It's Final Exam Time

I give my last final exam of the semester tomorrow to my MBAs. Just for the heck of it, I named all the companies and individuals in the problems after characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. I wonder if anyone in the class will notice?

If they do, I'll probably give them extra credit.

The Final Throes of the Semester

It's that time of the semester:

• Only one meeting left for each of my classes.
  
• My student-managed fund survive their end-of semester presentation to the advisory board
• I've graded and handed back all assignments except for final exams
• I've even given out and collected my evaluations
  

Now all I have to do is make up my finals, give them, and grade them.

The crop is almost in. And man, oh man is it about time.

One of the things I like about this career is that it has a rhythm to it - we have new "crops" each semester, and a feeling of accomplishment once the semester is done. But that final week or two is always a bit crazy.

So, to all my readers: If you're a student, good luck on your exams and projects. If you're faculty, hang in there - it's almost time for the break.

Can I Bwing My Mommy? Puh-Weeze?

A new student (I'll call him SnowFlake from now on) walked into my office last week asking for advice on classes. He'd transferred to Unknown University from a private school (which, by the way, has a reputation for drastically inflating grades). He needed some advice on which classes to take, and since I'm listed as his advisor, I seemed like the right person to check with. But he also wanted some advice on how to study since he's flunking intermediate accounting, and "that's never happened in any of my classes before".

SnowFlake starts out by blaming the instructor (who, by the way, is one of the best in the college). After some questions and comments on my part like "Gee, that doesn't sound like Professor X at all. Are you sure?", it turns out that he hadn't been keeping up with the work, and hadn't worked more than a problem or two from the end of chapter material. Instead, he tried to cram for the first exam, and did poorly. Since that strategy worked out so well on the first exam, he decided to try it once more on the second exam for good measure. Lo and behold, the same approach yielded the same result (funny how that happens).

So, I gave Snowflake some standard advice on how to study, and then he asked if he could set up a time early this week to set up his classes for the next semester. We set a time (Monday morning at 10), and then came the kicker:

He asked if it was alright if his MOTHER came to the appointment.

I managed to keep my jaw off the floor, since he was a second-semester junior, and if you have hover-moms, they usually get cured of it by sophomore year (and they're almost non-existent in Business schools). But since I couldn't think of anything else to say (other than "You'll be all right once they drop", which didn't seem prudent at this juncture). I said, "Well, Precious, that's entirely up to you".

Monday morning comes around, and I'm running late for our 10:00 a.m. appointment. So, I have the secretary leave a note on my door saying I'd be a few minutes late, and hurry in to the office with visions of MomZilla running loose in the hallway and going on a rampage in the Dean's office.

I get there five minutes late, and there's no sign of either Snowflake or MomZilla. I hang out in my office for a few hours just in case, and it seems like a larger-than-usual number of faculty seem to filter by my office (they keep me off the beaten path, which is probably a good thing). I guess after hearing about Mom coming in, they just couldn't resist sneaking a peek.

In any event, I get a call late that morning from SnowFlake informing me that he had to be in traffic court that morning, had completely forgotten, and wanted to reschedule.

I guess I should have had his Mom remind him.

A Hectic Couple of Weeks

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Some good, some bad. But crazy, nonetheless.

About two weeks ago, I went to the FMA annual meeting in Dallas (it was great, by the way). I managed to connect with a lot of old friends, and also made a few new ones.

While I was there, I started a couple of new projects. Without going into too much detail, I think I've figured out a very creative way to use a data set in a new way. Just before FMA, I started a paper with a couple of grad school classmates that uses this data. While doing it, I realized a slew of different applications for the data and methodology.

In short, it's data that's typically used by researchers in one sub-field of finance, but I think it can be used to answer a number of corporate finance research questions. The data's pretty ugly, so it took a while to get it under control. But now that I've got a handle on it, I have more ideas to use it for than I have time to implement. So, I was looking for coauthors who could help out. Luckily, I have a lot of friends, so there were people willing to listen to the idea(s). As a result, I now have three new projects. They may be garbage and I might be totally deluded that this is a good idea, but I don't think so (or at least, I hope not).

Once I got back, I bought a "new" (to me) used car, taught in our evening MBA program one night and then twice in a neighboring city in a professional program, and had two family health problems.

