I did it...

So we decided to be good little workers this weekend and do as much as we could. I wrote up 15 pages of notes and made a 109 slide, slide show on the first 7 of those pages. That should easily get me through this week. I was also informed on Wednesday that I messed up in one of my classes - I didn't give a midterm. I thought that this class was simply the lab part of another class. I was told, however, that because it has a separate class number that it requires a midterm. I, therefore, made up a practical exam that will be conducted tomorrow. It is quite easy and I hope that the students do well.

I also finished working on my paper this weekend and decided "what-the-heck" and submitted it to a journal. It was probably a mistake as I only had Swell read it over. I think it is too long and will expect a complete rejection in 6 weeks. I'd be happy if they just sent it back requiring revisions but I'm not sure it's a topic that the journal I submitted to will be interested in (although they have a public health section). If they don't want it I'll send it to a couple of people to read over and then submit it elsewhere.

In response to some of the previous comments:

Jenn - we check your myspace, and your journal religiously. I see that we feel that you are more important, more worthy of our love, and a higher priority in our very busy lives than we are in yours. We are very disappointed in you!

MauiGirl - Our safari group consisted of 7 people including us, plus the driver. We went very quickly (40km/h) until the driver or one of the group members saw something at which point the driver stopped for as long as we wanted. He talked a little bit about the animals we were looking at while we took pictures. We, too, were surprised at how close the animal were. I had the wrong lens on my camera as I thought we were going to be taking distant photos. We were so close to some of them that I was unable to take pictures as they wouldn't fit into the frame. Some of the pictures are misleading though because I zoomed in from a great distance - the rhinos for example. It was a lot of fun. You should take an extended vacation somewhere after your next trip to Liberia (i.e. do a safari in Liberia or fly elsewhere).

Jill - Re: reading my slides. You get nothing. You tell me nothing I give you nothing. I will say, however, that when I took the pictures of the chips I was thinking of you and heard you in my head say "you can really taste the chutney". I will also say that you have no business looking at my rack... of ribs.

Ma - Re: my presentation. I did 17 slides in 10 minutes by talking far too fast and probably taking a bit longer than 10 minutes. Job offer was a joke. One of the presentations after my presentation happened to be the CEO/Founder of the International Center for Eyecare Education (ICEE) which was the group that held the conference. I was asked a question from someone in the audience (maybe 100 people??? more for the discussion that followed which brought up some later questions - What did you say to bring on that!?). The CEO dude decided it would be prudent at that point to say: "If I received your survey [which he has never seen] I would have said: 'Who is this wanker?' and thrown it away." This was in response to my acknowledgment that I had a terrible response rate. I said something in return at which point he said: "I agree with you [or something like that] why don't you come do research for us?" (He said some other stuff as well which led people to say that he slapped me around, that he was difficult, that I brought out a reaction in him, that he is an a-hole... I wasn't bothered by anything he said. Whatever) The next day I gave him a copy of my CV (although I said I wasn't really looking for a job. I figured it's a good way to have him remember me later). They are based in Australia and Durban. I could live in either of those places. Thailand - we met a couple of American ODs working in Thailand and thought it might be fun to visit them and look at their interesting work... then we looked at our bank account.

We heard lots of interesting stuff. lots of boring stuff. All in all a good time - maybe some people will recognize my name in the future. It was a good first exposure to a congress of this type.

I don't really want to sell our place until we move. Perhaps rent it out? I don't know what the university would offer. I think that two round trip tickets each year for both of us is out of the question but well within reach if we become Fellows of the World Council of Optometry. I will be hopeful and look for flights plus a stipend from WCO (they are giving money to a Fellow who is not developing optometry so I think we should be able to get some as well) plus continued pay and housing from the University. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Don't want to be normal especially if normal is working in an office 9 hours a day five days a week telling 40 year olds they need reading glasses only for them to shoot me death stares because they couldn't possibly be getting old(er). Don't want to be normal if that requires me to talk to 13 year old girls about colour contact lenses (I REALLY don't care if you pick hazel or honey). Don't want to be normal if I have to deal with contact lens wearers who don't understand responsibility. Don't want to be normal if it doesn't allow me to try to make a difference at a community level rather than an individual level.

JL - It is true. Your life sucks. Get a new one! Sorry about your house and car. Haven't listened to your student yet but will as it sounds neat. Good to hear from you. Didn't know you were still alive.


All - In case you didn't understand one of our previous posts, yes Air France lost our luggage on our way home. Actually, they didn't lose it as they were standing outside of our airplane door upon arrival in Tel Aviv with a sign saying our luggage didn't make the flight. In it were both of my dress pair of shoes - so I'm casual these days, and our mic for our computer as well as a lot of clothes and toiletries. They offered to reimburse us for some things so we bought new toiletries and will submit the receipt. Our luggage made it to Jerusalem on Thursday and we'll get it when we see our dean on Monday. Swell gets mad about it every two or three hours. I don't really care.

Tomorrow is another week. Yippee!