Today I work and go to school for 12 hours straight.  In there is a total of one hour and 30 minutes when I am not actually working a shift or sitting in a class.  That sounds bad enough, but I had to get to Ann Arbor early to deliver some books to classmates, and we had to get up early in order to move our bed from our room to the guest room in preparation for the delivery of a new bed for the master bedroom.

So all in all, I misjudged time, and arrived on campus at 7:30 this morning.  Way too early.  I have delivered the books to appropriate mailboxes and now I sit in a computer lab reading email and wasting time until I can walk the few blocks to the library to start my shift at 9:00.

Obviously I am making this day more difficult than it has to be by being overly anxious about my schedule and arriving way too early.  I could have had another hour of sleep!  Lesson learned.

I try not to be political here, but you need to know the work the Truck Safety Coalition is doing right now.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Bush administration are pushing hard to start a “pilot” program to allow Mexican trucks to drive anywhere in the U.S.  Currently Mexican trucks are restricted to certain border areas.  This has been a hot issue for several months and has been studied by several agencies, including the DOT Inspector General ‘s own report that identified serious safety deficiencies that still exist in the program.

Specifically key pilot program requirements that address federal laws regarding safety in the US have been ignored with this pilot.  At least five states (NE, NV, MT, RI, UT) and perhaps more are not ready to enforce safety rules for the pilot program.  Half of our states do not have procedures in place to oversee and enforce requirements in several areas of safety and security.  There are unresolved data deficiencies on Mexican truck driver convictions and violations.  Safety inspectors do not have important safety information on vehicle accident reports, or driver violations maintained by Mexican authorities, nor any information about whether the pilot motor carriers, vehicles or drivers have insurance.  There is no method to ensure that Mexican drivers comply with U.S. drug and alcohol testing laws.  In reality, we have no way of controlling what the Mexican drivers are doing when they are in Mexico just prior to driving over the boarder onto our roads.   

Though in late July the House passed an amendment to their DOT appropriations bill that will not allow DOT to spend any money on this pilot until these issues are remedied, the Senate had not done the same, and DOT still planned to roll the pilot out. 

However, members of the Truck Safety Coalition were called to action, and we all called, faxed and emailed our Senators and today the Senate approved an amendment to their own DOT appropriations bill that also prohibits spending on the pilot until these issues are cleared up.  This is the direct result of our work, and I for one am proud that somewhere out there at least one life has been saved by our efforts to keep Mexican trucks from rolling freely over our roads without having to follow our own safety standards.

Stay tuned, I’m sure this issue has not gone completely away.  Check out more about the truck crisis at:   http://www.trucksafety.org

This past weekend marked the 17th wedding anniversary for husband and me.  We spent Saturday doing homework (me) and installing a new dishwasher (him).  Any thoughts of going out to eat were negated by a hose too short requiring another trip to Home Depot and generally irritated feelings of disgust, his by installation, mine by homework.  So we went to dinner Sunday instead and ate too much, drank too much wine and generally behaved in a refined but irresponsible way.

Today we are back on track, diet and study wise.  Even Katie the dog seems to recognize that I HAVE TO GET SOME WORK DONE!  NOW!  and has retreated to her bird watching pillow.  I have finished the readings for my Tuesday archival class and will attempt again to get the assignment done for the Wednesday government docs  class.  The instructor has emailed me more specific instructions so maybe it won’t be so frustrating this time.  Then on to Thursday’s grant writing reading, and then the dreaded Friday search and retreival class preparation.  All by the end of the day today.  Sure.  No problem.

Now..Katie, what did you need?  To go outside?  RIGHT NOW??   (..sigh..)  Ok.  

Homework.  Last year I liked homework; that feeling has worn off.  I am attempting to read four chapters in a government document text book, and two in a book that is describing the history of archiving.  I finally resorted to sitting out in the car to accomplish this as Katie the dog was not ready to take a nap and asking to go out approximately every four pages.  Yesterday I attempted the reading feat by going to my local library.  Where I promptly couldn’t stay awake.  I am obviously literally out of academic shape.

Out in the car the government documents book actually got interesting as I considered that the information I was unearthing there about how a bill or resolution goes through congress might help me in the truck safety fight.  I know, I should have learned all this civics stuff in high school.  But high school was a long time ago and if I ever knew this I sure don’t remember it now.

Now on to the assignments for these two classes!  At the moment I can’t even remember what my four classes are for sure, but I’ll concentrate today on the ones I have to be prepared for on Tuesday and Wednesday and concentrate tomorrow on the Thursday and Friday classes. 

