crazy busy

i have been crazy-busy with school. trying to keep one chapter ahead of my students...i think i am actually about 3 ahead of most of them, but i need to make plans for the next chapter for the next class...actually now that i am thinking about it, it seems like a good time to finish the last chapter and do the next lab and then do the next chapter on thursday...hummm...sounds like a plan. i am having the best time teaching! i want to figure out different ways to get them into the plan, but i am having a bit of difficulty with that, as i think i am aiming too far above them, this is biology 111, and many of these people haven't had any kind of advanced biology classes, or at least not in the last 5 years or so...hard to know what to expect from them. i always thought i didn't want to teach little kids because i really have no idea where they should be (can they tie their shoes yet?) and now i am seeing something similar, but with "adults" - ranging in age from 18 - 55. i really would like to be able to take a few steps back and see if they are really struggling with the material or if they are just not applying themselves...who knows. but i am enjoying the teaching anyways - busy though i may be.

i miss being with fonda too, this long-distance stuff is for the birds - i hope to find a full-time job sometime soon and we can make plans to move (wherever) and get resettled into our lives. it will happen, just as the job will happen...i just need to remember to keep breathing and keep looking for good jobs : )

i so want to sew...i have gotten a quilt from "quilts for kids" and i have made the top, but i need to now pin it and quilt it. i don't have a good place for pinning yet, but i am heading to the floor of the living room...maybe tomorrow night or tuesday morning. so i have not been doing much but refreshing my memory on cell stuff and membrane stuff - crazy how the understanding of things have advanced in the last 15 years!

below is a picture of an egret i saw just as i arrived some evening. it was hanging out on a slough near the parking lot at school. it really didn't like me watching it and getting close, so the picture is not all that great, but it was chowing down on some tadpoles, i think. it hung out for a while.



fonda and i also went to southport, NC. really cute town, not too far from where i am living in leland. we found a neat old cemetery there and took some pictures...when ever i saw this stone all i could see was "...Jane...laughter..." i think mom was hanging out and snileing (nod to mom). i know it said "...Jane...daughter..." but i keep thinking of mom laughing. thought i would share the image.



and another taken in the same cemetery, but looking up at the live oaks (they are such cool trees!)




and one more from our trip the day before heading to southport - we went to wrightsville beach, just east of wilmington and saw some neat clouds, i guess i have been trying to keep looking around me and seeing what is happening in nature.



enjoy the pictures and i will (hopefully) be posting some quilt photos some time soon. peace for now.