I'll start with our first year anniversary. It's been a full year with lots of ups and downs. On the up side, we got in a decent amount of travel together (Texas for a wedding, the Bay Area for Christmas, and both Arizona and Utah for fun), and we also got in quite a bit of outdoor stuff (though it's been tough to do that over the last few months because Vegas). And there were some downs, because adjusting to married life isn't an instant happily-ever-after, but those downs feel small in light of all the ups.
I made Joan a book of memories celebrating all of the memories we built together (plus some roses) as her anniversary gift. It was pretty far outside of my comfort zone because I'm definitely not a scrapbooker. Fortunately, I'm good at keeping notes of things and YouTube exists, which (when combined with photos that were on my phone) came together into a pretty hefty piece of work. I think there were something like 25 different memories (every other week for a year) and maybe around 15-20 photos. I had a few short sentences typed up for each memory inside a 5x7 rectangle, and then photos were glued to a backing paper and sorted with the memories. Then it was a matter of punching holes and binding it together with twine.
The week before, we were in St. George to pre-celebrate our anniversary (because we managed to get married just after the semester starts, making travel on the date rather challenging). There was actually quite a bit to do, and enough that we may go back again and explore some more. We drove through Snow Canyon and did a little bit of hiking (though it was quite warm and there's no snow this time of year). We got to visit some lava tubes, though we didn't explore them too deeply. There's an area called Ancestor Square, and we ate at four different restaurants there. There were two separate rainbows and a lot of lightning. They also have a really nice botanical garden and more hiking that we might have done if it were either the Fall or Spring (or possibly Winter, though I'm not sure how cold it gets there).
On a slight downer, we did see a guy who was wearing a mask get harassed by an anti-mask guy. We actually encountered him (before the incident) in the elevator. Joan greeted him, and he said, "WHAT?" My interpretation was that he might have been hard of hearing or something, but I didn't think too much more of it. But then when we were getting our breakfast, that other incident occurred. And to be clear, the anti-mask guy started it. He initially talked to the guy with the mask to ask him about the mask, and then said, "I'm glad you're wearing that, because you're probably f-ing sick." And then he went on like that for a little while. Fortunately, it didn't escalate beyond words. Joan and I ate outside and the man was also outside with his family, and we all chatted a little bit to release some of the tension that had been built up. But everything besides that incident was good.
For our anniversary dinner, we went to Ventanos, which is the location of our first date as a married couple. It was a little uncomfortably warm on the patio (horray late-summer heat wave!), but we were able to watch the sunset and watch the skyline light up, and take a really casual dinner together and enjoy each other's company.
The semester seems to be starting off well. We're now two weeks in and the classes are starting to find their rhythm. I had a bit of a rough start with the ART 240 course, because I assumed that they would be a little bit quicker getting used to the program. But I took an extra day and shuffled things around to give them a better onramp, and it seems that they're starting to get there. But since that one isn't particularly intense on its expectations, I don't feel bad about it at all.
I'm pretty happy with my MATH 127 videos, though I discovered that when edited them, the one-track audio was processed as mono (instead of a duplicated stereo), and I never noticed because I wasn't listening through headphones. But the students noticed. I'm not going to do anything about for this class, but I do need to go back and fix that in all 58 videos and reupload them to YouTube. Maybe that counts as extra content for the channel? I don't know how the almighty algorithm actually works.
Now that I have that experience, I'm thinking of doing something similar for the MATH 181 course. I'm currently leaning on the videos that the authors made, but I'm not super happy with them. It's good enough, but it's not great. And I'd really like to continue expanding my video collection. So that's probably going to be a next Spring/next Summer task.
And there's a part of me that feels like I'm missing something, because I typically have four classes. But because the MATH 125 course was cancelled, it's only three. Though I do need to start working on my notes for MATH 125, since I will (almost) definitely be teaching it in the Spring, and I still have that last third of the class to work through. In conjunction with this, I'm also thinking about videos for my online textbook. I've got the first video on Dropbox for now as I'm getting some feedback from various people about the flow and structure. So far, everything is positive, but that also leaves me with another 30-something videos to make. And that might take a while. I doubt it will be ready by the Spring semester. But I am somewhat hopeful to get through the first 10 or so videos. But we shall see how I end up using my time.
I heard back from the Advance HE fellowship program, and they accepted my application, so now I am allowed to sign my emails as Aaron Wong, Ph.D., SFHEA. But basically nobody will even know what that means, and I already don't have Ph.D. in my email signature, so at least for the time being I'm not going to play the alphabet soup game. But I probably will add it to my CV the next time I have to do that.
Otherwise, campus life is slowly returning to normal. Probably around 80% of students are unmasked at this point (though I'm still absolutely masking all the time). Although there are still some 90,000 new infections daily, it's starting to become part of the background noise with all of the other things going on. The omicron-specific vaccine just got approved today, and I'll probably get one in mid or late September, around the same time that I plan to get my flu shot. And even with that, I'm still going to mask in public spaces. Because I don't yet trust that there won't be a seasonal surge. We'll just have to wait and see.
Other things: Thor is doing well. Piano practice has started to happen more frequently than before, though it's far from regular. The current heat wave is disappointing, but Fall will finally arrive soon (I hope!). We might try again with planting sunflowers for the Fall. My Spanish Duolingo streak is approaching 600 days. While I like learning, it's starting to feel like a chore because I don't want to lose the streak. But also, that keeps me going. So I guess it's a net positive.
