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Getting back on track
posted by Heather on November 24, 2002 at 08:38 AM

Life seems to be settling down, so time to catch up with the rest of you and get hooked into this system. We’ve so enjoyed reading all the postings from you all. I’ve also shared some of them with Grandma. I thought she was gonig to pop a blood vessel when she was reading about David’s almost-van, she was laughing so hard.

We are comfortably into the rhythm of life here. We enjoy the house (although we haven’t done much work on it yet). There are sidewalks all over and many businesses within walking distance, so a big contrast from our past couple of houses. I’m still enchanted by the fact that things are growing in our yard that we can eat without much caretaking from us.

We have just begun to scratch the surface of things to see and do. We’ve been camping a couple of times and are planning to go to Joshua Tree in a couple of weeks. We’ve been to the Tar Pits and the Autry museum, as well as Santa Monica and the Pier. Daily life, though, is plenty fascinating!

Kim enjoys his new position. There is a good set of colleagues for him at USC. Beginning in February, he’s put together 4 grant proposals. A small one was funded and gotten good reviews on a couple of others, so that bodes well for future work. This fall, he taught lower division undergraduates for the first time (Survey of Health Promotion). He’s enjoyed it, but been fascinated by how some of them are still just big kids.

Sarah has embraced life here with gusto. She is attending San Marino Montessori this year and we are all happy with the choice. She was ready for some academic challenge and is doing very well. She is now reading, writing pretty well, and doing some basic math. Her class is a pretty cohesive group, so she is making some friends. As part of the regular curriculum, she has Spanish (daily); voice, recorder, and keyboard (1-2 times/week for each); and dance (2-3 times/week). There are also some after-school programs offered, so she’s tried gymnastics (wants to do it again) and ballet (LOVES it). She’s also taking swimming lessons at the Y and is becoming a little fish.

It has been difficult for her to make friends in the neighborhood. Kids don’t play in front yards much and everyone heads out to different schools, so that link is not there. The 11-yr-old boy next door tolerates her periodically, but we recently discovered (when trick-or-treating!) that one of her friends from school lives in the next block. The girls have gotten together a couple of times and I foresee many more.

Zoni is doing well but showing her age. She’d much rather poke around in the front yard these days than go for a walk. She’s found all the sun spots in the house and rotates through them during the day.

I’ve had to become an early bird. I need to work 6am-3pm to be on the same hours as the office in Central time, so I’ve actually been getting up at 5 to work a couple of hours before getting Sarah ready for school. Being done in the middle of the afternoon is great, though! There were a lot of changes at UAB in the past year, but things are somewhat steady now. Both large studies I work with are submitting renewals in January, so that is very exciting.

I’ll stop here and get more info up in a couple of days. We’ll have Kim’s mom and Grandma here for Thanksgiving, so should be interesting!

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Comments

Thanks for getting back on line. I will be interested in talking with Kim about his impressions of teaching undergraduates. While in Virginia this week, I stayed in the home of a dairy management professor from Virginia Tech. We talked about his frustrations with teaching, and how students have changed. It was a fascinating insight for me.

Posted by David | November 24, 2002 07:23 PM

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