Unknown Son had his surgical port removed (now that he's done with chemo, he no longer needs it, and it is a risk for infection). Unfortunately, what should have been a fairly straightforward half-day affair ended up with him staying overnight at the hospital due to some complications (he's fine now, by the way). Then, the next day Unknown Daughter came down with an intestinal bug that resulted in output from both ends.

Ah well - parenthood involves a lot of bodily fluids, I guess.

In any event, I'm now giving an exam to my evening MBA class. Hey - I have to kill the 2 1/2 hours sometime, eh?

Another Paper Done

I spent most of the last week working on a paper for a conference deadline on Monday. We managed to get the thing done Sunday night (I was in my office until 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning), and planned on submitting it Monday after one last quick read-through. Of course, on Monday morning we got an email announcing that the deadline had been extended. We should have expected it since this happens almost every year for this conference (the Eastern Finance Association annual meeting).

So, we gave the paper one last thorough going over. It was sent out today. It' s early, and the paper will need a lot more work (and polishing) before it's ready to submit to a journal. But the initial results look good, and it's always satisfying to have a finished version (even if it's preliminary) of a paper.

I like working with these coauthors. It's the first time I've worked simultaneously with two fellow alumni of the Unknown Alma Mater, and the initial experience has been very, very good.

How Professors Spend Their Time

I'm in the midst of filling out my annual report (we do one every year to show the powers that be what we did over the previous year). I've got several attachments, to my report, but I'm debating adding this as one more:

Maybe after I'm tenured...

Another Hit

Just got an email from a coauthor forwarding an acceptance letter for a journal on a small piece we've been working on for a while. It's in am p.k., but definitely second-tier journal, But since I'm not yet tenured, my attitude is that ANY publication is a good one (what's the old saying - "a Dean is someone who can't read but can count").

At Unknown University, we do our annual faculty productivity reports on a June-June basis. So this means I start the new year with a slap single already on the scpreboard.

CFA Level 2 Results

I finally got to the CFA Institute Website for my Level 2 results - of course, the server was overloaded for the first half hour after results were made available. Once again, it wasn't pretty, but I passed. CFAI only gives a very broad idea as to how candidates scored, but based on their report, I scored above 70% on approximately 60% of the material, between 50% and 70% on 25% of the material, and below 50% on the remaining 15% of the material.

But who cares? I passed.

So for now, it's back to research. Here's what's on my plate:

• Finish two papers that are somewhere between initial results and finished manuscript. They WILL be done by mid-September to submit to a conference. On one, I'm the data guy. On the other, I'll probably do the initial draft.
  
• Do the final edits on a paper that's previously been rejected and reworked. It should be done by next week to send out to yet another journal
• Finish updating the data set to add another 5 years of data for another paper that was rejected, then redo all the analyses. I get to play "data monkey" on this one too, and my coauthor gets to do the rewrite.

I also have a syllabus to write for my new MBA class. I taught it once before, but that was years ago. This'll be the first time teaching MBA since 2001, so it should be fun.

Rollin, Rollin, Rollin, Keep Them Doggies Rollin

I and a couple of fellow alums of the Unknown Alma Mater have been talking about a project for about the last 6 months. We finally started working on it in earnest about a month and a half ago. So far, we've got initial result (and kick-hiney ones, if I may say so), a literature review, some pretty good looking but simple charts, and (by the end of this week) a couple of tables. This might be the fastest initial progress on a project I've ever seen.

So far, it's been a good summer. I've almost finished reworking a paper that got rejected (it'll be sent out to a nearly-top-tier journal in the next week or two), started two new projects that we've already got interesting initial result on (they'll be done in time to submit to a conference in September), and moved a fourth project from the "vaporware" stage to the point where it could also possibly be conference ready by the end of September.

But I have to be careful what I say, because coauthors on two of the projects are regular readers of the blog. So, I can't gripe about them here. Not that I have to - they've all been (if for different reasons) pleasures to work with. Keep up the good work, y'all.

I'm Baaaaaaack!

Sorry for the lack of posting lately - it's been a crazy week. But then, lately they all seem like crazy weeks. We survived last week without any need for trips to the emergency room, or grandparents getting injured, but there was still more to come in the Unknown Household.