I need to get myself into a new rut; studying all day on the weekends!

Today I attended two classes.  The first was a grant writing course put on by the School of Socialwork, and held in the School of Education.  Most of my classmates are education or socialwork graduate students.  They are all very young.  As we went around the room introducing ourselves, each talking about what we want to be when we grow up, I felt the raw energy and the idealism of these youngsters.  They all believe they are going to change the world.  Some of them will.  All of them, in some way, will change the part of the world they inhabit.

My second class is put on by the School of Information as well as the Ford Business School.  The topic is ethics and technology.  Here most of the classmates are people I’ve had in other courses during the past year.  There is less idealism, more cynicism as we listen to stories about “incidents” which revolve around computer fraud, identity theft and more.  The objective of the class is not to learn how to do these things, but to learn how to deal with them, how to determine the undermining issues revolving around them, and how to critically think, review and supply recommendations.

Both classes are going to be a lot of work.  One of them has to go.  I was fooling myself if I thought I could handle 5 classes, work 19 hours and spend 3 hours a day commuting.  Tonight after my 5-8 p.m. class ended and I was waiting in the warm evening air for the bus (which was late) I made a decision to let the ethics class go. 

I think I want to be around some idealism for awhile.

So.  I’ve attended one class.  It seems fun, but it looks like a lot of reading.  Not that I’m opposed to reading, actually I sort of like it.  I’ve learned, however, that puppy Katie is an anti-reading dog, so reading at home has become a hassle.  This first class is on archiving, which I know nothing about.  Feels good to learn something new again.

One down, four more to explore.  I need to drop one of the five classes I’m enrolled in…but which one?

The new semester starts today.  The long, languid summer is officially over.  Soon I need to organize my stuff and head out, back to West Hall and rooms 311 and 409, where apparently I will spend the majority of the rest of my school days.

 I miss my flip-flops already.

I heard them before I could see them.  Noisy honking, the sound of air beaten by wings.  Six geese flew over the tops of the trees in my front yard early this morning.  Six geese.  Years ago I believed that if I saw six geese flying it was a sign that everyone in my family was happy, well and safe.  I believe that still.

I had the most amazing experience tonight.  Arriving home from work about 7:30 p.m. the sun had begin to lower in the sky when I took the dog out to the front yard after her supper.  As she was sniffing around looking for a good place for her deposit I became aware of a large amount of birds flying overhead, from the neighbor’s oak trees to my birch trees.  More and more birds began to flock into the birch trees, but I couldn’t get a good look at them as I was facing into the setting sun.

I moved with the dog around to the other side of my grove of trees, trying to be quiet which was a stretch while attached to an eight month old sheltie.  The birds were swooping out of the trees snapping at insects and then returning to the trees.  I still couldn’t tell for sure what they were.  The setting sun was making them glow gold, and I thought I could catch a bit of a topper on the head and maybe a bright stripe tipping the tail feathers.  But I wasn’t sure.

I could hear their wings as they swooped and glided above me.  I moved further around the trees, and could see that the sky above my trees in the back yard was filled with these birds.  I began to suspect they were cedar waxwings which move in large groups and decend on an area all at once.  For a picture of a cedar waxwing, check out this site: 

 http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Cedar_Waxwing.html

I stood quietly, telling Katie to Shhhh! and watched for quite a time, then moved her inside and went back out with my binoculars.  Sure enough, when I could finally find one that sat still for a second, at the tip of an oak tree, it was confirmed.  A whole flock of cedar waxwings had set up a temporary feeding station in my yard. 

I stood in the yard watching them playing and eating, swooping, twisting in the golden light, and listening to them chirp to each other for a long time, until the sun went down and the air cooled and finally they flew away, one big flock of beautiful birds glowing in the last rays of the sun. 

Hey Mom, wish you could have seen this.  Then again, since I saw it, I guess you did too!

Just another week and school will start.  After the endless summer it will, I hope, feel good to have a bit (OK, a lot) more structure in my life.  I stopped at a book store this week and bought the textbooks for two of my five classes.  Almost $200 later I lugged a big bag of books up to the bus stop.  Hmmm….this is beginning to seem like work.  I haven’t actually looked at the books I purchased…no sense getting excited (or depressed) too soon!

Meanwhile I am starting to have dreams about school.  Dreams where I am lost and can’t find the class, which is hilarious because four out of my five classes meet in one of two rooms at the school! 

Tonight I think I will try to have a dream about school where I get all A’s.