It's a Tihana Day!

It’s a Tihana Day!
Tihana Days are also known as Wednesdays for the rest of the known world and perhaps unknown worlds for that matter.

As usual, I went to my local Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for my large ice blended drink. I stopped by after my morning Cost Accounting and Budgeting course. I’ll write more about my classes later on in the blog or maybe Friday. It all depends on my time.

Tihana was working today and that obviously made my day. I didn’t even have to sound or look like Harry Callahan. [You need to be a film fan to understand that reference.] At first, I thought that Tihana wasn’t working today because I didn’t see her when I came into the Coffee Bean. Then, one of the other employees ducked into the back room and found Tihana.

Perfectomundo.

Naturally, the ice blended drink was perfect because Tihana made it.

Life was good for me this afternoon.

Tihana and I had a brief chance to talk; the store was busy. She needed the blog URL so she could read about herself. I have given her the address before but it seems to get lost in the clutter and drama and other activities in her life. I was very thankful that Tihana gave me a large strip of paper to write the address down and also that she gave me a marker pen; I had left my glasses home.

In addition to everything else going well for me, Tihana was wearing the red company tee shirt today. Red is a good color for her I think.

I should have brought my camera so I could have updated the Tihana image series, a red image would be a perfect addition to the series. I will try to remember to do that next week.

Visitors for November
We had 3,810 visitors to the blog in November. This was our best month ever for visitor traffic. The visitors were a curious lot; they viewed 5, 207 pages with the January 1, 2007 page being the most popular.

The blog continues to draw more foreign traffic than domestic visitor traffic. The difference would be even more pronounced if Sitemeter could track all of the Texans as coming from a foreign state. Texans truly believe that they live in a unique state and sometimes still think it is independent.

I do appreciate all of you who take time to visit the blog.

Teaching
The new school term started on Monday evening for me. This is the start of my third year of teaching at the school.

I have five classes this term and I like all five of them. This is the first term in a year when I will not be teaching a writing class. Three of my classes have small enrollments; Cost Accounting has five students, Marketing and the Internet has nine students, and Introduction to Project Management had seven students. I have had the students in the Cost Accounting and Marketing and the Internet courses in at last five or six other classes before. This will be the third time I have had most of the students from Project Management in one of my classes.

My Economics and Change course has about twenty students; this is a fluid number that changes from day to day. I have had more than half of the students in other classes so that will make it easy for me. One of the students in the class was happy to see me on Tuesday night.

She said, “Oh my God Mr. R., I was so upset at the thought that I wouldn’t have for a teacher anymore and now here you are. I’m so happy now. Do you think Sandra can enroll in the course? What other classes are you teaching this term that I can enroll in?” Sandra is another former student.

It certainly is nice to be liked even if I have a reputation of being a hard instructor.

I am considered a hard instructor because I have high expectations of the students. They have to earn their grades; I do not believe in social promotion. I expect them to come to class fully prepared to participate in the course and the discussions.

One of the other students in the Economics course thought my moustache looked good on me. That helped me feel good about keeping it on. This student was another of my former students.

My Monday night course is going to be a killer for me. I have forty four students on the current roster, that’s as of today and down three from Monday night. Tomorrow is a different day.

I am confident that I can teach the class but I am disappointed with the size because the size will prevent me from providing as much individualized attention as some students may require. I already know that there are three or four and probably more that will require more help than others.

I was originally scheduled to only have around thirty one students.

My class ballooned because some students like me more than the other instructor who is teaching the course at night like me. Some students also transferred because the other section was being offered on Friday nights.

What young person wants to be in school on a Friday night?

For that matter, what teacher wants to be in school on a Friday night?

There was some talk yesterday about breaking up my class and having two sections on Monday nights. That idea ran into trouble and died quickly because there were no available classrooms and there was no available teacher.

So, I will concentrate of teaching to the best of my ability and provide the students with the knowledge they need to succeed.

Looking Ahead a Bit
I have an appointment tomorrow for an ultrasound examination. This is for the Urologists. They want to check on my ureter after the stent removal. Hopefully, this will be a painless process for me.

Then, on Friday, I have my regular date with Dr. Karen where she will nag me about weight loss and then she will, hopefully, continue to tell me that all of the tests she had done last week were all normal.

Not too bad for me.


Be well and stay happy.