Salamanders

March is not coming in like a lamb in Massachusetts. We had a sloppy mix of snow, sleet, and rain today. Tomorrow, however, its supposed to get quite warm. If it stays warm into the evening, I think the salamanders will march Tuesday night. It's supposed to cool off again, so it probably depends, at least somewhat, on when the temperature change happens.

I lead my class into the field last week -- just to a park in downtown Amherst where we tried to collect some data. I meant it to be an exercise in what happens when you aren't quite sure what you're doing hoping to persuade them to make sure they're prepared before they go into the field for real. I find that the only thing a lot of students discover when they carry out their first research project is how not to carry out a research project. That's better than nothing, but I hope we can do better. It was fun -- we got a chance to see what the project is going to be like and got a sense for what needs to be done to get ready.

I've been invited to give a talk in North Carolina on May 16 and so the other thing I've started doing is getting my talk put together. They want me to give a talk on course redesign. I've given talks on that a couple of times -- I'm looking forward to putting together a new talk, though, and hoping to make myself use it as an excuse to actually write something. I haven't had any terrible catastrophes this semester, which is helping me get started early and having the chance to really focus on something for a change.