Hullo Blog friends!

Okay, so its been over a week since I blogged about how I'd blog more..
oh well, another resolution takes a back seat to reality.

So I've been officially on sabbatical (my term, not the schools) for to days now, and have actually found it to be great so far. I have had two productive days of writing a rough draft of the first part of my thesis - which is actually really interesting, at least to me - its the analysis of a study I did, and data I collected on students in last year's online and on-campus cohorts of my big course. Perhaps I'll be disowned by the department for doing a thesis is which part of it at least has me, analyzing my own data, using standard methods (as opposed applying new methods to analyze an existing data set that had already been uber-analyzed by everyone else's "new" method), in Stata (this may be enough to get me disowned- but I swear the other part of my thesis is 25/7 R), and related to stats ed. On the other hand, perhaps >= 2 people wll understand it.
Anyways, having fun busting out tables and graphs.

But enough about academia, let's talk the weekend. We had a busy busy weekend - things got off to a frantic start as we rushed out the door to get Emmet and Micah checkups at a kid friendly dentist over in Catonsville. Best dental experience I've had, and I wasn't even the patient. Micah and Emmet got clean bills of mouth health, although we have been forewarned that Micah will need serious braces...so its off to Keno for me. The rest of the day never topped the oral hygiene-esque fervor of the a.m. But Sunday is another story - a cold and blustery day that ultimately gave us a weak covering of snow, we set out to rectify our lack of all out playing on the previous day. But what to do? Playgrounds were out, everyone's tired/bored/’scared etc.. of the old faves like the Science center or Aquarium, and Roni and I can’t keep playing that Towsontown Center is a fun place for kids. So we did a little research and found this play place in Columbia - amidst a sea of chain restaurants (its unbelievable how all of America's finest chains seems to have converged on Howard County), in an office park exists a fabulous, indoor playground type place. They had all kinds of stuff to do, ranging from a huge indoor sandbox to a real fire engine (um ,well engine removed and tanks emptied)...after two ad a half hours of serious play we adjourned to the Columbia branch of Rocky Run Restaurant, ‘cuz we can’t get enough of it even though there is one right around the corner in Charles Village. (and its pretty much a given that the kids won’t eat anywhere that doesn’t serve fries – which alas ruled out the only interesting restaurant choice we could find in the area, the Mango Grove, apparently a kick ass India restaurant – but the kids know pakoras aren’t fries so we’d be in hot water). A lot of people seem to drive to this Rocky Run only to adjourn to the bar, power through brews and watch football – so we knew we had to get out of there before any given game was over.

While we were dining, the snow came – and although there wasn’t much it actually made driving home slow and slippery – and NO I’m NOT one of those folks who can’t handle a little snow, I swear! It took us nearly an hour ro make it back to Beech Avenue, at which point we headed next door to Sean, Cindy and Sylvie’s for a birthday party. Saw some neighbors, Karl, Aimee and Caleb, and met some new folks, And it was a lot of fun.

So now you can tell this blog has been nothing more than a prep for writing my thesis – I’ve cranked out far more text than needed yet still haven’t finished my weekend tales, nor gotten to the point. So if you’ve read this much, thank you – the next post will be short, sweet, and slightly humorous.