Tuesday and Thursdays are my busy days this term. Lab in the morning for 2 hours, then an hour and a half before lunch. Lunch for 45 minutes or so, then two classes in the afternoon with a half hour break in between each of them. Tiring. Yesterday, I was able to blow through the modern physics class and cover a lot of material. Today, it seemed like I was going at a good clip, but didn't quite get as much covered as I thought I would. Astronomy was a lot of talking so I could get through enough material to make up some ground.

Yesterday was the first all-faculty meeting of the year. Last year, I only went to one such meeting; and the one I attended was in the Spring. (Last Fall I taught right up to the time of the meetings, and often had students after class.) I find it interesting that the others in this department do not walk over to the meeting together. Not that it's a big deal...I mean, we're all adults that can get to meetings on our own, right? It's just telling of the general atmosphere.

While the meeting was getting started, I had a chance to fill in my calendar. I'm almost up to November with my weekly schedule. Surely by then I'll have it memorized. The interesting parts of the meeting were hearing the president and provost. I suppose part of their job description is to paint rosy pictures for the faculty. It never hurts to hear it, though.

After the meeting, I needed to clear my head. I ran for 20 minutes on the treadmill. Same deal today: 20 minutes on the treadmill. Yesterday, it cleared my head. Today, I felt less energetic after the run. I may need to start going earlier, before I am hungry for supper.

Tomorrow is a good day to get some research done.

Friday I invited CC down to give a talk/demo session for the division's weekly colloquium. It went off perfectly! The lecture hall was packed and everyone had a great time! C brought more than 20 demos, half of which he put out in the atrium. It took about 3 hours to set things up, but it was totally worth it. The best demos were the "magic wand", the optical illusions regarding the shadows, and all the persistance of vision demos. He only had enough time at the end to do a couple color mixing demos, but it was still really cool.

Afterwards, we (R, C and I) all went to the Central Station Cafe in downtown Bloomington. I had the special, which was the beef tenderloin. YUM!! So good. The service was great, too.

I had NO doubt that C would give a great talk. I'm just really glad that the students showed up. I knew they would enjoy it. I'm definitely glad everything worked out in the end.

306-230

306-230

A. wins, but no bingos.