someone let these two kids get married.

You know, no matter how happy we look in that photo, we’re even happier today. I love you, Brooke!

Brooke and the kids are entertaining the grandparents this week. The twins were sick all last week (viral pink-eye), but at least they got new hair cuts (pics to follow).

I’m drowning in grading (midterms, papers, etc.) after a week in San Diego for a conference (and then up the coast to see some friends and family).

We’ve also been throwing our arms out playing Wii.

Nine years ago Brooke and I celebrated our first married Valentine’s Day by making our first large joint purchase: her piano. This V-Day we picked out a minivan, but couldn’t take delivery of it until this week.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, Jeremy, that’s soooo romantic,” but seriously? A minivan?

(more…)

No names yet, but here are the two new additions.

Baby A
6lbs 0oz, 19.5″
Born at 8:50am

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Baby B
6lbs 2oz, 19″
Born at 8:51am

Those pictures were taken in the OR, within ten minutes of birth. Both are doing fine, but need a little oxygen to help with the transition. Brooke is starting to get feeling back in her legs… We’ll post more later.

We don’t want to give it to you all at once. So we’ve assembled the following ten hints and put enough space between them for you to consider each individually. Think about each one, then move on if you haven’t guessed.

1. The junction of Highways 82 and 91 southeast of Cleveland, Ohio.

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2. The modern baseball franchise that won their first World Series in 1924.

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3. Sometime between being hunted by the “Predator” and saying, “Idis naught a toomah,” Arnold Schwarzenegger co-starred in this movie. More specifically, it was after he partnered with Jim Belushi, but before he went to Mars.

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4. Brooke has something in common with Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lopez besides being incredibly hot. (No, she hasn’t been in a movie with Randall Batinkoff).

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5. Kofi Annan, Ann Landers, Jenna Bush, Cory Lidle, Jose Canseco, and Maurice Gibb are all well-known examples.

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6. So are Fred Weasley, Luke Skywalker, Stuart Tarleton, and Zack Martin.

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7. So is Ashtyn (Jeremy’s niece).

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8. The term “monochorionic diamniotic” is really important.

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9. We’ve been using the nicknames “Thing 1” and “Thing 2.”

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10. They are due on January 4th, 2009.

So I turned in my dissertation today. Five copies, printed on bond paper, 1.5″ margins on the gutter side of each page (1″ on the other), the front matter single-side-only, in APA style, with three sets of signed forms, and an electronic version to boot. I paid my $130 for binding and microfilming (do people still use that?) and was congratulated three times by the undergrads working in the library administration office.

Upon leaving, I had a feeling that reminded me of the Matrix. Right at the end, when Neo has finally mastered the Matrix, he flexes his shoulders and the world bends around him, as if it was controlled by him. Well, as I walked up from the bowels of the library, I felt I could let out a barbaric yawp
to shatter every window in the atrium.

Finding, therefore, that I was lacking some perspective, I detoured by the French Department, my old haunt, to humble myself by stammering through a conversation with the department chair.

(Il faut absolument que j’aille encore en France.)

Between work and family activities, I haven’t had much of a chance to celebrate, but I passed my dissertation defense without qualification (that’s a good thing) last Monday. I have since been pushing my dissertation through the college administration, which is the last step before graduating.

The grilling was rather intense by the two senior members of my committee, but I ask for it (literally). I’ll post a copy of the dissertation and some of the audio from the defense sometime (maybe this weekend).

The really funny part was on the Fourth, when I donned the Doctor (of Philosophy) t-shirt Brooke bought me and asked Ben to read the front.

“Dork-tor?”

Quick updates:

First, I am now within a week of defending my dissertation. The hardest thing at this point is getting my 130 pages into less than 20 slides.

Second, I’m back in the saddle again. I did what used to be my daily morning ride up the canyon on Saturday. It took me 30% longer, and I burned 50% more calories than I used to (that’s what almost a year off the bike will do to you). Yesterday I did the same ride at lunch and cut 9 minutes off Saturday’s time (not bad for an 18-mile course). Of course, I was anaerobic 60% of the time.

Much to the relief of my wife, and to the chagrin of my mother-in-law, we are moving on. I accepted a tenure-track position at at SUNY Brockport, located near Rochester, New York. (Before you ask, it’s as near the city as San Francisco is LA.)

The job starts August 20th, but I will, no doubt, have much to do before then. I also have to be here for graduation August 17th, which means we’ll have to be moved before then. (We can’t move 2,000 miles in two days.)

After some thought over the issues in this post, I have decided to bite the bullet and fork my blog.

This blog, enworb, will continue to serve the purpose of communicating with friends and relatives on a personal level, including off-beat opinions, quick thoughts, videos of the kids, etc. While the new blog, http://brownelearning.org , will host most my professional musing, announcements for the classes I teach, etc. Some articles will appear on both sites. Hopefully, this will mean that you don’t have to get those RSS notes about things you care less about.

BTW, you might notice the play-on-words in the new domain name. Enworb is a great, private call sign because it’s my last name backwards, but it must be spelled out for people to understand it. Of course, the problem with a last name like Browne (with an “e”), is that you have to spell it anyway. I thought of domain names like brownwithane.net, etc., but they were still too tricky. Fortunately, one of my professional interests is e-learning, so, to people who do not know me, I will tell them the domain name is “brown e-learning dot org”.

PS – I highly recommend http://www.registerfly.com/ for domain names. Not as user friendly (though their email tech support is responsive) as the bigger guys, but a whole lot cheaper.