Happy holidays to all!
I have no pictures of all of us in the same place, but here is one I assembled. Note--look more closely--in this picture are four of the five girls in the family.
Roger is very elusive when it comes to camera lenses. His absence here makes me realize that NO one has a decent picture of him. I’ll make it my project to get a good one just so we can have one for the archive. Anyway, if you go online to the Great Shopping Spree pictures (noted below), you can see him as he looked last summer.
OK, now I’ll itemize the year’s news.
Roger:
With Jim Craig’s retirement next year, Roger also has the option of retiring. He is reviewing the alternatives: whether to seek work in another research lab, or retire and do consulting on the side. We’ll keep everyone posted.
Daughters:
Julia is working full time as a Blockbuster movie store manager. She has six more credit hours to earn in order to get her baccalaureate in film studies at IU. She shares her apartment near campus with her black kitty. This past fall Abby started attending Ivy Tech community college, working on courses that will transfer directly to IU. She likes it so far. She also has an apartment by herself, with her funny yellow cat.
Pets:
As always, we continue to harbor too many cats. The number is four now. We gained one and lost one this past year. Kitty Wampus showed up in the woods behind us in May; shortly thereafter, I decided to neuter him and then find him a home. (The former happened, the latter didn’t.) Nala died of a mysterious tumor in September. Our others are: Nacho with the Permanent BB Shot in his side, Spooky the Feral, and Pennywise the Terrible Tortie. We also have Madchen the Corgi. This picture shows Spooky and Madchen. It is also a composite.
Happenings:
Last August, Roger won a $500, five-minute Shopping Spree at Marsh grocery store. See the pictures at https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/csrhodes/5MinuteShoppingSpree/index.html. In the allotted five minutes, we managed to pick up about $700 worth of stuff. We bought the merchandise that ran over $500, minus the $100 or so that we put back. We’re still using the goods.
I have become a traveling fiend. A year ago, I had taken a trip to Monterey, California for a conference:
In February 2006 I made a site visit to Orlando to do advance planning for an October 2007 conference (more later). In September, I went to Las Vegas for Photoshop world. (See the Web Album below--what a GAS!) In November, I spent more than a week in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada serving as program chair for a conference. Then, in early December, I went to Atlanta to present at another conference.
Now, faced with a 1-day trip back to Orlando in January, I am working to convince my colleagues that it would be more sensible to teleconference me from there.
Roger and I didn’t vacate during our vacation this past summer; we caught up on household construction and maintenance things instead. I hope to entice Roger to Las Vegas this spring; I had so much fun while I was there, I want to share it.
Me:
I am thriving, and rising to the challenges of the electronic age. My most recent career charge is to head up a digital training curriculum. My team is working on putting up some podcasts, creating live electronic demos, and digital tutorials. I have a Blog (this is it) a Wiki, a Web Album, and Web Calendar. My cell phone does everything—takes pictures that can be instantly emailed, printed, and saved to disk. It plays music, emails, surfs the web and gives me directions to coffee shops in strange towns. Of course, I don’t need a photo lab anymore because I can print photos directly from my digital camera to my little battery-operated photo printer. I feel empowered (smile). The downside is that I seem never to be off the clock, defensively emailing to avoid an avalanche. Since people in my work group don’t all take simultaneous vacations, I am continuously inundated with niggling “just one more” issues tossed my way.
I continue to volunteer my time with several organizations. I am a board member with Pets ALIVE, a regional spay/neuter alliance that is servicing the whole state (www.petsalivespayneuter.org). In less than 2 years since opening, the clinic has performed 16,000 low-cost pet surgeries. We have received numerous nationwide awards and recognitions, and are opening a training facility for groups who want to start a similar effort in their locations. I am also treasurer of the Bloomington Watercolor Society (www.bloomingtonwatercolor.org). Unfortunately, I have only completed three paintings this year, because of all my work with SIGUCCS (which is a worldwide organization of college computing support professionals (www.siguccs.org). In 2006, I served as program chair. My job was to put the program together, including call for abstracts, acceptance, review, and publication of papers, plus oversight of presenters, rooms, invitations, publications, and attendees. (This was all after-hour volunteer work, and there were two of us sharing the load.) Glad it's done! Now I start all over, doing the same thing for the Orlando conference in October. Anyway, I think I'll take a break after 2007 to work on global warming.
Other things:
Mom is better, and staying active. She is going to come to visit here December 28, at which time we will go shopping for nice clothes that fit and she will enjoy the Bloomington offspring. Then, we’ll go to Muncie for my family’s Christmas celebration on January 31.
That's all for now--
