Try To Be A Straight-A Student

My first assignment for my graduate class got a virtual thumbs up from the professor. He's using part of it as a discussion point for the rest of the class. This makes me feel a little better about my chances to do well in graduate school!

Unfortunately, work has been very difficult the past few weeks and doesn't appear to have any intention of improving soon. I just need to keep reminding myself of how blessed I am to have a good, stable job that I (mostly) enjoy.

A Change is Gonna Come

Image taken at Atlanta Botanical Garden by Robbie, April 2007.

Twenty years ago today, I was in Washington, DC, for the inauguration of George H.W. Bush. My college band was a national representative in the parade, or I never would have been able to go—or wanted to, really, since I wasn't much of a political maven in those days. It was the Bicentennal Inaugural, 200 years since George Washington was sworn in as our first president under the new Constitution. Think of all we've learned since 1789!

I'll be watching the Inauguration today at my desk at work, via the CNN feed provided by my employer. No matter your opinion of the policy positions held by our new president, it's impossible to deny the importance of this event. For the first time in our 220-year history, our president will not be a white man. All of us who don't fit into that mold suddenly find that glass ceiling over our heads crumbling to dust.

On a subject much less historic but still personally notable, I start graduate school today. My textbooks are waiting for me in the leasing office of my apartment complex, and I've just downloaded the syllabus from Blackboard. I'm nervous but excited, on a much smaller scale like the Obamas feel today, I imagine.

It's a chance for a new beginning for all of us, and I hope we'll embrace it.

Most Sensational, Inspirational

Atlanta skyline from the Omni Hotel. Photograph by Shannon Noelle, taken September 1, 2007.

As part of our New Year's resolution to do more things here in town, my sister and I spent several hours Saturday at the Atlanta History Center, most of it in the exhibit "Jim Henson's Fantastic Worlds." Fantastic doesn't begin to describe it. You might expect something that's 98% Muppets, but it was closer to a 60/40 split. They had all sorts of projects he did back in the 1950s and 1960s: silkscreen posters and art done in college, cartoons and pen-and-ink drawings, storyboards for various films, and even a showing of the film "Time Piece," which he wrote, directed, and starred in, and for which he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects, in 1966 (I never knew about that).

It was an amazing journey into the mind of an amazing man, and one that took me back through my childhood in the process. I highly recommend seeing any part of this collection if you can. It's a Smithsonian traveling exhibit; schedule dates are available here.