Back to work!

I started back to work yesterday. Although I was more than ready to get back into the routine, I do miss being home with Wyatt. He really was an easy baby to take care of -- eat, change diaper, sleep, look cute and so on. He started with the new daycare yesterday and there weren't any problems to my knowledge.

As for work, the campus seems quiet for the beginning of the new semester. Our overall enrollment is down slightly which probably means further budget cuts. Hopefully, we'll get some last minute enrollments to keep our numbers up.

LIB 101 starts next week and I am still polishing up the lectures and assignments. Not a lot of heavy lifting there, just some fine tuning. I've had to tighten up the attendance policy because of last semester's miscreants. I had three students miss 4 of 16 classes with no excuses given. Tardiness was also a big problem -- several students came 10-15 minutes late to a 50 minute class, including two of the 4 absence students. I didn't have any problems last spring semester with an older class (mostly sophomores and juniors), so I figured brand new freshmen and a couple of sophomores would be able to handle it. The maturity just wasn't there, so I will have to crack down.

If I was a student in my class at 19-20 years of age, I might have abused the attendance policy -- but certainly not 25% of the class meetings. I have to remember that my most recent academic experience was as an adult graduate student. Clemson had a pretty rigid attendance policy which I thought was Mickey Mouse back then, but I see the reasoning behind it. I just figured that the maturity level of a 19 year old was a little higher than it was. I guess not.

On the book front, I am waiting for a couple more Alan Furst books to arrive via interlibrary loan. In the meantime, I am reading David Hackworth's Vietnam-era memoir Steel My Soldiers' Hearts. It is sluggish going so far, but should be interesting once it gets going. Hackworth joined the army at age 15 and was in the occupation forces in Italy after World War II. He also served prominently in Korea and in the early stages of Vietnam. This book, co-written with his wife, details his job in turning around a misfit Army battalion in early 1969. This guy earned ten (!) Silver Stars for meritorious valor -- the military's highest award short of the Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross.

News and notes

Time flies when you are home with a child. Well, not really. It has been a wonderful experience to be home with Wyatt. Tomorrow will be my last "solo" day home with him - Lisa is out of school and he will head to daycare on January 5th.

He is such a "good baby," meaning that he eats, sleeps and fills diapers with frightening precision. Usually waking only once a night, Wyatt goes back to sleep very quickly -- I'm rarely up with him more than thirty minutes. No major health issues, other than the cradle cap and eczema that seem to afflict our poor babies. Wyatt's skin issues are no where near Owen's issues -- but the bad stuff didn't happen until Owen was older (and the weather got much colder and drier). We're off to see the Allergist on Monday to launch a preemptive stike -- with medications, steroids, and so on.

My original intention was to do a fair bit of yardwork and exercise. I was really good about the exercise the first few weeks, taking hour long walks with the Zune. I tried listening to the Eric Clapton autobiography but it was really dreadful. Maybe a better read, but I doubt it. Not enough time spent on my favorite parts of his career -- Cream and Derek and the Dominoes. Oh well, I digress. I intended to do the yardwork with Wyatt in his stroller, but he doesn't like being in the stroller/carseat combo unless he is in motion. So after about five minutes, he would start to fuss.

Perhaps I'll be able to do some work this weekend and next week with Lisa home. Not likely with Owen home, but maybe we'll let him run amok in the backyard.

I've watched a lot of CNN and CNN Headline news while feeding the boy and the headlines are very dreary and depressing. While watching the ever-lovely Robin Meade this morning, the headline "crawl" had a procession of the most depressing headlines I've ever seen: Morgan Stanley lost billions last quarter, the USPS thinks that they will have the slowest holiday shipping season in decades, bad weather with many flight delays, Ponzi scheme bilks thousands out of billions, that creep govenor of Illinois, and so on. The only good news -- for most consumers -- is that oil prices continue to drop. I really don't want to watch any more news until the Inauguration.

I've also read three Alan Furst novels: Night Soliders, the Polish Officer, and Kingdom of Shadows. I'm not done with KoS, but the other two novels are excellent. Not really off-the-beaten path of what I normally read, but strangely refreshing. Furst looks at (for me) different angles of war in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, from Eastern European countries. They are spy thrillers set in the darkest parts of the 20th century. Great stuff and I can't wait to read the rest of his works. It's been nice to have the time to read without falling asleep after thirty minutes!