I woke up last Saturday with my back severely out of whack - my lower back was in a knot, and it hurt to do just about anything other than sit (or lie) completely still). This continued until Monday, when I saw my doctor. She adjusted my sacrum (no, she's not a chiropractor, but she still was able to do it), gave me some very strong muscle relaxants, and told me I need to do more stretching.

On Wednesday my back felt much better so I took the Unknown Son to the Clinic for the routine follow up scans for his original cancer (although he's in remission from the neuroblastoma, he still has scans every six months just in case). Then it was off to the neighboring state for a charity golf tournament my sister and husband started as a means of raising money for neuroblastoma research (their son died of the cancer last year).

Since some relatives on Unknown Wife's side were visiting, she and the kids decided to stay over so that they could visit with family. So, I've almost two full days to myself (they arrive back at the unknown household late Saturday night). I've gotten a fairly good amount of work done (even sent an article out to a journal) and slept in past 9:00 both Friday and Saturday (hey - when you have young kids, sleeping in is a rare occasion)

In any event, it's a beautiful, warm, sunny Saturday afternoon, and I'm SITTING AT MY OFFICE DESK WORKING ON RESEARCH.

Ah well, such is the life of an untenured professor.

Stick A Fork In Me - I'm Done!

Just handed in grades for the semester. As usual, there was a pretty broad range of performance, and many of the usual cast of characters (the names change every semester, but the acts never do):

• The obviously extremely bright student who doesn't take proper care on his assignments and does them at the last minute. This results in a low score on 20% of the total grade, which along with his poor attendance (class participation is another 20% of the grade) makes it difficult to do well in the class. Then on the exam he gets one of the highest grades in the class (Final Grade: "B", when he was clearly capable of an "A").
• The not-so bright kid who is more passionate about finance than any student I've seen in the last five years. He ends up getting one of the highest grades in the class on the exam (Final Grade: "A", when I thought at the start that he'd probably be lucky to get a "B-").
  
• The charming one who tries to be my buddy, but doesn't do the hard work necessary to grasp the material on more than a surface level (Final Grade: "C"). Then he can't understand why he got such a poor grade (I guess math is also not his strong point).
  
• The student who failed the class last semester and retakes it this semester. She "Gets Religion" and works her tail off this time around (Final Grade: "B-"
• The student who failed the class last semester and retakes it this semester. He learns nothing from the experience and approaches it the same way he did last time, with the same results (Final Grade: "D+").

So, it was the usual mixed bag, with some surprising performances on both ends of the distribution. Either way, I can now put paid to this school year, and start on a couple of research projects that need my attention.

Now, all I have to do is get out of town before the emails and calls start coming in. I need to figure out how to put an autoresponse on my email that says "Dr. XXX is currently out of the office. He is recuperating from the stress of grading your papers on a dry (no alcohol permitted) campus. He will be back in a couple of weeks after recuperating and getting all the sand out of his swim trunks."

A Crazy Week

The semester is winding down - only two weeks of classes to go. Still, they'll be crazy ones. I just got back from a conference, which took several days out of my schedule. The next few days I'll be feverishly trying to finish up a paper for submission in time for a colleague to put it on her 3-year mid-tenure review (if we get it submitted by Friday he can count it, but not if we submit it later. And since he hasn't done as much writing in the last three years as he should have, this piece is important to him.

In addition, my student-managed investment fund class has to prepare our end-of-semester report for our advisory board, and I still have to create a couple of problem sets and final exams in the next week.

I know I say this every year at this time, but man, am I tired. But at least it's only two more weeks and then finals (followed by alcohol, and then sleep).

Ah well, it still beats a job in industry by a country mile.

Spring Break, and The Living Is Good

Spring Break has officially begun at Unknown University. Since I'm on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule this semester, that means blessed relief from classes for another 10 days.

Other than a bit of extra time catching up with the Unknown Family (it's off to Horton Hears a Who in a few minutes), that means I get to focus on my research and catch up on studying for CFA Level2. I've got a rewrite of a first draft that need attention, a revise and resubmit to work on, and another rejection that needs to be tweaked and sent back out.

As for the CFA, I'm pretty much on track, but there's still a lot to go (and only 12 weeks until the exam). I still need to take a first pass at Ethics and Derivatives, I'm only about half done with the Fixed Income material, and Financial Statement Analysis will need at least two more passes before I'm comfortable with it.

But for now, I'm lovin the break from the classroom. I like teaching, but a breather is always appreciated by this point in the semester.

