Enough animals update

Life continues to be rich and full in Enoughsville. This week, I have been particularly rich in animal experiences.

There's a park near me where every spring I get to see the First Robin of Spring – rather, the first Invading Robin Horde of Spring, because they travel in large flocks and take over the area. This past week I got to see the Last Robins of Fall, apparently; they were partying in the park, appreciating recent rains and the chance to take turns doing the splish-splash-I-was-taking-a-bath song.

Then I imitated the robins and flew south myself, winding up in Texas.

People sitting in the airport were grumpy. 
People working outside were animated and seemed happy.
"Motion is lotion," my friend tells me.

On the flight down, I heard back from the journal where I had submitted my revision just six days before. In the fastest turnaround I have ever seen, or likely ever will see, my paper was accepted. Wow! That was a wonderful way to start the week off happy. I got to tool around Baylor University, which is a really lovely campus. I got to see their resident bear, and to give a math talk. The bear slept through my talk, as you can see, but fortunately not all of the students did, and so we had a lot of fun together.

Arrow points to where the bear is sleeping.

Yup, really sleepy.

While I was gone, Ofsnuff outsourced the torture of our dog, taking Prewash to the vet to get the goop in her ears. When I got back home, I got to DIY the dog torture again; she's getting better about me putting goop in her ears, although still not great; the good news is that it seems to be working, so that whether or not she's better at goop acceptance, her ears are better at being regular old dog ears.

"If I create a moat of volleyball scraps, 
will that keep your torture device away from my ears?"

Building on dog success, I also finally built and installed the cow shelves. They look really good (I say in my biased opinion, but also in the opinion of many passersby who stop to compliment me and sometimes to take photographs). There are still a few cows in the washing machine that I need to add to the display, but it's essentially done, and is a very happy little spot on this block.

Very early in the week, even before I jumped on my plane, we had a nice visit from Gosling and Colin. Colin seems to fit right in to the family routine, gamely playing along when we brought out the Boggle set after waffles and playing five rounds with us as we mopped up words left and right; he and Gosling walked around the campus with us afterward and took time to smell the roses; they offered me gratuitous and enthusiastic advice on Cow Shelf Bling. 

There are six of us in the photo, if you count Nelson
(who is on the phone with OfSnough).

My students are recovering from the midterm that I just gave; two of them have decided to withdraw and focus on other classes, but others have decided to rethink how they study and practice problems, and I've offered them my enthusiastic support and encouragement.  So, onward toward the chain rule and optimization problems, we go!

And that's the news from our family (and from a bunch of animals we've encountered), all of whom continue to be rich in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.