Busy busy busy

Ahoy all...

I've been busy, and mercifully not so much with school work, but that is soon going to change.

Kerry had her baby on Tuesday, about two hours before a tornado warning. It didn't amount to much in Tuscaloosa, but the same system produced a tornado in Greensboro that destroyed a couple of homes. No major injuries, or deaths, so that is good.

As for my papers...
I'm working on a third (and hopefully final) draft on my first. Not a major re-write, simply moving a couple of things around, adding a paragraph or two about a couple of more topics, and generating a better map of Ghana. This is essentially a month ahead of schedule. I'm going to meet with my first reader on Tuesday.

The second one is a bit further behind. I have a first draft in, but haven't heard back yet from it. Hopefully not a major re-write, but I just didn't feel as good about the second as I did the first. We'll see, that should come up on Tuesday.

I also am trying to get my presentation ready for the Tuskegee conference. I'm in the program, so I guess I've committed to presenting. Twenty minutes is all I get, so I'm going to have to whittle it down a bit from now (I'm at a half hour on the presentation, but have yet to cover everything).

It still looks like a May graduation.

And speaking of Geography, there is big news from the department. Dr. Jerry Webster is leaving in June, and is assuming the department chair at the U of Wyoming (he had been there immediately before coming to UA in the early 90s). I thought he left there because he didn't like the cold...but he's going back. It doesn't impact me, but it certainly is news. He's put in a recommendation for his replacement. He won't tell anyone--well, the students at least--who it is, but we all have an idea. Besides Dr. Webster, there are four full professors. One certainly does not make sense (he got his PhD in 68 and was head of the Sociology Dept. before it broke up in the 90s...but he's on the old side), another I don't think Dr. Webster much likes on a personal level (which may well be reason to recommend him for the position...haha), and the other one simply would not make a good chair. That leaves Dr. Luoheng Han. He's relatively young (my best guess is mid to late forties...certainly the youngest of the full professors). So we'll see. My money is on Dr. Han.