Idea Warehouse

Last Days of Summer

It's Wednesday the week before school starts and I'm tweaking my syllabi still. Have overhauled the course goals in Technical Writing to be more up to date with the direction the field is going. The most recent issue of STC's Technical Communication has an article that is very helpful in this regard. As for 101, I'm fine-tuning the daily schedule, trying to make sure we can side-step the 4th-5th week slump. Meanwhile, Dan and I sent in an article to Intercom and I'm sure to hear from my editor any day now about the first round of reviews.
On my desk now are 6 CDs: The Very Best of Sheryl Crow, Madonna: The Immaculate Collection, Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits, The Temptations/Four Tops, Don Henley's The End of the Innocence, and Daryl Hall and John Oates' Greatest Hits. I guess I'm not very current, except for maybe Sheryl Crow, and even that is popular more with my age group, I'm sure.

Connecting to Friends

One thing I love about the Internet is its ability to allow you to find old friends more easily through each other's "web presence," whether that is a personal home page, work home page, or through various postings on the web. Recently, when I was visiting my brother in NJ, he told me Bonnie Hart had emailed him asking about me. I was so thrilled! Even cooler were the emails we exchanged when I got in touch with her. We were best friends in junior high, and we had so much fun together. Discovering Screaming Yellow Zonkers, sitting out in the middle of Broad Street in the middle of the night, (me) getting caught stealing pretzels from the kindergarten snack storage at Walnut St., watching the very last of the cigarette commercials on TV on December 31, 1969, or was it 1970, can't remember. I think we also walked uptown together during the first moratorium in April, the first Earth Day, and we also experienced being allowed to wear pants to school finally. Remember Mr. Wright? Mr. Cologne, Mr. Kirby?? Did we go to Gettysburg together, too? Some of it's fuzzy now, but we had a lot of fun, I know. Anyway, I can't wait until we can meet again and reminisce, as well as get to know each other as adults. Bonnie, that picture of you on the web page is amazing; it looks like you haven't aged at all, plus, it captures your adventurous side very nicely. I hope to connect with Maria Canonica, and I wonder if Nancy has any web sites now. Never know....

Syllabi Time

Now's the push to get the syllabi finely tuned and whipped into shape. However, I also am trying to dedicate myself to exercising at least 3-4 times a week. Last week I biked a couple of times. We have good (but hilly) roads to do that on around here. Today I have to take my shot (UGH!!), but I hope someday soon they'll have a non-injectable medicine for MS. At least I don't have to take Avonex more than once a week. I think that MS walk is ocmiing up soon, so maybe I should gear up for walking in that. Not like I'm in much shape yet, but I'm slimming down very, very slowly, finally. Really keeping up with my points tracker (ala Weight Watchers)

Wear Yellow

Started biking for more exercise, and Dan was talking about Lance Armstrong. So I go, "who the heck is he?" (I don't pay much attention to news anymore..., but sometimes I do). Well, after I got back, I checked it out on the Slate website, and found out he had proposed to Sheryl Crow after his race, plus I looked at all of his web sites, and have quite the high opinion of him now. 'Course Sheryl Crow is my absolute favorite singer, too, so I know he has good taste as well as an admirable mission in life.

Insurance Craziness

Yesterday, we had quite the insurance fiasco, with our local agent dropping the ball on our policy, even though he said he'd "take care of it in plenty of time." So much for trusting insurance guys, not that I ever did, anyway. Meanwhile, after we discovered he was about to screw us over for twice what we've been paying, even though this is the one year we will have (six months actually) where we haven't had a male teenage driver (highest risk category of all) on our policy in 6 years, it should be lower than usual, I was on the prowl for another company. And lo and behold, Progressive won!! Instead of $500+ a month, it's less than $200. IMPORTANT UPDATE: It turns out that our local agent is now presenting us an offer of less than Progressive's....mmm, what to do...stay tuned ...ok LATEST UPDATE: Back to the local agent, 'cause Progressive can't beat the reduction Nationwide is offering. Well, I still think Progressive is a decent company. It's just wiser to save a little money wherever you can.