May 8 - Still Busy

Yes, I'm still busy. Let's see. What I did today... hmmm. I started off by making a dump run, after emptying all the garbage cans in the house. I got to the office and spent a couple of hours finishing the report for the APR at University of Maryland and got that sent off. I got my annual faculty activity report about 90% done. I completed and submitted my travel forms to get approval for my June Colorado conference trip and my August Anaheim conference trip. I made reservations for my Williamsburg conference trip. I made the plane arrangements for Colorado. I completed the changes to an article that'll be printed in the Journal of Accountancy and got that sent back to the editor. I wrote the first draft of the first half of a new research report I'm writing with a colleague for Issues in Accounting Education. I answered a dozen emails from people about an article that appeared in the May issue of Strategic Finance (hey, has anyone here even HEARD of any of these publications, let alone read anything in them?) I added a couple of late renewer's to the ham radio club roster and mailing list and emailed them the issue of the newsletter that they missed because they were too dense to figure out how to write a check to renew on time, even though I put reminders in the newsletter for FIVE straight months in a row warning them that they'll be removed if they don't renew by the end of April. I'll bet these guys were blondes before they lost all their hair. I spent almost an hour on the phone talking to the new FMIR in Antwerp instructing him on how to log onto the Telenet website and check the students' usage quota on their internet service, configure the wireless routers, and other tech stuff that I wasn't supposed to be doing anymore since I'm officially no longer assigned to the Antwerp program anymore. When I got home, I released the beautiful bluebird that somehow had tripped my critter trap (birds usually aren't heavy enough to trip the trigger, I wonder how a light bird like a bluebird did it? Stupid bird.) Then I rebaited the trap (yep, stupid bird ate all the stinkin' bait). I set out some mice traps inside my back garage (preventive measure), baited with bacon that the cat had snitched from Mom's plate yesterday while she was out and had left on the floor underneath my living room computer stand (the cat left the bacon there, not Mom). I fixed myself a Marie Calender's pot pie since Mom has Ruritans tonight. I cleaned out the drain in front of my garage out back because we are under a tornado watch right now and there's a big front moving in on the radar map, and I don't want the garage to flood again because the drain is full of grass clippings. I found some important papers for the red house for Mom, who had let them slip behind her nightstand where she couldn't find them or reach them even if she had known where they'd gone. Finally, I checked into the ham radio emergency service net tonight... we always organize and test out our equipment any time there's a tornado watch or severe storm warning... I'm good to go. I just got through commenting on a couple of blogs I check daily. And yes, all this was done today. Like I said, I'm busy. That's why I don't blog more often. I stay busy from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. And people wonder why I'm so irritated when I have to sit through boring useless ridiculous meetings (like, well, I won't mention any by name, but Mom knows the ones I'm talking about) which do nothing but waste my time. My to-do list for tomorrow is even longer, and I have to knock off early to go to the red house to sign some papers for Mom. I don't know why. I don't believe we'll ever sell this darn house. We'll be sitting on this house when we're 105, and in the meantime, we'll use all our retirement and savings keeping it up. 105, mind you. 105. Maybe even 110. Mark my words. Yessirree.