Ahhh, just a good old Saturday afternoon around here :) Nothing really going on, and we are relaxing and trying to stay cool. It was a pretty productive week, lots of school-related tasks to do both for UA and UT. We had the kind of scary thought that we have to be moved and settled in a new city in about 15 weeks.....
Guess there won't be a whole lot of relaxing going on if we realistically want to pull that off - but I know us, and we will find a way to make the most of the time we do have.
This time last week we visited Natural Bridge, AL. It is in northwest Alabama, about an hour or so from our place in Tuscaloosa. It was really a cool place - it is the largest natural bridge east of the Rocky Mountains. Here is a website that gives some detail about the place.
Dissertation update:
After a flurry of activity around here - (official, stamped IRB approval was recieved on Friday) I am now just waiting for the facility to let me know when I can come in and start my interviews. I am looking forward to getting those going. The reason for the wait is a good one, many of the inmates at the facility are participating in a Buddhist meditation retreat. I don't know many details, but I was excited for them to get this opportunity.
In the meantime, my list of to-do tasks looks like this:
1. Create dissertation outline
2. Pull together information for Chapter One ( this will be the introduction, the story of how I reached the point where I wanted to do this kind of research, and the potential benefit for social work).
3. Pull together information for Chapter Three (methodology chapter). This is pretty much already written in my dissertation proposal.
4. Send off application for a research support grant.
5. Make my final decisions on what kinds of equipment I need to buy for the project (digital recorder, and external microphone). I already bought an external hard drive, a Western Digital MyBook. I had hoped to recieve some research funds to get the kind of recorder and mic I wanted...but so far, it looks like I am on my own for those. My wish list is: the ShurePro mic and the MAudio recorder
Whew! What a crazy semester here for us...I am still slogging away on the dissertation related tasks -but Kev has officially graduated!! Yay! For his final movie project I helped with a film ("Moon Turn the Tides") he made down in Wolf Bay, AL. Here a few pics from the movie shoot:
The sunsets in Wolf Bay are so beautiful! The film has 2 main characters - the actors (Meagan and Mark) are friends of ours.
The synposis of the film is: A man returns home to the coastal home he left a year ago after his wife left him and the house was partially destroyed druing a hurricane. On he eve of the sale of the house, the wife returns to the home - little does the husband realize that her goodby comes from beyond the grave. These pics were during rehearsal.
Here is Kevin with his Canon XL1 setting up for a shot.
The next pic is actually us trying to see if some of the 'beach' area from a local lake might subsitute for the actual beach if needed. (It did and it's amazing, but you really can't tell with the way he filmed it!)
The next two pics are of the main female actor (our friend Meagan) - she needed to look like a corpse for the later part of the movie. She is a very pretty person - it was a challenge to create the makeup effects - but lots of fun!
This was one of my favorite pictures from the shoot - catching the final rays of the sunset.
Picture one is a bronze (I think) Longhorn - in the sitting area of the alumni building on campus.
Two: A group of sunning turtles in a campus pond.
Three: The capitol building in downtown Austin.
Four: Here we are sightseeing on the capitol grounds.
Five: This was the view from the Hilton Garden Inn window - I liked that the wind was blowing and all three flags were in a similar position.
Here's the happy couple!
The next picture was of an actual 'longhorn' on campus...it wasn't special just for us - but it was neat that it was there :)
The last picture is the front of the social work building.
Quick recap of the photos: The first picture we took was the University of Texas exit sign as we were headed to the campus for the first time.
The second pic is the tower on the campus.
Then, of course, the pics of us with the tower in the background ( I know, goofy, touristy kinds of things!)
