Jocelyn and Justin suggested that Dave think about pushing through and finishing his PhD in three years instead of four, which is already an optimistic, fairly aggressive goal. This would mean two more years of extremely rigorous work for Dave, and a decent extra load of my own. I'm not sure what I think about it all; I'll have to decide some other less-stressful week. 
Sun Oct 10 2004 21:12 The Long Journey to Graduation:
This week marked a very important milestone for Dave in his doctoral work; he made his debut as a fledgling public budgeting academic at the Association for Budget and Financial Managment conference in Chicago. He presented two papers he's been working on for about the last 6 months. One of the papers was a duet piece with Kurt Wood, who graduated with his doctorate from KU in May. The other was a collaboration with Justin Marlowe and Jocelyn Johnston, both professors at KU. Dave came home last night from his trip pleased with his experience, but feeling like the little fish in a big pond.
Tuesday was my night out at the Merc for another cooking class with Chef Paige Vandegrift. Paige likes to organize her classes around foods that are in season, so we learned about all sorts of wonderful ways to use apples! Yum. Ah, but I'm forgetting the day out we spent at the Kasnas City Zoo with Natalie Houghout (a former Lunt from San Antonio) and her two children, Adam and Sara. This is the first zoo I've ever been to that seemed to be arranged more for the animals than for the humans. We spent all day visiting all the animals. We even had our own visit from a kangaroo who hopped out of his pasture to see what we were having for lunch (the kangaroos were enclosed with nothing more than a boundry of large boulders placed here and there). The boys absolutely loved every moment of the day. Wednesday was a school day, so we didn't do too much, and we left the house at 5:00 am on Thursday to take Dave to the airport, so we played at home with our neighbors most of the day. On Friday morning, I put Atticus' bike and the jogging stroller in the Subaru, and we went to Prarie Park; thie place has lots of paved trails through a protected "wild space." Atticus biked, Samuel rode and I walked the half mile to the Prarie Park Nature Center that has all sorts of fun displays about animals, and even a few furry, slithery, feathery animal friends. We went for a swim Friday night. Saturday morning was the farmer's market, so we treked off there as soon as breakfast was over. We bought a pasture raised chicken, a gallon of honey and a pound and a half of apples. And I locked my keys in the car. The locksmith charged 40 dollars to retreive my keys, which I was glad to pay. This was my most expensive outing. Well, the week was full, and I must say I'm glad it is over. We'll see what fun I can cook up this week. ![[Comments]](/nb//themes/Default/comments.png "3 comments")
(3) Sun Oct 10 2004 21:40 Disclaimer: I didn't edit this at all. Read at your own risk:
I should say that the kids and I had a week full of fun outings to kick off October. We went to the pumpkin patch with Atticus' preschool on Monday. They had pony rides, racing pigs, a very benign corn maze, and a pumpkin patch, of course! Atticus chose a small green and orange speckled pumpkin, and Samuel chose (with my suggestion) a small orange one. They both were very proud of their choices, and I took pictures that I hope to get on the web in the next week, when Dave can help me upload them.