Good afternoon!

Good afternoon! It is a beautiful sunny day out with a lovely temperature of 25°. Not bad. Not bad at all. I am ready for a nap in spite of the loveliness of the day and would like nothing better than to take one right now.

Our weekend was rather weekendish. Saturday there was some housecleaning and such. Paul took the Jetta to Worcester so it can be fixed. Jonathan sold the Mercedes. Sunday was Sunday. We went to church and had burritos for lunch.

Monday was just yesterday. Holy crud. It seems like much longer ago than that. Funny thing the way time works.

After class yesterday I spoke with the teacher, Dr. Greenwood, about my honors component. He said that I could do a spreadsheet analysis such as we are working on in Strategic Management. That sounds cool to me. Today in class he said that I could do the spreadsheet and then transfer all the information to a power point such as we are going to do for class. Fine. That sounds like fun.

It turns out that Economics is much like Algebra for me. I hated it in high school. I didn’t like spending the first ¾’s of class talking about whatever sport was in season so I didn’t pay attention. I would write poems or essays or short stories because they were far more interesting than football or baseball or track or whatever. I didn’t do well. In college, I did well when I had a teacher who was willing to take the time to explain what was happening and why.

Economics online was not much good. The book was a book. Nothing out of the ordinary other than it was only half of another book. I was taking the Macro-Economics part and Micro-Economics was not being covered. I am pretty sure that even though I was taking only part of the larger book, there was more of the half in the larger book than in the smaller part I had. The book wasn’t much good at explaining to me what was happening or why and much of what I did was guesswork. I managed to get okay grades but had to rely on an extra credit paper in order to get an A. This time around, the book explains things much more clearly and the teacher is dynamic.

In this Micro-Economics, we have groups. I have done almost no group work for any in class classes. About the only one was last spring for the Honors Colloquium course I took and it almost doesn’t count because we really were just doing our own part and then combining it into a group presentation. For Economics, there are five of us in the group and so far it seems pretty good. We’ve divided up our first group assignment up and each of us has something to do by a certain time at which time it must be submitted to the person who is putting together the power point. At that point, we’ll each review and then go over it Monday in order to be ready to present Wednesday. I think this is terrific.

In Strategic Management, although I love the content, I do not love my group. There are five of us. The group leader (I am not sure who the group leader is for my Economics group, by the way) and one other girl are both high maintenance. The other girl is a follower and would like to complete the whole thing working solely as a group. The one guy, I think, is a latent leader; he seems like he would be good as a leader if put in that position but he is content to just sit back and do whatever is assigned to him. What annoys me is that if I were doing the spreadsheet on my own, it would have been done by the middle of last week. If I were transferring the information to the power point, it would be done by the end of this week. As it is, I volunteered to begin the transferal of information and was pretty effectively blown off. The leader said, “What are you all doing tomorrow at this time?” Well, I’m in class every day from 11:00 to 12:15. I could go early but she’s in class then. I said that I do school work while my kids are in school. “What about Wednesday night?” Wednesday’s are my most chaotic days.

What I do not understand is why we can’t have certain things assigned for each of us to have done by a certain time. For goodness sake, I am willing to do the whole transferal of information from the spreadsheet to the power point. Dr. Greenwood said that would take four to five hours. I’m willing! Good. Grief. I don’t know what else to say other than this is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t think this is really a good part to do ‘as a group.’ Only one person can transfer the information, it doesn’t take a committee to do it.

Everyone is home now. Seth took Ryan out to the trampoline. I haven’t mentioned Ryan yet. He is over because Meredith had an appointment and didn’t have time to take him over to Adam whose car is not running. I guess we are a viable option; we certainly don’t mind if he comes over. Anyway, he’s been playing with marbles and having fun and then the kids got home and Seth took him out to the trampoline. Meredith called a few minutes ago and said she’s on her way over to get Ryan so it’s good that he’s having fun with Seth since he had to be alone with just me and Laura (which isn’t a bad thing but we’re not much fun, I think).

I believe I will be going for now. We have missionaries coming over this evening and that means I have things to do. Not that I ever don’t.

Have a wonderful rest of the day!