Happy January!

Holiday travels ended quite a few days ago, but I have not had time to do any blogging.

The train trip back up the coast from San Diego to Eugene was even nicer than than the earlier southbound trip. Partly this was because more of the scenic route was traversed during daylight. Partly it was because Smiley was not actively teething and slept better.

After arriving back in Eugene I made two discoveries.

The first was that I was nearly as ready for my math class as I remembered. I thought I had my syllabus printed, copied and ready. I thought the class website was revised for the new term and ready to upload. But neither was true.

Putting together a nice class list spreadsheet takes some time. I also had to revise the homework answers (the partial answer key students receive and the Moodle method of collecting homework) because of changes made to the workbook just before I left town, at the request of a co-worker. So, all in all, what I expected to be a respectable amount of math work to squeeze into a week of unpacking and househusbanding turned out to be a lot of math work. But now it's done.

The second discovery was that lots of folks in Eugene were suffering from and sharing a nasty cold. I caught it last Wednesday. Thursday I got worse. Friday was dreadful. Saturday I was better. Then my wife caught it on Sunday and has been down because of it ever since. Fortunately, little Smiley has so far resisted it.

Yesterday I did most of the postpone-able chores that were waiting since I got home. I also finally got to spend time doing e-mail again. I am feeling much more settled with no bills yet to pay and only three letters in my e-mail inbox.

Expect a backlog of blogging soon...but not many photographs or videos promptly. Vacation was very conducive to taking more photographs and videos, and not at all hospitable about providing time to edit or process them.