Happy Belated New Year!

I can't believe that my last blog post was three weeks ago. That time has gone by extremely quickly, and yet lots has happened. I went to Eugene and back, the semester started, and everything around here is in full swing. However, first things first:

Jeff had a follow-up doctor's appointment on Thursday, and the news was good. The doctor cleared him to do any activity he feels like, including running and shoveling snow. Jeff says he feels completely back to normal, and yesterday he went for a short run. He had absolutely no problems with breathing, but having been away from running for a while, his knee started acting up a bit. He will need to ease back into activity slowly, but more because the rest of his body will need to adjust and not so much because his lungs need to adjust. It is a huge relief to hear that he is out of danger, and although he will need to continue the blood thinners for another five months and then get some tests done to see if a cause for this event can be determined, it feels good to have things pretty well back to normal.

So, my trip to Oregon was great – I got to visit with friends and family, got a break from the cold weather, and generally had a good time. The only exception to this was the part about getting there and back. I ended up spending hours and hours in the Denver airport on the way there, not getting in until something like 2 AM. Then on the way back my flight from Denver to Regina ended up getting canceled, and I spent the night in a hotel that was neither close to the airport nor to the city of Denver, with none of my luggage (no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no clean underwear, and no pajamas). I ended up buying an XXL T-shirt from the hotel gift shop to sleep in, and washing my clothes in the sink so they wouldn't be unwearable the next day. I got home about eighteen hours later than I was supposed to, and apparently I was lucky because there were eighteen people on standby for that flight (who presumably were also supposed to be on my canceled flight) and only one got on (I was fortunate to get a confirmed seat). I think we have dealt with delays or flight cancellations on every single flight we have taken in the past year. I could complain about the specific airline, but when I think about it it hasn't mattered much which airline we are flying. They are all terrible.

The semester has started with a bang, and in some ways it feels like I have been teaching my classes forever, and yet it also seems like they've barely started. I am teaching two undergraduate classes, and both are full to their maximum of fifty students. I was asked if I would be willing to increase the enrollment limits, but the way I have the classes set up is for this maximum, and it would take some reworking (so that my TA and I are not overwhelmed with grading of assignments, exams, and final papers) so I said no. I am not sure what forces have led my classes to be completely full (with students on the wait list) when this has never happened before (and I have been teaching these classes since I started here), so I am not ready to change the format of either class for what might end up being a passing bump in enrollment.

We have been quite busy jumping into this semester, though when I look at my to do list, it seems quite a bit smaller than it was last semester. I am hoping that things settle down soon, and I think they will!