Two very full weeks

Last time I posted was two weeks ago, and it has been a very full and busy two weeks since then. I rushed to get all my work done by Thursday, December 4, and then that afternoon we drove three hours to Saskatoon so that I could attend an awards evening put on by the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation. I did not receive an award, but was in the program as a recent grant recipient, and had to make a poster describing my research to a lay audience and stand at it and talk to people for a good chunk of the evening. This is not my favorite kind of thing to do, though Jeff says I'm pretty good at it despite my dislike. Then we drove back three hours to Regina that night, getting in late, so that we could catch our flight the next morning to Calgary. That week was rather exhausting.

We had our early Christmas in Calgary with Jeff's siblings and their families. It was a fun time of visiting, eating, playing some games, and spending lots of time with babies. Unfortunately, people were sick, naps didn't align with one another, and parents were not getting lots of sleep. However, all this had the effect of forcing quite a bit of rest and down time, which I think I greatly needed.

Jeff's sister's partner and their sixteen-month-old, and Jeff's brother's wife and their three-month-old

 We came home the night of December 9, and the remaining three weekdays last week were spent hard at work. All except for Friday morning, when I had a doctors appointment and took the rest of the morning to bake some cookies. Thursday evening we had a retirement party to go to, Friday evening was a Christmas gathering for people (and their families) who attend a research meeting that Jeff is part of, which is what I baked the cookies for. On Saturday afternoon was a birthday party for our friends' one-year-old, and much of Saturday was spent doing work. So between work and all these social events, this has been somewhat of an exhausting week!

It has also been a bit odd weatherwise. The real shock is that most of last week was spent with highs above freezing, which has meant lots of melting. There is very little snow left, and grass is even peeking through in some places. It's making things all brown and yucky looking, which we normally don't have until spring (as much as I can say what is normal here after being here for a little over two years). Today the hype was just below freezing, and this afternoon it started to snow a bit making things look a bit more fresh and white. I never thought that I would say this, but I sort of wish that it would drop below freezing, stay there, and snow a fair bit, because it makes winter much prettier!

This upcoming week I have a lot to get done at work– grades to submit for one class, papers to grade for my graduate class, end of year documents related to annual performance review to submit, a manuscript to review, and a manuscript to edit and submit for review. Also, I have to prepare for teaching next semester, help my honours student get her data collection up and running, and probably a few other things that I am not thinking of right now. That is the neutral to stressful news. The happy and relaxing news is that I have only one meeting scheduled over the next week, I can do quite a bit of this work from home, I don't think it will spill into the evenings, and it should all be done by this coming Friday. Then, a free weekend, and then on Monday, December 22 we leave for Oregon where we will spend twelve days. I plan for that time to be completely work free, and I expect to immerse myself completely into the holidays (funny note from Dragon speech recognition software – it typed hostilities instead of holidays, and when I went to fix it it suggested hot ladies).

Until then, I will do my best to relax into the Christmas spirit at home with Jeff, my kitties, and our Christmas tree :-)