Despite no rain yet in California, the Midwest and Northeast have had snow days, making it time to acknowledge that winter is on its way and so, too, are the holidays. Some years I undertake crafty projects for the holidays. This year has been one of them. I recently finished a project where the vision grew as I went along. Because I didn't have a template or pattern to follow, I had to make things up as I went along, basing decisions on experience, input from colleagues, and intuition. While the end product wasn't exactly what I expected and left me with some practice samples, I'm confident the recipient will be pleased. Sometimes it helps when creating something that, while the functional criteria are clear, the design criteria remain a bit fluid.

Congratulations to Surendra for his recent recognition by the Entomological Society of America with the 2019 Distinguished Service Award!

Yesterday the Academic Assembly Council met. I was able to visit with the Council for a couple of hours. I'm not sure where the time went; before I knew it, our time was over. That tends to be the case when I meet with the AAC. It turns out there are some outstanding 'to-dos' on my list that I need to complete. Those meetings occur frequently enough that things keep moving forward. And, now that Mark, Mark, and I are meeting with the committees (one of us for each committee), we hope to keep ahead of concerns and maintain open two-way communications with this vital group.

Today I had a chance to meet with Yana to work on a grant. No surprise, we got side-tracked. However, we made significant progress thanks to all of the work that Yana, Scott Stevens, and others did to set the stage. What's really cool is seeing how pieces of seemingly unrelated opportunities are falling into place, much like what sometimes happens when you don't have a pattern to follow. Surendra wasn't the only one to receive kudos - Yana had nothing but praise for Kendra Rose. I only hear good things about Kendra so no surprise there.

Tomorrow is a County Director meeting. It's a tight agenda. The position reconfirmation process, 4-H support and a vision for the future, and a model for improving communication with County Directors are all on the schedule.

In between, I hope to shake the last of the cold I managed to catch last week and give some thought to what projects I want to take on over the upcoming long weekend. After all, even creating on the fly takes some preparation to ensure you have all the necessary supplies on hand.