And no, I don't expect to show up on any video collections sold over the cable channels (even as comic relief).

Another Crop Almost In

At the risk of sounding like Chauncy Gardner, teaching at the university level is a lot like farming - there's a definite rhythm to the semester that mimics the farming calendar. In the off season, you prepare the soil (make changes to the syllabus, do some reading for new materials in your classes, etc...). During the semester, there's planting (the first week or so), pruning and weed pulling (usually done with exams and quizzes), and finally, at the end of semester there's the harvest.

I gave my last final exam yesterday. So, the crop's almost in. Now all I have left to do is grade them (and the remaining class projects) and I'm done with teaching-related stuff for the semester.

No cracks about vegetables, please (or at least, not too many...).

But as for research in the "off season", there's a lot to do:

• I just yesterday finished my part of the work on one revise and resubmit (I'll call it R&R-1), which involved a fair bit of empirical work, and SAS programming out the yazoo. Now I can turn everything over to my coauthors, who'll do the remaining writing, and deal with the rest of the referee's comments.
  
• Since my part of R&R-1 is done, I now get to work on another R&R (R&R-2) where I get to do most of the writing (both coauthors are not native speakers of English). Unfortunately, the referee was extremely picky, so there's much to do.
  
• There's a third R&R (R&R-3) for which a coauthor is doing the first draft on the revisions (it's all writing - no new empirical work is needed). Then, he'll pass it back to me for further editing (I'm the "senior" writer on this one - the coauthor was my student previously). With luck, I'll finish R&R-2 before this one comes back to me.
• Then, there's a piece with a former colleague and a former Ph.D. student. It was sent out and soundly rejected previously. So, we (actually, the former Ph.D. student) did a lot of additional empirical work. Then the former colleague did a rewrite, and I'll get to do the final buffing and shining. Hopefully, it'll come back to me after R&R-2 is done and before R&R-3 comes back to me).
  
• Somewhere in there, there's another piece that I'm trying to finish before the FMA submission deadline. It's with another former student - we'd previously done a pilot study with interesting results. Since then, we've expanded the data set to about 5x its original size, and then ran some additional tests. If the coauthor can finish his part of the data work (mostly the coding of governance data from about 500 proxies) soon, we can write up the new results and send it off.
  
• There are a few other pieces in various stages, but I'll save discussion of them until they move out of the "vaporware" category.
  

Luckily, I have almost five weeks before the next "planting". Looks like it'll be a busy time. But that's what makes it fun.

Twas The Night Before Finals

I read the blog "Rate Your Students" on a daily basis - it's the electronic equivalent of the lounge where the faculty share stories about students among ourselves. Here's their latest offering - Twas The Week Before Finals

‘Twas the week before finals
And all through the U,
The students were yawning
And some drooling too.

While papers are now due
Students are at the mall,
With not one single fear
That their good grade might fall.

“I can write it all one night,”
Thinks the tattooed pierced girl,
“I’ll just peek at a Wiki
And give it a whirl.”

They don’t come to class
There is always a reason,
These vary quite little
From season to season.

“A cold” has the tall one,
“With me it’s the flu,”
“My sister’s in jail
And Grandma’s dead too”

“Hangover” “flat tire”
“My boyfriend dumped me,”
“Alarm didn’t go off”
“Had to play with my Wii”

“This class ain’t important,
Many other things are.”
With an attitude like this
Frat boy’s sure to go far.

“I’m going to med school
Organic’s the crux,
Have to go over anatomy
With my buds at Starbucks.”

“After that comes my psych
And the math quiz I missed.
Your class is ‘bout tenth
On my priority list.”

Outside my office
There arose such a clatter.
A line of students?
Now what is the matter?

Here come the grubbers
The beggars and thieves,
With the crap that they’re dishing
I’m going to heave.

“This paper is all mine.
I never would fake,
That you found it on Google
Is just a mistake.”

“You’ll ruin my average
My perfect grade,
A ‘C’ isn’t part
Of the deal that we made.”

“I pay tuition
You give me an ‘A,’
Then everyone is happy
And I’m on my way.”

“Get lost all you losers!”
I wanted to shout,
But the tenure committee
Would then throw me out.

I brought out a six pack
Some pills and a noose
But settled down with exams
and a vodka and juice.

