Friday, February 24, 2006

We had a nice visit from my sister, our nephew and my parents on Wednesday evening. Tyler, our nephew, is growing so quickly. It is amazing the difference a week makes in an infant. He is starting to attempt imitations of sounds that he hears. It is good that he seems to be on his way to being a talker, because if he wasn’t, he might have trouble getting a word in edgewise during any family get-togethers!

Last night I had a good meeting with my dissertation advisor and think that I have solved the structural problem that I have been wrestling with for a while now. We then had a departmental grad student meeting where a collegue presented a preliminary version of a lecture that she will give at the ARCE conference this year. It was a good talk and these meetings give you a bit of a sense that you are not alone in this whole dissertation thing.

Friday, February 17, 2006

We got back from Hawai’i late last week and have spent the last week trying to catch up on everything. We spent February 1-9 on the island of Oahu. I gave a paper at the Evolving Egypt conference at BYU-Hawai’i. The paper was well-received and there may be an opportunity to publish a version of the paper later this year in a proceedings volume that will be published by the university. Keep your kingers crossed for me! We spent the first four days at the conference and then took the last 5 days to see qite a bit of Oahu and learn as much about the history and culture as possible. Having grown up surfing with my Dad, seeing the North Shore was very high on my list of priorities. We visited Waimea Bay, the Banzai Pipeline and Sunset Beach while we were there. See some of our photos here. We visited the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor along with the Iolani Palace, the former palace of the Hawai’ian royalty and Washington Place, the official residence of the Governor of Hawai’i. I was able to stitch a number of photos together into beautiful panorama photographs. We hope that you enjoy the photos!