Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Plugging Away

Yesterday, we had a snow day in the Willamette Valley. We started with rain and then had snow on Monday evening and off and on all day on Tuesday. It had rained a lot on Monday, so the roads were wet and then when the cold Arctic air came south, the roads were icy on Tuesday. I was supposed to take him to Shriner's in Portland for an appointment yesterday, but I canceled the appointment due to the roads. And, then Eddie's school closed because of the roads. So, we both stayed home and hung out.

I worked on the grant proposal off and on all afternoon yesterday, in between watching news about the weather or talking to the family. Mostly, I needed to look up some info on the internet to fill in some details. I was happy to be able to hang out at home and not do too much. I was still dealing with some fatigue.

Today, though, I had four appointments and meetings. I saw the wound care nurse, met with my grad research assistant, with one of my graduate student advisees, and then an Advisory Board meeting at the Longhouse. The good news is that the wound seems to be healing. The nurse felt that the cavity wasn't as deep and also said that one open area was small - instead of 2.5 by 1.5cm, it was 1.5 by 1cm.

The meeting with the grad research assistant went well as did the meeting with the grad student. But interestingly enough, the university closed at noon today due to an electrical fire in the steam tunnels. It also destroyed some of the fiber optic system so our internet was down, as was Blackboard, and, apparently, a lot of our fire alarms. It was because of the latter that they closed the university down because of the safety issue. So the Longhouse meeting was canceled.

I stayed in my office, though, for a couple more hours and worked on the grant proposal. This time, I had to look up info in the books I have in my office and then I had to jot down details so that I could add them to our References Cited list.

I'm relaxing tonight. I got home about 2:30pm. Talked to Eddie about his day at school (half a day, my parents were hanging out with him for Grandparents Day), then checked my email (since internet was down at work), then ran a couple of errands with Eddie and by 4pm, I was pretty tired again.

So, I'm continuing to plug away on the grant. That feels good to be accomplishing what I need to on that proposal. I still need to write up about two pages worth of material and then make changes to the proposal. I'll try to write up the two pages tomorrow. On Friday, I'll do the tedious editing on the proposal and finalize the References Cited. If we're successful, it'll buy me out of one class a year for two years and give me some extra summer salary. Buying me out of one class a year (or even two) is important; between my many medical appointments and fatigue from treatment, I just can't imagine teaching more than one full-time class at a time.

Tomorrow, I might do a little bit of work in the am, but then maybe some early bird Black Thursday shopping, then dinner at my sister's house. It should be a good relaxing day! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

1 comment:

Joanna said...

Happy Thanksgiving, Dee!