HAPPY DAY!

I can't help but be happy this evening. Dr. Chairman (my dissertation mentor) promised to not let me stray too far off the path to success. Also, he cleared up the confusion with my study design. I will still be doing a correlational study, but now I will be using a predictive design rather than the explanatory design. I changed my independent and dependent variables to predictors and criterions. So now, I am a bit more confident that this thing could be doable.

The next order of business, start getting written approvals to do the study. I will work on this tomorrow...and remind myself to keep after it...along with everything else I must keep after. Too many irons in the fire right now!

No excuses

It's been so long since adding to this blog. Why? It is authored by a very busy woman! I just finished another class and am LOVING a week of break right now. In the next class, I am the only student. What in the world will that be like??? The class is conducted by my dissertation mentor, and together we will start on my proposal...I think that's what's supposed to happen.

Sarah came down a week ago and I snapped this shot while we were out. My girls are awesome!

I have nothing more to say, but I promise to think of something more interesting than this next time!

Time Flies

EEEEK! Has it been this many months since I last blogged? There is too much going on in my life right now. I have let me dissertation progress slip but today, I read in the paper about a fire in a refinery during a start-up. Tesoro's refinery in Washington - 4 killed and 3 reported hurt. My dissertation will hopefully deal with a safety management system. Seems like we should be better able to protect workers from these kinds of accidents.

I have to put up some pictures. Emily performed in a couple of competitions this winter. Dance Masters and LADF - the girls did real well. Emily did real well too. She is awesome to watch!! This photo (taken by Heather, I think) shows Emily is mid jump in her tap number. All these girls are beautiful young ladies.

Now one from Roslyn (I think this is a lyrical dance - the girls look so pretty! Personally, I don't really like lyrical dancing that much - but this dance was entertaining to watch. Roslyn is the kind of dance that makes you think....."why?" Emily is the girl in white, on the right.

Let's see, Erin has been busy. She has been doing Academic Team all winter, and just now HEAVY into karate and tennis. She is playing on the tennis team at school recently. ALSO, she just passed her 3rd degree black belt pre-test. We will take her back to Beckley, WV in two weekends so she can take the real test. She is ready.

This photo is Erin at an academic meet - she won first place in composition! Isn't this a pretty picture of a pretty girl!

Here is another picture of her - with her trophy. We are so proud of her!!!

Let's see. Sarah is doing very well for herself...other than her obsession with animal acquisition. She now has more horses than I can remember and two more on the way. She has two dogs, two cats, and now, two ducks (unless Peanut got hungry again). Oh no! I just realized I have no recent pictures of Sarah. Shame on me! I just got a new camera phone and the camera is BETTER than my camera (which barely works at all, lately). I need a new camera. Anyway, I will take photos next time I see her (with my new phone).



Everything is beautifully in bloom right now. The redbuds are even starting to show their orchid buds..or is that color magenta? I think they are closer to Crayola's orchid. I love the magnolias this year. They are glorious. I have to hire somebody to grind out two tree stumps. I very much miss our beautiful wild cherry tree. I was struck by lightening late last summer and died in two weeks. We also had a maple taken out in our back yard. It was damaged by water. It was hollow all the way through, rotted out from the inside. It wasn't totally dead but very near (perhaps 10 percent was still alive). Our backyard is a swamp again. We had drain lines installed several years ago...they are no longer working.


The hour is late. I still have school work to do. I start the 8th week of this class (Knowledge Woker Collaborative Information Systems) the day after tomorrow. I have a huge project due a week from tomorrow. The longest paper I have had to write in the program. It will be on a topic I am very familiar with already - enterprise knowledge sharing systems. Life is good. I will be a little more than 50% complete with this program when my class is done. I can't believe I have survived this long and done as well as I have. It's been very hard work. But it has been so worthwhile. I don't regret a penny of it.

Happy New Year

It is a new year - always a lot of hope for the new year and good things to come. Dum spiro, spero. Before we know it, it'll be spring. Bring it on!





I have had a wonderful 2-week break from school, and now I must start writing again. The class is about statistics used in research. It has been tough for me because I only had one statistics class in college - maybe in 1978?? For the paper due next week, I have two problems to address...one uses a 2-sample T test; the other is a correlation using Pearson R. Got to love it! Working the problems is the easy part - the hard part is reporting my results in a way that pleases the professor. I must get maximum points on this paper. I failed the first and third papers. Currently, I am passing the class but I need to build up a safety margin - 5 more weeks to get to the end.





