Mid-Continent Champions

Yay for the ORU Golden Eagles, who won tonight's Mid-Continent Conference championship basketball game against Chicago State!!! We're going to the NCAA, baby!

It was a great game...the kind I love to cheer for. The first half, and even a bit into the second, was neck-and-neck. The refs were stupid. But at least they were stupid toward both teams. And I really thought one guy on the opposing team was going to get kicked out of the game, but he didn't. There was such an energy in the arena, with a home crowd cheering our team on to victory. And it was a really scrappy game. Basketball. Joy. I had forgotten how much I missed it.

In other athletic news, I made it down to a 10-minute mile yesterday (3 miles in 30 minutes, actually). Perhaps for tall people or fast people this isn't a big deal, but it was probably the first time I've hit that speed knowingly since freshman year. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. Of course, I won't be satisfied until I'm at a 9-minute mile, at the very least.

Today was very full; I really don't think much got accomplished. Class, staff meeting with VP, work, class, ePortfolio meeting with C&W rep, basketball game. Now blogging, then homework. We're hosting the rep from Chalk & Wire this week, which is pretty cool because we can bombard him with all the questions we've been storing up and try to convince him to do all kinds of things the software can't currently do. I got a preview of eP2 today, which is a new upgrade of the ePortfolio software. A total rewrite. It'll be a while before we go live with it (no definite time projections yet), but it's so much more user-friendly than the current version. I think students are going to have a lot fewer hassles using it, and that makes my life very happy indeed!

I missed being able to go to the C. S. Lewis & the Inklings Society conference this past weekend. The original plan was to write a paper over Christmas break and then attend/present at the conference. Sadly, the original plan was marred by the facts that (a) any of my productive Christmas-break energy went into the freelance project and (b) it's too hard to read a new Charles Williams book, do the necessary research, come up with a brilliant idea, write it, and work overtime and do grad school. It became apparent quite quickly that it wasn't going to happen. I know I made the right decision, but it's bittersweet. That conference last year was amazing. And let's face it: literature is my passion.

Maybe next year. Or maybe next year I'll be somewhere else altogether, studying what I want to study. It's hard to know what changes a year will bring.