the documents.

Two New Year's resolutions related to my sabbatical. First, I will try to write more about my project. It appears that some of my blog followers think I haven't been doing any work since I wrote mostly about things other than work. Second, I am going to eat a healthier diet and exercise more. This is my opportunity to get in better shape and lose some weight since I am eating alone and have more time for exercise. Having made this commitment publicly and in writing, I'd better follow through or it will be embarrassing.

I guess it is time to get to work. Then off to the grocery store after work to buy fruits and vegetables.