For many this season
Is chock full of cheer
But for profs, December
Requires much beer.

Let the games begin!

I Made It Through The Week!

I survived the week. And everything went well:

• My trip to my former school went well - my student successfully defended her proposal, and won't have to do much more empirical work to finish her dissertation. She does, however, have to do a better job of fleshing out her literature review, hypothesis development, and discussion of results.
• The class I taught on SAS programming was well received - the students were pretty engaged, asked a lot of questions, and seemed to get a lot out of the material.
• My coauthor and I did a lot of work on our paper.
• I survived the CFA class - it's the same modules I taught last year, so there was minimal prep.
• My graduate assistant is working on the project I assigned (the one he was trying to duck earlier). He seems to have actually made some progress.
• My students blew off class again today. So, those who showed up got another bonus. And in addition, they actually got to see the problem set that's due on Wednesday. And since there's no class on Monday, those that were absent pretty much gave themselves an auto-screwing.
  

And last but not least, I just got another revise-and-resubmit from a journal today. Now it's off to the Unknown Wife's Homecoming at her former school. We're spending a couple of days with a college friend of hers and touring the Big City on the way back.

A Crazy Week Ahead

It's yet another week where I've bitten off more than I should have:

• I taught my regular classes yesterday (Monday). After my last class I met with my grad assistant to give him his first assignment for the semester. I'm starting a project on the effect of dividends on firm risk, and he's putting together the initial data set. So, I spent an hour with him going over the steps needed to be done, the layout of the CRSP data files, and a few SAS tips he might need to know (or research further). Right after that, another grad student stopped by with some "simple" questions on how SAS handles date variables (ironically, some of the same stuff I'd just gone over with grad student #1). One hour later, I finished with him and left to meet Unknown Family at Unknown Son's new dojo (karate school) for his first "group" class. He looked pretty sharp in his new gi (the uniform). But it was all I could do to keep from laughing as he repeatedly spaced out in class and started posing in front of the mirror (I think he's still more excited about the idea of learning Karate than he is about the actual learning itself). He's also completely smitten with the 12 year-old brown belt who was helping out with the class (I guess he didn't realize that it's always dangerous to go after older women who can kick your butt).
  
• Once home, Unknown Wife went off to a parent's meeting for Unknown Daughter's Girl Scout troop while Unknown Son and I wrestled with his homework. After Unknown Wife got back and we got the kids to sleep, I ended up writing SAS code until midnight to put together a small data set for a short tutorial I'm giving to doctoral students at my former school (more on that in a minute)
• Today I take the train to the nearby big city for the day. I'll spend the day in the library at a large research university gathering data (they have resources we don't, but graciously allow access to nearby faculty), and then teach a CFA prep class in the evening. After all this is done, I'll end up back at the Unknown House at around 11.
• Wednesday, I teach classes until about 2, and then immediately rush to the airport for a short (1 hour) plane ride back to my old haunts. After landing, I'll work until the wee hours Wednesday night on a paper with a colleague (I'm staying at her family's place).
• Thursday morning, I attend the dissertation proposal defense of one of my former students (I sit on her committee, and the colleague mentioned previously is her dissertation chair). Then in the afternoon, I give a two-hour tutorialto the grad students at the same school on basic SAS procedures used often in financial/accounting research .
  
• After that, it's back on the plane and back to the Unknown Household for a few hours sleep.
  
• Friday, it's back in the classroom, followed by a meeting with my grad assistant to check on his progress (he's tried to weasel out of a previous assignment, s0 this time he gets tight controls put on him - after all, if a corporate finance guy doesn't understand agency problems, he doesn't understand much).
  

Somehow, in the midst of all this I have to put up slides for the following week's classes and put together a problem set for my investments class (they have an exam next week, and I always give a pretty tough problem set the week prior to the exam as a form of "enforced" practice). And then there are the matters of the revise and resubmit that's sitting on my desk and the new project that my coauthors are breathing down my neck on.

But griping aside, I'll get it all done somehow. Even with all this, academia is still the best job in the world. I should know - I've had a number of "real" jobs, and there's no comparison.

Another Article Accepted!

