This and that

It's a quiet cool day today, which makes it perfect for lots of cooking. We're having our first guests over for dinner tonight. I don't know why I waited so long to start inviting people over, except that I somehow thought that I should "know" people better before I invited them. But recently it occurred to me that inviting people over would allow me to get to know people. And cooking at Christmas reminded me how much I enjoy doing big, elaborate cooking for people.

Andrew's been in and out of the house all day. He only arrived last night, but has plenty of car repair planned during his stay here. If there's one thing I've learned since meeting him, it's that there's always one more thing you can repair or tune up on a car or motorcycle. It occasionally drives me crazy to lose whole weekends to car repair (you'll recall that we're a one car family, although we live in a very walkable neighborhood). However, I do appreciate that our car, aged sixteen years, has never been un-driveable.

I've been consumed with two problems since I got back from Jacksonville. One is personal and one is business, but neither is tragic. First, our refrigerator isn't quite working, and it took me several days to determine that for certain. The landlord has been great about this, and has had the repairman out twice. The freezer is working fine, and it appears to be a leak in the seal between the door and the fridge compartment. While parts are being ordered, I'm able to keep things sufficiently cold by rotating jugs of ice between the fridge and the freezer.

At work, I've been struggling with a challenge. Presenting my ongoing research at the conference last week made me realize that I'm trying to make new kinds of claims with my data that I haven't done in the past. In particular, I'm trying to see if I can use video data, which is best at telling you details about a particular moment, to talk about larger patterns in students' behavior. It's frustrating to be so stuck, but it's also nice to have a challenge. I've set myself a deadline: if I can't say anything meaningful by April, I'll move on to a new project. But in the meantime I'm reading lots and discussing lots with people who might have good ideas.

I've had some good news too. Andrew has picked a committee and set a defense date (April 7th!). This means he almost certainly will have moved down here by this summer, and that makes me very, very happy.