Off to Magis National Faculty Retreat

I'm heading out to Regis University in Denver for the Magis Faculty Retreat. Out in the mountains for several days, it should be a great location for reflection. I plan to come back with some pictures. The picture above is from their web site. I'll see if going on a retreat in the middle of teaching three classes is really a retreat. I'll be swamped with grading when I get back.

A Sudden Spring Thunderstorm

There I was minding my own business, trying to work on some stuff for this coming week's classes and I noticed the clouds getting very dark, very quickly. The storm was brief and fierce. It passes through Ypsilanti in about 15 minutes, but it was fun to see. I caught some pictures out in front of Bombadill's.. Just alittle slice of Midwestern life.

A Little bit of Sunday photos

I took the camera with me downtown, but first I snapped a picture of the fence being put up by my next door neighbor. He's done a nice job. It will not only allow us both more privacy but will cut down on the cut throughs to our yards from Michigan Ave. Some people cut through his backyard and mine from Michigan Ave, making for a less secure environment.

The other picture is from the small park in between the library and Bombadill's. On this day at this time, it was undisturbed, although it is usually the site of various folks hanging out. It makes for a peaceful little snapshot.

Out at the old Ballgame

We caught the Binghamton Mets over the Memorial Day weekend. It was a beautiful day at the ballpark, although the results of the game were not so hot for the hometown boys. Extremely poor base running doomed the Mets to simply make it exciting at the end. Twice players got thrown out at home in early innings, as the players looked like they did not quite understand that running fast is often highly desirable in baseball when someone is trying to throw you out. Another guy was thrown out at first because he didn't even try to run to the base despite having hit a ball the third baseman couldn't field properly. At the end with two on and two outs, a B-Met lined out to center field that was just a hair from being an extra base hit. But the beer and peanuts were great. And we stayed for the fireworks afterward. The funny blue creature is "Ballwinkle". I know... don't ask.

Jones Park Vestal, NY

I made my way over to see my grad school friends, Art and Mike, over in Vestal, NY for the Memorial Day holiday. I'll run a few photos from activities. This is from the walk in a wooded park near (or in) Vestal. It is a great trail, one that it looks like not too many folks take. We ran across some mountain bikers but that was pretty much it. And we got in a great conversation about the merits of various psychological tests, not exactly a stem-winder for some folks, but it worked for us for a while.

Graduation Day at UDM

It was a really beautiful day for graduation. This is the kind of day graduations should be like. I hooded my first doctoral student, i.e., dissertation chairs put on the academic regalia of their advisees at the graduation ceremony. After the ceremonies in Calihan Hall, there was a reception in the Fisher Fountain area. The photos are of students and faculty at UDM.

UDM Research and Poster Fair 2008

Harold Greene, Ph.D. and I will present a poster of our research on the Rorschach and visual information processing at UDM in a couple of weeks. We are working on the article to submit to a journal. I think we have some nice findings from this first study. We have been able to correlate certain characteristics of the blots to different aspects of the eye movement process. The writing up of this is fairly tedious in some ways, because there are a lot of results being presented and a lot of details to keep track of. I hope to send off the paper by the end of the semester.