Seems like I'm on a roll lately (it's a slow roll, but a roll nonetheless). I just heard from a coauthor that a small paper of ours just got accepted. It's at a lower-tier journal, but at least we placed it somewhere (articles are like orphans - if they keep trying, they eventually find homes). The coauthor is a former student of mine who's done pretty well for himself - he started at a lower tier school and has published well over a dozen articles in four years (mostly at lower-tier journals, but one at a top-tier journal in a related discipline and several at just-below top-tier level).

A couple of years ago, my research was just beginning to fire on all cylinders when the Unknown Son was diagnosed with cancer. Then (not surprisingly) I got almost nothing out for the next three years (I was just looking, and there's gap in my vita that's exactly three years long). But over the last year and a half, I've gotten three publications and four other papers under review. It's not an earth-shattering output, and I'd certainly like to be publishing in better-quality journals. But since I was mostly cleaning out my backlog (and some of the ideas had gone stale while The Boy was sick), I'll take it.

At the school I'm at, quality is valued but numbers count too (after all, one definition of a Dean is "a person who can count but can't read").

Now I have some cover to work on longer-term projects that have a decent chance at higher-quality journals. I was just looking at my research file and I currently have four projects under way, and hope to finish 2-3 of then by December. If I do, and I get one or two more publications by the next fall, I should have a pretty good shot at tenure.

And since the Unknown Wife has told me in no uncertain terms that we're NOT moving again, I have a lot of incentive.

Like they say down South, "If Momma Ain't Happy, Ain't NOBODY Happy!"

A Good Day, and A Good Ride

This was a good day - I went into the office around 11:00, finished a paper to send to a conference and then finished my PowerPoint slides for the next week's classes.

Then I went on a 22 mile bike ride. It was a bit windy, but other than that,conditions were just about perfect for a long ride - mostly flat terrain with just enough gently rolling hills to make it interesting, and a temperature of 64 degrees. It was so nice that I actually ended up holding a faster pace for the 22 mile ride than I usually do for my 16 mile course. I even passed one of my students on the road. I wonder how he felt getting smoked by a teacher more than twice his age?

Hey - I may be carrying about 15 extra pounds, but my legs and cardio are both in pretty good shape. O.K - enough bragging...

Now, it's time to read a bit to the Unknown Son before bed (Unknown Daughter is at a friend's house). The kids just watched Lemony Snicketts, so now he's reading the books (he just got the first two from the library). I particularly like them because they use some pretty complicated words, but follow them with an explanation in an aside). So, they're great not just for the story itself but also for feeding the lad's inner nerd.

What I Did During (The First Part Of) My Summer Vacation

I just realized that I haven't posted anything new on the blog for about 10 days, so I thought I'd let you know that I'm still alive and haven't stopped blogging altogether. But, I did feel a bit burned out on blogging, so I took a bit of a break. Here are a few updates on the summer so far:

I've been working on a few projects. One is editing a paper I'm doing with several other people. It's a new experience for me since a good part of the paper is theory-based, and I'm an empiricist at heart. So, I've been forced to brush up on a lot of the math I haven't used since grad school. In addition, I'm the only American among the coauthors, and they're all theorists. So, I'm in charge of "englishizing" the paper (their term). Hopefully it'll be handed back to my coauthors for their part soon.

I've been working on a second project in what's also a new area for me - it ties in options implied volatility to firms' information environments. While I'm familiar with the information asymmetry literature, the options stuff is new to me. And in addition, the data set is several times larger than any I've worked with, so I had to learn a few new SAS programming tricks. But being the nerd that I am, it's actually fun.

Logging my research (actually, my "writing") time has been a humbling experience. I 've been averaging one "zero time spent" day out of every three or four, and find that I don't spend nearly as much time writing as I thought even on the days I do write. But then, that's the point of the exercise. As my accounting friends say, "you can't manage what you don't measure".

I also got one small paper submitted, so I now have 4 under review.

On the personal side, I've been cycling pretty regularly (about 5x a week on average), and have done a few hard 15-20 milers. I'm still not in top shape, but I've been able to hold just shy of a 16 mph pace for a pretty hilly 20 miler. My goal for the summer is to get up to an 18 mph pace for the 20 miler and to ride to my mother's house, which is a very hilly 80 miles away.

Other than that, I've spent my time playing with the kids, trying to grow grass on the front part of my yard, and trying to unpack some of the boxes that have been in my basement since we moved almost a year ago.

I'll get back to posting some "real" stuff in the next couple of days.