Hey Everyone!
Just wanted to pop in and wish you all a great weekend! It's a rainy, cool one, here in the Garden State, but I'm not complaining.....that will inspire me to stay inside and do "homework", all weekend!
Frank and I are finally starting to get into our new "grooves" of school schedules. Things certainly have been a bit different around here, over the past 2 weeks, since we both started, though. Whereas I used to be the one who was always on the computer, now I have to beg Frank for a few minutes with it, since he takes his classes on line and is on the computer from the second he gets home from work, till very late at night, now! (The only reason that I am on, now, is because Frank is still sleeping!) That may account for my still staying up so late at night, even though I'm in school now - that's the only time that I can get on the computer, now!
Also, our house is very quiet at night, with me reading at the kitchen table, downstairs, and Frank reading or typing away in the office, upstairs!
Learning my new schedule and becoming accustomed to being a commuter (whereas I lived on campus, when I was going to school there, years ago) has been a bit of an adjustment.......as has carrying around that 4 million pound backpack, everywhere (I think that I've figured out a way to make it lighter, though - it takes careful "choreography" of running back to my car at key moments, and exchanging the books that I need to have with me)! But I've really been enjoying my classes, so far, and I love being back at R.U.! It's so beautiful, walking around the Cook and Douglass campuses at this time of year, and being able to spend time outside in the middle of the day, and move around (as opposed to being stuck in an office, all day) - that's such a refreshing change from what I've been used to, all these years! Plus, it's great additional exercise, too - maybe I'll finally lose those last few pounds that I've been hoping to get rid of! I appreciate being on campus so much more than I did, years ago, when I was young and naive! The assignment schedule is pretty heavy, and it's hard to keep track of everything that's due on a particular day, for each class, but I'm on top of everything!
I'm only able to take one class (and the associated lab) that pertains to my new major, this semester, as I need to get my college level math level "up to" calculus, before I can start taking the chemistry classes that are co-requisites to the rest of my nutrition classes. I'm really enjoying my Foods and Nutrition class (it's my favorite!) and the lab is really fun, too - last week, we evaluated all sorts of unidentified food and beverage samples, according to their various tastes, smells, "mouthfeels", sounds, and visual presentations. I wound up dropping that dreaded Intermediate Algebra class, as I told you all.......because it was too hard! And the instructor moved so fast! That was too much for someone who hasn't looked at algebra in over 20 years! So I decided that I would bite the proverbial bullet and put myself back into Elementary Algebra, next semester, and start all over again. Even though that will delay my getting into the "meat" of my nutrition program (if you'll excuse the pun!), I don't want to set myself up to fail, and I need to really take my time with math. It's sort of frustrating - here, I'm a licensed stock broker and did much more theoretically complicated mathematical equations on a daily basis, when I was working.......but algebra still mystefies me! Oh well - I'll get there, slowly but surely! In the mean time, there is one more nutrition class and lab that I can take, next semester, without needing chemistry along with it.
The other classes that I'm taking, now, are part of Cook's "core curriculum" - things that I need to get a degree from Cook that Douglass didn't require for graduation, so I never took them (ie: political science, economics). Since Cook is an agricultural / scientific college, in keeping with their "theme" I'm taking Politics of the Environment and Economics, People, and the Environment. I'm also taking a Computer Science class, that's required......and that will ultimately kill me, I'm sure, when we begin the programming part of the class! At least I'll finally be forced to learn how to create a web page, anyway!
I'm locked in our "office room" with our cat, Laverne, now, trying to coax her to eat in between each paragraph that I type. UGH - it's so frustrating, and I'm constantly worried. She's acting perkier, now, but still not "back to herself" and she still isn't eating nearly as much as the doctor wants her to. The doctor has essentially said that unless we can get her eating and get her metabolism going, again, her liver will ultimately fail. So I feel all this pressure to get her to eat, but I don't want to annoy her to the point where she will refuse to eat "on purpose". We have no idea why she stopped eating, in the first place. I'm beginning to think that it's emotional / psychological, since all of the cats are STILL trying to "find their places" in our little feline society, here, since Frank's cats moved in 2 years ago. She used to be "the queen of the roost", and maybe she feels less powerful, now, or as though there is more competition for Frank's and my attention. Who knows - I'll just keep trying and hope for the best!
On top of the craziness of getting back into a school type schedule, and trying to get Laverne to eat, every 2 seconds, wouldn't you know that our refridgerator had to break down, this week, too? We ran out to Sears and bought a new one, a few nights ago. But biggest pain about this whole refridgerator thing was not the loading of all of our tons of food into coolers in the garage, nor breaking an entire carton of eggs in the process.....but rather taking down my hundreds of magnets from the old refridgerator, storing them safely, and contemplating how I will configure them on the new refridgerator, when it arrives, tomorrow!
Well, the old one was a "side-by-side", and the new one has the freezer on top and the refridgerator on the bottom, so I guess I can say that I can be more artistic, now, without the "interruption" of the door handles, in the middle of my magnet patterns!
So that's about all the news from here! Sorry for the ridiculously long post, but since I don't have as much of a chance to stop by, during the week, any more, I figured that I would bombard you all with one big post, over the weekend!
Hope that all is well with all of you! Take care and hope to see you here, soon!
I wonder if they were still having trouble with this again 
