A Taste of Winter

The semester is over. Everything ended well. I don't have a ton to say about that. Tests were taken. Grading happened. It's over.

I've been slowly working through the things I need to work through. I've got my binder of notes that I need to go through and double check that I've updated all the things that I need to. There are still a couple things I need to finish typing up, but I'm about 90% of the way there now. I haven't really started building the course webpages, and that's next on the list. I'm looking forward to being back in person, even if I'm a little worried about the omicron variant. We'll see how things play out, and maybe I'll be regretting going back in person next semester, though with masks being required, having been vaccinated and boosted, and the vaccine mandate for students to enroll in classes, I'm not *that* concerned. There are people who are at significantly higher risk of infection through work transmission than I am.

I cranked out my annual review pretty early this year just to get it out of the way. The write-up is relatively easy, as I've got all of my stuff reasonably well organized. This gives me a thing that I can have completely checked off the list going into the holidays. I'm rewriting my ATMI data pull and calculation scripts in Python (it used to be in R), and so that's going to take another day or two. And then after that's all set up, I'll be able to do some analysis and begin writing an article. I really want to crank this thing out and be ready to apply for full professor as soon as possible. I'm done stalling due to my lack of interest in academic publishing. So I'll probably be hitting that kind of hard in the next couple months. I've also got that medicore shmup to finish building. I know what I want to do with it, and I just need to sit down and do it.

We got out to Sedona last week, and we had a great time. I'm not going to do a day-by-day because it was mostly just hiking and exploring the town. But I did want to put up a couple pictures because it was one of the more picturesque things that I've done all year.

It snowed the night before we headed out there, and so on the drive through Arizona there was snow on the side of the road, and lots of snow in William, where we stopped for lunch. We picked a random chicken place we found on Google maps and then drove up a hill in some residential neighborhood and ate our food overlooking a snow-covered valley.

The bed and breakfast had a wonderful view from their dining area, and each day we spent at least some time just taking it in.

And the hiking was pretty good. It was chilly, but not too cold, especially in the sun. There was still little patches of snow under trees and in other places where the sun didn't have a chance to melt it. We ended up hiking along a ridge that gave us a pretty good look at the valley.

So that was a good diversion for a couple days to break our work routines and get out to some place new. Getting outside and hiking was definitely good for both of us. And it was also good to get a small taste of winter before Christmas. Winter in Las Vegas mostly means that it's cold and windy (though this year it hasn't been that cold), and that little bit of frost and snow was enough to be satisfying without being miserable.

I think the rest of the last couple weeks got pushed out of my brain by Sedona, so I don't have much more to say. The piano has been used, but only to put things on it as we've shuffled stuff around the house. I think the hummingbirds have figured out that Thor can't get them. Thor had both front paws on the window while one hummingbird was just sitting at the feeder just on the other side of the glass (probably mocking him). I'm looking forward to turning the page on this year and starting another one.