I have been as off the grid the last two weeks as much as possible while on vacation. It has been a wonderful (And even a little stressful) letting go. Things are starting to stack up a bit, but for the most part I have been able to stay out of it all. The only downside to the vacation has been the cold I have had for the past four days or so. Both my wife and I have the same thing and it makes paradise a little less than perfect. Sleeping has been very hard and getting out to do things hasn’t been easy either. Trust me, we’re still enjoying ourselves, but not nearly as much as we would if we were feeling 100%.

I think it has to have something to do with my work schedule taking me to Phoenix, AZ last week. While I was there I felt like I burned the candle from both ends — especially the first day when I did four talks. By the end of the day my voice was a whisper. I really enjoyed it though and felt like they were very well received. The second day I did a single 40 minute talk with abut 30-40 minutes of Q&A related to the Platform fr Innovation in Teaching and Learning stuff I have been working on. Again, I think it was relatively well received, but I did feel a little off my game … maybe it was b/c one of the really smart people in the World was there (Alan Levine), maybe it was b/c I am still working this talk up, or perhaps it was just a little too much the day before. No matter how you look at it, I enjoyed it and was honored to be invited. I have write ups of what I talked about over at my updates blog.

Speaking of Alan, it was sort of surreal to finally meet him (BTW, his words are too kind). We have talked on the phone, I’ve listened to hours of podcasts from him, responded to dozens of blog posts, and shared emails with him for the past several years — but up until last week we had never met face to face. The work he did while at Maricopa is legendary and the work he is doing now with the NMC is setting trends that we’ll be addressing for years to come. A real treat to meet the CogDog!

What else? Let’s see … we went to Disney and had fun, but I will say that spending a few hundred bucks on tickets should at least guarantee a ride on something. Classes began for the Spring semester at PSU this week … that means next Thursday (right before I head to San Antonio for ELI … anyone going and want to meet up?) we have our first face t oface session of our CI 597C class. It should be a lot of fun and it might be worth watching the class blog for updates and all of the activity going on around the course — there will be plenty.

And finally, speaking of blogs … the Blogs at Penn State made the jump to MT 4 this past weekend. A huge step forward for the blogging project and I have to send a huge thank you to the Blogs at PSU team — they made magic happen! More on all this in the coming days. Take care and enjoy the Macworld Keynote later today … I am actually close enough to an Apple Store that if Steve does something big I am going to get it. Maybe.