Anyone anxious this week? And it's not over, yet. My Pollyanna voice says that while the country is divided, no one is on the short end of a landslide. Some important ‘firsts' took place across the country (NY, DE, NM), too, suggesting changing times. An interesting week, indeed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote – I hope you remained COVID-safe during the process! A special thank you to Michelle Hammer-Coffer's football team for sending dinner to all the vote counters in Pennsylvania! I finished a project this weekend for a fan of that team. Don't tell him; it's a Christmas gift.

Go Steelers! Thanks for supporting vote counters in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Jose Luiz Carvalho de Souza Dias started this week in Merced County as an Agronomy and Weed Management Advisor. Jose has programmatic responsibilities in Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin Counties. Please welcome Jose to UC ANR!

Amidst the voting and vote counting, Program Council met this week. We spent some time talking about partnerships, within UC, across CA and beyond. Mark has assembled a useful document to describe opportunities. If you have ideas, please reach out so we can assist in pursuing the partnership. In particular we talked about the research continuum comprised of AES researchers, CE Specialists, CE Advisors, and Community Education Specialists and how to ensure that all know of the benefits of working with partners across the continuum. Jim Farrar shared a high level vision for the IPM program that was particularly interesting.

Tomorrow, Glenda and I will share our UC ANR work and the planned work of both the ANR Strategic Plan and the REC Strategic Framework with the UC Vice Chancellors for Research. We hope to generate interest in our work and identify possible partnerships across the UC system. We will have a similar conversation with the UC Committee on Research and Policy next week.

This is the first week of the month which means that Friday is the monthly meeting with REC Directors, followed by County Directors. Following is a 2-hour professional development session for Extension Directors that I am particularly looking forward to about helping people cope with the stresses of 2020. I'm not alone in finding this an important topic; record attendance is anticipated at the session. A few more meetings follow on Friday, before the weekend arrives. I don't know about you, but I am already ready for the weekend! I plan to keep the news channels turned off.