Today I spent the better part of the day redesigning the bioinformatics activity for our intro lab. It has been overhauled every year we've used it, primarily due to the rapid change in the available technology. The theme has been to have students explore a 3D representation of an enzyme with each amino acid colored to represent how strongly it is conserved. When Eric Martz (who wrote protein explorer) and I first wrote the lab, students created a box-shaded alignment and colored in each amino acid one at a time. Last year, we had them create the alignment and then the software would color in the amino acids automatically. This year, we're using 
Consurf which does the blast search, generates the alignment, and colors in the residues automagically. The students should be happy to not have to do the work themselves.
While I was in the lab testing the installed software, to make sure we didn't need to update netscape or chime, I noticed that I was getting sore throat and a cough. Every year now, I seem to get some kind of bronchitis during the fall. I managed to get my prep pages and duck quizes ready for my classes and went along to the children's skating lessons.