I found this picture of Jack. He is such a tomcat!

Now I must get to work. I will try to post more often this year.

Been a while...

I must apologize, it has been awhile since I posted. It's been a month of losses. Our sweet Chewy died of lung cancer this month. Best dog ever and deeply missed.

This is a rather crappy picture I took with my rather crappy cellphone. Chewy used to roll over on her back when she wanted a belly-rub. We all miss her.

School is going...still. I just finished 23 hours (of 62). Next class up is RESearch 722. I am supposed to learn much more about quantitative and qualitative tests for validity, accuracy, and generalizability. EW! It's good though, I have been reading hundreds of studies and when I get to the method and results parts....I jump straight away to the discussion and conclusions. I don't like to read all that VERY IMPORTANT part... :-( I SHOULD have been reading all those parts...but they are dreadfully tiresome reading.

NO, I have digressed. There are more losses this month. My beloved wild cherry tree. We had it cut down because it was struck by lightening. I will miss its sweet scent in the spring. I won't miss those catepillars though. The tree was magnificient. Almost as tall as the tulip tree. The front yard looks oddly bare without it. As for the back yard, we had a tall maple taken out. It succumbed to a drainage problem. Our backyard is turning back into a lake, I think. I kind of like the idea....., especially now that the tree is gone. When the man cut the main trunk, it was very hollow. The tree died from the inside out.

Interesting thought - how things die. Some die from the inside out (like Chewy with lung cancer, and the tree that water-logged). Some die from the outside in (like our cherry tree struck by lightening or a deer, struck by a car).

Sarah comes home finally!! In one more week, I will hug her again. I hope things work out the way that is best for her...whatever that might be. I got to see Katie over Thanksgiving. She rarely comes down and I never go see her. When I am done with school, I will catch up with people. I have so little time anymore.

That's all for now. I start writing tomorrow - I think the Dr. is going to be good, he certainly has an interesting bio. I hope my classmates are lively and the discussion is fun.

should be sleepin'

It's late but I don't want to crash yet. I have been reading for almost two solid weeks. The current class is called "Management Philosophies." I must write an Implications & Conclusions statement tomorrow. The I&C for the reading weeks is the hardest to write. There's so much stuff...I have to decide what, of all that stuff, means the most to me and how will I integrate it into or apply it to my life.

The paper due next weekend, will be a comparison/contrast of the philosophies of Henri Fayol and Edward Deming. I had to pick one foundational theorist and one modern theorist. I chose Fayol because I read an interesting article about him during the last class about how some of his ideas were mis-expressed because of not so great translation of this work to English. I chose Deming because he "invented" TQM and I want to learn more about it. The nuance of this assigment is that the comparison/contrast has to give a sense of philosophical evolution. They are in different time periods - as far back as 1840 for Fayol and as recent as the 90s for Deming.

The cherry tree is dead and I will have to hire somebody to cut it down. I may call the County Extension agent and see if she knows of anyone who would cut it for the wood. It is a black cherry tree - at least three stories high. I will miss it. It got struck by lightening and it's leaves turned brown and dropped off within two weeks of discovering the tree had been struck. It appears totally dead. We have a big maple in the back that got badly damaged in an ice storm a few years ago and it's almost totally dead. If we have to pay to have the cherry cut down, I'll have them take the maple too.

Summer is OVER (Almost)

I have not blogged in awhile - it's been a busy summer. I visited Sarah the week before she left for Ireland...AGAIN! I miss her but she is sending me lots of emails which I greatly appreciate. We had a great time - visited her horses and saw that dreadful house she plans to move into. We had lunch in Old Washington and the weather was perfectly lovely. It's amazing how much Lily and Roanan have changed and grown. Roanan is no longer reddish, but instead is a lovely white with interesting markings on his face. He was very friendly and kept nibbling on me...eventually biting me (I forgave him..I think he thought my finger was a carrot).



Jerry and I took the girls to Yatesville Lake for a picnic and a hike. Yatesville is pretty nice, but I love Cave Run more. Grayson is pretty nice too, the cliffs there are pretty...especially when the mountain laurel is blooming. These are some photos I took over there.

I should get back to reading now. My current class is Management Philosophy and I have plenty to read. Currently reading Gods of Management by Charles Handy. It's kind of interesting and not bad to read...at least I'm not having to use a dictionary every paragraph. For that, I am greatful!