weekend adventure

I must be losing my mind lately (like everything else I seem to lose, my mind shouldn’t be any different).  I stayed up too late and then had to get up too early this morning.  So around 10 AM, I crashed on the couch in the living room, and was dead to the world....until, our bird clock sparrow chattered at 1:00 and woke me up.  I sat up from a dead sleep thinking we had a live bird in the corner.  From the sleepy fog, I sat listening for it again, heard nothing, and observed Jack asleep on the chair in his usual place.  It dawned on me that if we really had a bird in the house, Jack would be all over it.  I then glanced at the clock and saw 1:00 and realized the clock sparrow woke me up.  When awake, the bird calls sound like mice in the wall, but in my sleep, I knew it was a sparrow. 

I went on a fun solo adventure yesterday – 3.5 hours into the mountains of Eastern Kentucky to hear my sweet daughter sing at a festival.  It was a trip to the middle of nowhere, just very small towns, lots of coal mines, and raped mountains.  Strip mining, highwall mining, and mountain top removal is devastating to the landscape in that part of the state.  In older places where little reclamation has been done, kudzu takes over and covers everything.   Anyway, it was a beautiful day, and for a while I watched people making brooms, baskets, and wooden chairs with woven maple seats.  Pretty neat to watch while listening to some fine mountain music on two stages and little groups of people just jamming for the fun of it.  I met up with Sarah an hour or so before she performed, and we visited a bit before I left. 

Perhaps it’s not proper to talk about this in a blog, but I will.  I met a young person who is working on a PhD.  The person is married with a little baby and complained about her work (that is funded externally) and that she’s had no personal time with all the courses, but now those are over.  She stated that she just wanted to get this research and dissertation done, get a real teaching job, and enjoy life again.  I know the feeling all too well, but I refrained from talking about my research and my journey.  I had investigated getting a doctorate from the university she is working with.  I couldn’t keep my job and do doctoral work there.  It was less expensive than I’ve had to pay.  Even though we have some stuff in common, she and I are a world apart.  I also thought, how sad for her future students – their professor will have no real world experience.  How fortunate for me that all my professors were experts in their fields and related everything (except for philosophy) to their real world experiences.  Even with philosophy, my professor applied it to the business world, mostly to ethics.

So tonight, I’m finishing (hopefully) testing my survey.  Tomorrow, the host will finalize and clean it up.  I then send out invitations.  HOORAY!!!  Progress is a good thing.  As for my job this week....an altogether different attitude and story, and something I refuse to think about until tomorrow.