la la la la la .... nothing to see here... in shiny things

I was going to finish the 2014 survey that I started ages ago … but you know, I’m just not in the mood. What I am in the mood for is a break from work. I’ve stayed busy for so long that I hardly remember what “not busy” is like, but weirdly enough, suddenly I am not that busy. Of course I have approximately a gazillion things I should be working on, but nothing that’s terribly urgent. This will of course end soon, but it’s kind of nice for now.

I am, as always, dealing with all the students who are attempting to graduate. And since the Registrar’s Office has forced huge graduation application changes upon us, I am currently dealing with the ones who applied to graduate in December but still haven’t finished up, plus the 450 or so who applied for May. And now the applications for August AND December have opened up, so I suppose we better start thinking about them too. It is horrifically confusing, and working on applications is pretty much all I do anymore. And despite hoping very much that after one semester of doing them a year early would make it easier and we’d figure out what we’re doing… we have not figured out what we’re doing. Well, we really haven’t even been through a semester yet; we had to do December the old way (students applied in September) at the same time we did May the new way (students also apply in September, which is a year early! or nearly a year, excluding summer.) So I guess I can’t say we haven’t figured it out till after we get through May at least. At which point we’ll also be working on August and NEXT December.

Yeah, it really makes my head hurt. Everyone hates it and all it has accomplished is to force us to give up a system that worked very well for a system that’s a disaster. Go Registrar’s Office!!!! And to make me do nothing but deal with graduation applications for the rest of my life. On the plus side, at least it’s job security. (The fact that I just spelled “security” with a q instead of a c and couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it is NOT a good sign, though.) And I don’t hate it – I just wish it made a little more sense and was a little less nerve-wracking.

SO. We’re having the usual icky winter weather, although oddly we’ve had basically no snow. Since November, when we had three big snows. It has been very cold, and this weekend is promising snow/wintery mix/general nastiness. We visited the lovely lovely WARM SUNNY Charleston over Christmas (Yay! No destruction of our plans at the last minute as usually happens at Christmas!) and I was going to post some pictures, but just realized that I never uploaded them to Flickr. That is very weird. I have no idea why not. Usually I do that right away, although I confess I got really behind right after getting the new camera, because I decided I was going to edit and stop uploading every single picture I take. Especially since I’m trying to improve my skills and actually learn how to use it so there’s a lot of experimentation going on. Anyhow, I’ll post a few phone pictures instead.

And vow yet again to do this more often.

This was at Folly Beach, while enjoying a Blue Moon at the outside bar and gazing happily at the ocean. I have absolutely NO idea how this happened- it’s almost like a double exposure, but I took it with my phone! With no special magical tools, as far as I know!!

This is a Picture Using Special Magical Tools: the Living Planet App, which lets you make cool little tiny planets!! With great big cups of beer on them! Or wormholes, which is kind of the opposite.

The birds that were flying all over the place. They’re very pretty, and I bet Noko knows what they are. We used to call them Grackles, I think.

And just nice beachy view from the bar. We went to Folly every day we were there, which was a little unusual. And we did not just drink at the Tide’s outside bar!! We wandered around and walked up and down the beach too! I just didn’t take any phone pictures. I am still not in the habit of using my phone to take pictures with, especially when I have my Big Boy Camera with me.