Wow! Class last night was great! It is wonderful to see the enthusiasm and excitement everyone is bringing to their projects. A few groups still have to play catch up, but most are in good shape to have something really exciting to present. All of the projects are interesting and have a lot of potential. The point we're at right now is my favorite: everyone working excitedly to get something cool done -- and I get to help! One of the things I've always loved about my job is the opportunity to participate in all of the interesting projects going on in the department. The herbarium rescues the fantastic collection of Roberta Poland, a local amateur botanist, and I get to participate in creating 
a website to make the collection available to the public. Often it's just a little help here or there: figuring out how to make the crucial figure work or solving some obscure technical problem ("Hmm. That error suggests you don't have swing installed. This google site says you need a 'swingall.jar' file. Oh look! Here's one! Here you go!")
I've been tackling some problems this week that have been intractably hanging over my head for what seems like a long time. Icky administrative tasks. I'm almost caught up. And today I have several fun projects to work on! I thought up a great idea for a new Istvan Bierfaristo shirt. Look for details soon!