Yesterday evening I drove down to Columbus to see Ron Paul speak at Ohio State. I’ve seen him on TV and the internet and read a couple of his books, but I hadn’t seen him in person before yesterday. He was in Columbus, Ohio with Judge Andrew Napolitano to tape a live broadcast of Freedom Watch. After the broadcast, Ron Paul returned to the stage to deliver his message, which the crowd enthusiastically received. After the speech I hung around for a couple minutes and was able to shake hands with Ron Paul—unfortunately, he was busy greeting all the other attendees and I wasn’t able to get a photo with him. It was a great event, and I’m glad that I decided to make the drive down from Toledo at the last minute.

Wow! The weather has been so nice this past week, and today I finally got outside for a run. Now, I haven’t been running outside for months. My excuse is that the weather was either too cold or too snowy, which it often was. But, at least partially, I just preferred to go rock climbing instead of running. But, I tried to stay in shape aerobically by working out on the elliptical machine every now and then. Uh, that didn’t work out so well. I could seriously tell that I’m not in running shape—at least not how I used to be. So, I guess it’s back to work for me, and I’ll be hitting the park trails more regularly from here on out … weather permitting, of course.

Tonight is the Academy Awards, but, eh, I’m not too interested. I’m not too impressed with most of the movies that come out these day. Though, Avatar was definitely a great movie. I have, however, been watching some quality movies on TV—classic movies to be exact—on Turner Classic Movies. Last weekend, I watched a bit of Ben-Hur, which unfortunately started a bit too late for me to watch all of it. Last week I caught a couple more: Out of the Fog, Cool Hand Luke, and To Have and Have Not. These are great movies with actual stories, characters, and dialogue rather than a series of special effects, never-ending chase scenes, and what-have-you. I much prefer watching these classics on than most modern movies; I just miss that movie theater popcorn.

Some decent weather has finally hit Northwest Ohio. Yesterday and today have been beautiful, sunshiny days. Yesterday I took a little stroll through Wildwood Metro Park. It felt balmy with the sun shining and temperatures over forty degrees. A perfect Winter day. The downside is that the snow and ice are melting, and my feet fell through. I was walking down the path, and I noticed the snow and ice looked a little mushy. A few steps later and I saw where some other wanderers’ footprints seemed to have broken through the snow and ice to the muddy waters below. I decided I’d better move off the path to go around the pool of water. Too late. With my next step, I crashed through.

Yesterday I finished creating a list of all the instructors at the University of Toledo this semester, and today I’m feeling the effects. I spent the better part of two days compiling a list of instructors at UT for my dissertation; the instructors are the population I want to sample. I contacted all sorts of people and offices around the university, but no one could or would provide me with a list. So, I had to make one myself. I looked up every subject in which courses are offered this semester and copied the names and e-mail addresses of over 1500 instructors into an Excel spreadsheet. That was a lot of clicking, double-clicking, and hot key stroking. Let me tell you, my index fingers and hands are feeling the effects today—especially on my mouse hand. But, I have my list, and I’ve moved on to developing a sampling plan and finishing up my dissertation proposal.