Departure Imminent

We are leaving town tomorrow morning. We look forward to seeing some of you soon.

Ready for Christmas

Well, school's out, grades are turned in, and I am ready for Christmas vacation. I am still managing to get some work done (book research, grant editting), but I am more antsy than normal. Poor Brian is still working overtime, trying to pull ahead so his actual vacation will be less stressful. I, on the other hand, have been baking more cookies, wrapping Christmas presents, addressing Christmas cards, and sipping hot cocoa. I made cookies a couple days ago with a recipe Anne sent me, and they turned out great. I think I am replacing my old recipe with Anne's---thanks Anne!

We will be heading north early next week. I hope it stops snowing for a few days so the roads can be nicely plowed, but that might just be wishful thinking on my part. Amanda, when will you be in West Michigan?

Unseasonably wam December

It has been quite warm lately, even for Florida. I think our AC kicked in for a short while today. On Monday, we went to an outdoor wedding. In most places, this would be quite risky in December, but here it was fine. It was a very nice wedding at Maclay Gardens. Here we are at the wedding:

Recent days in Florida

It's been some time since I posted anything substantive so here is a short update on all things Florida-Sites. I have been working extra hours at work for a while but I started the last two weeks working them consistently each day and then putting in whatever fit well on the weekends. I'll continue that trend through whenever we head north for vacation. Justice Anstead is leaving the Court in January (as was expected) and we are on an expedited track to get things out the door. We would also like to see family over Christmas without taking a pile of work home (which may be an impossible goal as to the latter part), so I have hoped that by working several extra hours consistently we can avoid that and make the holidays merrier.

In other news, the ferrets, fish, and assorted reef inhabitants are doing well. The tanks are fairly stable and almost everything is visibly growing. Even the xenia that died and disappeared completely months ago in the power outage while we were out of town has reappeared and grown significantly. Pictures of the assorted things in days to come, perhaps.

My neck and back are also feeling better than they were last month. I still feel soreness in my spine from time to time and perhaps that will never go away. But it is not interferring with life and that is nice compared to how it was in November and the months before that.

No development on the job front yet but that is not a surprise. After the AALS rounds passed in the first two weeks of November, I knew the next things I would hear back on were LLMs. I do not expect to hear from all of them until March or so. So my next focus is on sending out Fellowship applications, preparing to coach an FSU moot court team in DC in February again, and then update the 2009 edition of the handbook. I have other projects in the mix as well, including the edited video of Tom and Shiela's (Wooster friends) wedding. But that is all more than enough to keep me busy for a while.

Finally, I suppose I'll note something that has been on my mind lately. Last week, I read what was by far the most effective victim impact testimony I have ever read. In Florida, after someone has been convicted of a crime that they could be sentenced to death for, the court has a special proceeding where the jury decides whether to recommend the death penalty or not. During that proceeding, the victim's family sometimes reads a prepared statement expressing the loss they have felt from the victim's death. I can't be specific about what I read, but suffice it to say that it was very eloquent, heartfelt words expressing a great loss. I wish I was permitted to repeat the words the person used, but I obviously cannot. And yet, should any defendant with a family be executed, we immediately cause a second family to feel a similar type of loss. It is a difficult world we live in and the death penalty is a very complicated issue for me. But that is a post for another day.

Heaters in Florida even

Last week, our heater unfortunately went out. Someone came out and fixed it, but for about three days we had no heat. That forced me to put heaters in the fish tanks since at night it was dropping to 30-40 degrees outside (50-60 inside) and tropical fish perhaps obviously need 70+ degree water.

The ferrets handled it pretty well, they just slept in piles instead of spread out. We also put a small space heater near their cage that blew hot air towards a corner of one of the floors. We didn't have it on very often, but for several hours one night we did. Here is a picture showing Eve who lined up in front of it to enjoy the heat (the bottom of the picture shows the heater so you can see the ferret position relative to the heater):

The other ferrets dealt with the cold in their own ways as well. Chewbacca stayed in his tent even more than normal:

And Rex and Brussels slept under the blankets in the hammock (Rex shown below):

And of course Hanneke had to find a way to stay warm too. No one call the style police:

That is of course hot chocolate she is drinking. On the plus side, it did make our Christmas tree fit in more:

Our heater is back on though so it is back to norma Florida indoor weather. I hope all is well up north where I imagine the cold is harder to escape.