If it is Friday, I must be getting an oil change.

Over the past 10 years, it seems that I have spent a number of Friday mornings at Jim Price Chevrolet getting the oil changed in my car, taking care of car inspections, and other such mundane automotive tasks.

Since I will soon return to a 5-day, 40 hr. work week, I am trying to take care of those chores that require me to be someplace other than in the office. One of those is the car care as described above. The other is pet care. Ginger is having a spa day at the vet's office. It never ceases to amaze me that her haircuts cost about 7.5 times more than my own.

I did enjoy myself yesterday at Charles Town and had a decent day on the slots (at least for me). Of course, I didn't win the $20,000 drawing, but Dick, Katie, and I had a nice time. While there were no big winners among us, neither were there any big losers. So we could all go home fairly content.

Well my plans for working at home will come to an end on August 7.

I will be returning to my old position as education specialist for WVPT on August 10.

In the meantime, I will be helping with a Sunday-Thursday summer training camp at Virginia Tech the first week of August.

For someone as traditional and conservative as I am, the last three months have certainly been a roller-coaster ride for me. I think I am ready to get back to a more even flow of events.

Intel Training

Today was the first day of Intel Essentials training for Harrisonburg. As so often happens, the morning was spent getting everyone registered to use the online collaboration tools for the course. This never seems to go smoothly, but we finally got everyone access to the tools.

Tomorrow we get into the heart of the course, and the participants will begin to build their unit plan. Because of the time crunch (we are doing this in 5 days), I will have to monitor time spent on each activity so that we can move ahead at the required pace. I would love to do this as a semester course sometime. That would give everyone more time to work through the content.

In the meantime, I have other projects waiting for my attention-- not to mention the yard work that never seems to go away.

Preparing to Work

Now that I am back from the NECC Conference, I have been trying to create my workspace down in the basement. Sorting through miscellaneous items to determine what goes to the yard sale, what goes to the shop, and what needs to be stored is a monumental task. I think the more I work the more mess I create.

I did take time out yesterday to go treasure hunting with Dick. Wisely, I purchased nothing, but Dick did find some nice items, one of which was one of the Dalton ladies. We ended the day at the Peaks of Otter where we had a nice dinner before going home.

Monday, I begin working on special projects for the VDOE. It will be strange working from home after so many years of getting up and driving to a work location.