First day of spring

At least, it supposedly will be the first day of spring beginning about 1:30 today. As you can see from the fuzzy cell phone photo, there is snow on the ground, on the trees (and their newly hatched buds), and falling through the air. I don't expect it to magically disappear later today, but this snow is not expected to last because the temps have been too warm, comparatively speaking.

I am exhausted. After we arrived home last Saturday night (less than a week ago!), we crashed and burned. I spent Sunday in my nightgown. Monday I had to trek back to Big Rapids for a hectic week. On top of everything, I've been fighting a bad cold AND bedbug bites from our "four star" hotel in Waikiki. Two of them got really nasty, with large areas of redness and intense itching. Cortisone cream did not even touch the itch. I still have the splotches, which I showed to the doctor at my regular check-up yesterday.

This week I had the BA Capstone presentations Wednesday night and a colloquium to present on Thursday, in addition to the usual. I've also been having my pre-pharm advisees coming by my office to get their advising holds lifted. I'm better at it than I was, but I still don't know the answers to half their questions. However, given how little time I have to spend on advising, and given the fact that I am being required to advise in a field that I know nothing about, I guess I'm doing okay.

This coming Friday I'll be at the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, & Letters Conference, presenting a paper on nonverbal communication. That's here in town, at Calvin College. The week after that, I'll be in St. Louis at the Popular Culture Conference, presenting a paper on advertising murder in detective fiction. I'm looking forward to both. Now I just need to write the papers! :-(

I had promised coverage of numerous topics in the blog, but this morning, I've got to get busy on those conference papers. Duty first. Pleasure later.