How cool is this?

Several years ago, Mr. Perfect was asked by the Dean of the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah if he would be interested in teaching graduate architecture students about structural engineering. This semester, it finally happened. In January, Mr. Perfect began his first official stint as an auxiliary faculty member of the U. He has an eight-week contract and is teaching wood structures to a class of about 15 students.

It's been fun to watch...most of the time. He's had to learn how to balance teaching (planning lessons, preparing quizzes and projects, grading assignments and quizzes) with staying on top of his load at work. Lots of late nights. Overall, I think he's really enjoying it. I'm not surprised that he's a natural teacher. He's so patient and knowledgeable, especially in his profession. He's past the halfway mark. There are only three more weeks of classes for him. Someone else will teach the next half of the semester. Maybe steel.

I hope that he's enjoying it enough to do it again, though he's not sure about the pressure of keeping up with everything. While it's a lot of fun to tell people that my husband is teaching college, it's even more fun to watch him take on a new challenge and excel at it.

More HTML class fun

Having passed my first HTML class with flying colors (bragging rites are MINE!), I've moved onto the next level of learning this fun and sometimes complex skill.

For this class, I'll be working on a single website. It's a recipe sharing site where family members (and friends, or course) can submit and view favorite recipes. I still have a few things to figure out before it will be completely working, but here's a preview:

Parker & Merrill Family Recipes

Let me know what you think.

Online classes and random stuff like that

Through my work, I've started an online class to learn basic and then advanced HTML (HyperText Markup Language), XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language), and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). It's been a blast so far (possibly because I've passed all of my assignments so far). Right now, we're just starting with the basics of how to create and stylize web pages (HTML 4.01). Here are links to my assignments so far:

• My First HTML File
• My Second HTML File
• My Third File

And now you're probably thinking "Wow, big deal. The blog looks much cooler than that stuff!" True, but the blogging template is set up for me here. I mostly just type in what I want it to say, and use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to change font, color, style (bold, italics, underlined, etc.). I can go into the HTML and change some things, but not everything. In the class, I'll not only control the content, but every aspect of how it looks. It's really fun. With the blog, I chose the theme, but I didn't create it.

Most interesting thing I've learned so far: