that wacky sun

my walking partner and i decided to start earlier next time. it's finally starting to get darker both eariler and more rapidly. i feel it's borderline stupid to walk in the dusk/twilight hours because of visibility issues, to say nothing of potential dangers that are more premeditated and intentional. he agrees for my sake, though i really doubt he worries about being pulled aside and raped. he just would rather not always be walking me home, and i more than understand. walking me home means either a ride back for him or a walk in the dark alone. yuck.

so today we finally figured it was time to walk earlier, even though it's hotter out. you can't have it all, anyway. at least we've each got a walking partner, which gets us, or me at least, out of the apt and walking once a day just to walk.

another thing, briefly. i really dislike the idea that these two papers are going to fail with a 34 and 41, respectively. it just seems like there is something wrong with the question if the answers are so screwed up. but other students chose that essay and did well with it. the rubric is very specific and detailed, and they were told they could find the rubric online. it isn't as though they didn't know what to expect, and it isn't as though every student who chose that essay missed by this much. most, in fact, did well. some very well. just these two....

sigh.

love and peace

the joys of grading papers

the previous post will seem on the surface to negate this post. just keep in mind that while both posts are true, life is complicated and full of apparent contradictions. it's all part of the ineffable plan. really.

the first lesson any student ought to learn [perhaps it should be an entry-level course for all college students, regardless of major] is this: your teacher is not stupid.

neither is your teacher a dunder-head, an idiot, a computer-illiterate moron, or any other description that would cause that teacher to be unaware of the difference between 1 inch margins all around and 1.5 inch margins all around.

this difference is, in fact, especially telling when the paper *still* just scrapes by the minimum length.

just.... wow. and if it weren't enough by itself, these papers are turned in electronically, so if i were in doubt as to the margins, i could just look in page setup.

sadly, i will need to stop grading for a while after this one. my trend has been generally downward today, and this is a sign that A) i need to take a break, or B) my random selection of student papers has somehow managed to include consecutively worse papers, no matter how many times i've shuffled.

sigh.

argh

i'm an idiot.

that's the only possible explanation for why i'm sitting here, at home, on a day when i teach, during the time when i teach.

now, i'll admit, i woke up in time to have someone put a sign on the classroom door for the students. but i should have woken up in time for that sign to say 'prof will be a little late' instead of 'prof is unable to hold class'.

but even rushing through everything, the nearest to 'a little late' i could have managed was over a half-hour, assuming no traffic and a perfect parking situation. in reality, we'd have held the last half-hour of class. and i'm not the sort of person who keeps students sitting around in a hallway for an hour waiting for a prof.

in the end, i've moved everything back a day, and cut the last catch-up day from the schedule. grr.

yes, i'm an idiot.

public vs private

i know i write about some personal stuff here. i've talked about periods, pms, uti woes, and more. and i know this is a public forum where anybody interested can read. i do make the distinction, however, between information that's *available* and that which is advertized. anyone who knows me and is looking hard enough could find out what my blog is, and any reader who puts enough clues together can likely approximate my location etc. it's all available. how much effort do you want to go to? the sort of personal stuff i've got on here is the sort of stuff that i'm fine with semi-anonymous folks knowing in a semi-anonymous manner. availability is fine.

i would not, however, advertize. you'll note that specifics are lacking, that i haven't used the url of the blog as my homepage on professional communication, i don't sign my emails with my blog name, etc. that's going beyond available in the dusty recesses of the library and into flashing neon ads on the highway.

that being said, i am currently listening to a conversation in the office across the hall. the doors line up, and our desks are facing. both doors were open (i've since closed mine, to little effect). i can clearly see the speakers and clearly hear everything they are saying. i cannot, in fact, avoid hearing it.

the conversation is about pap smears, trips to the gyno, and all sorts of squishy internal bits. i'm hearing about breast palpitation, circular motions, and (GASP) the crush one of these women has on her doctor, how she can almost imagine he's making love to her while she's there.

okay. now if you want to have that conversation at work, you close your office door and sit close and talk soft. you do not have this conversation in plain view and hearing of the person across the hall, loudly. especially since you can't see who's walking up or down the hallway or adjoining corridor.

i know i'm not interested in being privy to this conversation, but i am, even with my door shut. (no, they did not get the message.) even less interested i imagine, are all the other people along this corridor who are hearing it, and the students wandering around looking for their prof's office, and the faculty at the end of the hallway.

most importantly, i will not be able to look at these two women again without a certain amount of disdain. not that they have these talks. i imagine most women do, and i recall discussing subjects of a similarly personal nature with some of my lady friends. but that they are having it so openly, and not taking care that a third of the people on the fourth floor are hearing them. what idiots.

and i cannot imagine finding a gynocological exam to be sexy in any way. i always feel like skinning alive the next person who so much as brushes into me.

love and peace

bad habits

lately, i seem to have lost the ability to accurately estimate the work i'm capable of doing in a certain amount of time.

that is, i make daily to-do lists that include the various items on my agenda. these things include attending specific classes, reading for specific classes, doing specific tasks that will add up to accomplished assignments in specific classes, lesson planning for specific stories, working specific hours for the IT part of my job... and much, much more. often, the task 'bed by x:xxpm' appears on the bottom of the list. i make sure to schedule meals, because when i first started this grad school thing, i ran into some trouble with nutrition and not remembering to eat sometimes. shopping, laundry, checking mail, gassing up the car, paying bills... they all make it onto the list from time to time.

naturally, when a list is huge, it won't all get done. but the less important items just migrate from list to list until they become important items. it's pretty simple. for a while now, for example, i've been meaning to get over to traffic and parking for a new sticker that will allow me to park close the building an hour early. there's nothing riding on it except convenience, so it's been pushed down the list. paying the electrice bill was floating on a list somewhere for a while, and when it became important (ie was due soonish) it got done. that's how it works.

now normally, the 'regular living as an adult' stuff takes a bit of a back seat to 'pull my hair out as a grad student' stuff. but the important stuff gets done on time. a given list will include the three or four really important things i need to get done and about an equal number of less important things i'd really like to get out of the way. (note: as long as there is a clean pair of underwear in the drawer, laundry can wait another day; however, in a perfect world, i'd do laundry about once every two weeks.)

this generally is a good system, and it's kept me more or less on top of things for a while. at least since midway through my undergrad degree. since this semester began, however, this list system has become a nightmare. the number of items and their relative importance hasn't changed. but for some reason, i find i get a lot fewer of the items on the list actually accomplished. and i'm running around a whole lot more doing much harder work. this seems a somewhat backwards situation to the logical one.

for instance: today's list included the unimportant items of getting that parking sticker; shopping for fruits, vegetables, bread, and eggs; printing out the articles for wednesday's night class. it also included the important items of compiling the workshop worksheet for tuesday morning's lesson; going to the swc to look a really old book, writing a report on the book, and reflecting on the whole ordeal experience before sending it out; paying the electric bill; reading the articles for wednesday online and making some notes on the one i have to present on; getting to bed by 10, since it is really hard to wake up in the mornings if i haven't slept enough and i can't afford to miss the class i teach.

that actually doesn't sound all that bad. a bit of running around, but how hard are any of those? not very. i did the shopping on the way home because it became very important when i remembered that i had no easily-brought-to-campus food for lunch tomorrow or easily-prepared food for dinner tonight. i visited the book, spent about three times longer than i'd planned examining every nook of its cranny, and very nearly got my exhaustive notes taken from me by the dictators librarians. i wrote up the workshop procedure and printed myself a copy. the students can just listen carefully this time around. i managed to slip the electric bill in outgoing mail on my way out this morning.

notice that i did not do any of the reading for wednesday's class. notice also that the write-up of my dear book is not in the list of things i completed today. and please do note the time of day when all this isn't completed.

for some reason, i've gotten into the bad habit of misjudging time. i could have sworn all this was doable in a day. but things just took much longer than they should have. and this has happened consistantly. why? i'm not daydreaming the time away. i remember those mental wanderings, and often write them down. i'm not sleeping too long, because i am getting up when the alarms tell me to, and getting to sleep after i should. i'm not obsessively checking mail or anything, and i haven't been blogging as often as i ought to be. so where is the time going?

alas, i've got about another two pages of cover memo, and something like 4 formulas to write. silly things that look like algebra but refer to the foliation of the book and various signed or unsigned signatures, and misprintings that i had to look for specifically on every page of a 400+ page book that practically fell apart between my fingers..... have i mentioned that this darling book is in ITALIAN?!? it's amazing how much harder it is to spot typos and transcribe messy handwriting in a foreign language. I might have had an easier time of it in old english, and that's saying something.

as with the last time, i'll give it another hour, and then to bed with me finished or not.

love and peace

and since i'm on here

i figure a brief update that has nothing to do with butter is in order.

classes i take are still going well. that assignment i was going to fail ended up being very well received. this is good, since high marks are good things. and it is bad, since i really don't know how exactly it received those high marks. i'd like to repeat whatever i did that was so successful, but i'm not sure what it was.

the translating was.... well. it took a lot longer than i thought, was a lot harder than i thought, and ended up with more errors than i'd have liked. that post about all nighters being an impossibility wasn't entirely accurate, i fear. i'm still capable of them, but they must be all nighters. not most of the nighters. if i allow myself to sleep, i won't get up for at least eight hours. so there's no chance really of waking up again after four hours of sleep.

so thursday and friday were one long hellday to me. i actually saw a student of mine in the bookstore on the second half of hellday, and she asked me something about the paper. i'm not sure what my expression was, and i've got only vague ideas about what i actually said to her. apparently, i said something about emailing me, because she did.

the class i'm teaching, since we're now on that subject, is still going well. i've fewer problem children than before, and the unique situation where the students simply want to discuss the texts so deeply that i have a hard time fitting in the literary terms. not exactly something to complain about.

i tell them about their papers tomorrow. that should be fun.

and now i must reflect on a transcription. then make some head notes. i figure if the last reflection went so well on so little brain power, i'd better wait to do this one.

love and peace

butter

a while back, i discovered a need for stick butter in my refrigerator. it's what i put in my oatmeal, cornmeal, cream of wheat, etc. when recipes call for something in the butter category, stick butter goes in. tub stuff is for toast.

anyway, i purchased a box of the imperial brand, a sort of gold box with dark blue print on it. a box has four sticks of the stuff, and lasts me a damn long time. i have never looked on the package to see whether it is butter, margerine, vegetable spread, soy product or what have you. i know it ain't real butter. i know it's processed beyond belief and only bears a passing resemblance to cows. i'm fine with this.

in fact, i'm not fond of butter butter. it's too.... something. i don't know what. the taste of butter is just too butter. if given a choice based on taste alone, i'll choose margerine every single time. it's what i've grown up on, except at thanksgiving when the family splurges on butter butter and i've got to eat that for a while.

anyway, i bought the stick butter (which as i hope i've shown is really just the imperial brand whatever that i've used from an early age), brought it home, stuck it in the fridge.

just now, i made a bowl of cream of wheat. i opened the package to get a stick of butter out, and the packaging inside is different. it isn't foil/paper/stuff as i'm used to, but is pure paper. nevertheless, i added it to the bowl with the sugar.

this stuff doesn't taste like my regular, familiar, comforting stick butter. it tastes like butter butter. like real butter. like the butter butter we eat for a week or two at thanksgiving.

and my cream of wheat doesn't taste right. it doesn't smell right. it tastes and smells like butter butter.

i looked at the wrapper, and it doesn't say butter anywhere on it. nor does it say margerine. it talks about percentage of vegetable oil, but that's it. the box is the same way. nowhere does it say that i purchased butter butter, and yet my butter tastes like butter butter.

if i'd wanted butter butter, i'd have looked for a package that said butter on it. usually, they're so proud of their butter butter status that they have that real big-like on the packaging. or the other ones that aren't butter butter but claim to taste like it. the word butter features prominently. or the ones that are so proud that have no resemblance to butter, margerine, or cows in general. they're also sure to say so in big letters.

i now have three full sticks and all but a little under a tablespoon of a fourth stick of butter butter-tasting butter. and i don't like butter butter. i don't want my butter to taste like butter butter.

and if you didn't plump up just reading about all this butter, i'm impressed.

love and peace

quandry

how in the world do they get key lime pie flavored yogurt to taste like BOTH key lime pie filling AND graham cracker crust?

it's green, and as long as something's sweet and limey at once, it'll taste like the filling, but there's no specks of brown or anything. it isn't like there's essence of graham cracker in this yogurt.

probably it's honey or something similar. all it says on the label is natural flavors. i'm guessing honey's pretty natural...

on a side note, i really am going to fail this assignment. i've compiled my list, annotated it well, provided clues for use, offered some header material explaining my rationale for choosing these texts as opposed to the others our guide listed.

all that's left is thoughtful reflection on the process. and my brain is fried.

the only reflection i can think of at the moment is that i spent the better part of my weekend alternately freezing my ass off and soaking my wrist in hot towels, guarding a meticulously collected book-hoarde, torturing my wrist typing cap letters for call numbers and parantheticals, and all i've got to show for it is a few creases in our literary reference guide.

that's likely the kind of reflection that lands a person in f-land.

i've got the lesson plan for tomorrow. it involves pairing them up to talk about imagery and detail in specific paragraphs of the text, and having a long talk about what actually happens to a body when it is hung by the neck until dead. i love this story. so far this semester, we've talked about porn and insanity, and now we're adding methods of execution and capital punishment. i could also go into slavery on this one, since there's some of that in there, too, and without reaching a whole lot.

but that's not reflection. the real question is whether i trust myself to get up in the morning and do this, thereby sending myself to bed right now; or do i trust myself to get up in the morning in time to make my class if i stay up and do this tonight? at the moment, i don't trust myself to do either, and the third alternative which is still somewhat palatable is to stay up until it's done and then spend the rest of the wee hours reading articles until it's time to leave for school. sleep would then take place tomorrow evening.

or i could just accept failure. and that's not really an option.

i'm going to work until 1, see what i get, and go to bed. if i've got more to do in the morning, i'll just do it then. but one hour of good, hard, quality [we hope] work, and that'll be the extent of my ability tonight.

love and peace

the weekend in thoughts, so far

this weekend, i've been doing a lot of work. lots of reading, some planning of research, more reading, some research, more reading, more research, etc. as it is the end of sunday, the traditional weekend's end, i will go ahead and post the non-work related thoughts that struck me strongly enough to write down.

1. it really wouldn't take much time to run to the store and pick up a couple boxes of macaroni and cheese.

2. is it wrong to get more work done in your living room than in your home office?

3. danish wedding cookies are nasty. better take these to the english dept to see if anyone else wants them.

4. man, some macaroni and cheese sounds good about now.

5. what in the world does it mean to 'violate the double alliteration condition of anacrusis'? i thought i was a grad student, and therefore in the know about these things.

6. oh, god, i'm going to fail this assignment.

7. shit, man, it isn't even my fault.

8. i need some cheesy noodle goodness. [insert stray thoughts about the texture of perfectly done noodles with slippery cheese sauce, and a brief mental tangent about the creation of noodles in shapes]

9. ah, crap. there's no way i'll get a good night's sleep in and still get this done.

10. fuck it. i'm going to bed.

11. [insert dream here where anthropmorphic macaroni noodles leaked cheese all over my carpet while marching in military rank. i believe there was an arm crafted out of a gigantic macaroni hanging over my bedroom door.]

12. hmm, this is a big building. maybe no one will notice i'm here and i won't be mobbed by little old ladies.

13. no, no, don't do this to me. come on, you've got to have the book. you didn't have any of the others, so at least have this one, would you?

14. shit. i'm going to fail this assignment.

15. what sort of over-achiever checks out a guide to reading old english poetry within the first two weeks of a semester?

16. these pens run out of ink at an amazing rate. no wonder they came with two refill cartridges.

17. i probably should start carrying those refills with me.

18. 4 hrs later, she's found 2 whole books for the assignment. they aren't the ones on the list, but they'll do. maybe.

19. i should have eaten more than a container of yogurt for breakfast. it's very hungry work here in the library.

20. should have brought the brace, too. it'd be warmer than nothing, and the cold's making my wrist seize up.

21. i should have bought macaroni and cheese yesterday. then, when i'm done here, i'd have something nice and comforting to go home to.

22. i'm afraid to leave my book-hoarde. if i don't sit here guarding it, some librarian-thief will try to reshelf it. i spent 7 hours collecting it. it's mine. my own. my precious.

23. bambie, honey, algebra really isn't that difficult. for god's sake, go to the bathroom, blow your nose, dry your eyes, and stop sobbing in butch's letterman jacket. you're in public, for crying out loud. literally. and x is much easier to find than you're making it out to be.

24. hey, butch, sweetie. telling crude jokes at an ever-increasing volume is obviously not making bambie feel better. send her to the little girls' room to get over the doom that is question number 6. or try patting her shoulder and saying 'there, there. there, there. we'll find x, don't you worry.'

25. not just macaroni and cheese. i'll need some protein as well. i've got that ground beef in the freezer, just needs a quick thaw to be ready to go. i'm so glad i just cooked the whole thing whenever ago that was.

26. i'm such a fool. why didn't i choose some other topic to do this on? i could have had better luck with mystery novels of the 21st century. or fantasy novels dealing with gigantic reptillian creatures of varying levels of intelligence. why old english literature? in a library that clearly puts more value on 19th century lit?

27. damn, damn, damn. i can't leave my book-hoarde, but i'm hungry. and cold. and my wrist hurts.

28. i wish it was my fault, somehow. if i'd put this off, i could blame myself and do better in the future. if i'd been lazy in my pre-planning, i could blame myself and plan better next time. if only it was something i could conceivably fix.

29. white flag time. i've got 14 sources of dubious quality. maybe i can just explain how lacking our library is in old english lit, and the prof will be understanding.

30. considering the reality of spending 9 solid hours in an ice cube of a library, one would think more could be accomplished.

31. what the hell. there's a store on the way home. if the only thing of value i accomplish during today's study time is to buy a box of macaroni and cheese, so be it.

32. this united must be the ghetto united where poor white trash shop. i've never seen so many grundgey people looking so natural in their filth. [let there be a side note here stating that, as a poor person of rather pale descent myself, i am using the term poor white trash to indicate a specific group of people and not the greater portion of impoverished people who are trying to make do. poor white trash are akin to rednecks in some ways, in all that stereotype implies, and there are several clans of them here in dirt town....]

33. ah, the heat is good to the wrist. must remember to thank sr for the 'hot towel around wrist' tip.

34. oh, looks like i get to change the overhead light in the office. it's been quite a while since there were two working bulbs.... i wonder how bright it will be.

35. wow. that's quite an improvement.

36. we might have a knitting problem blooming. festus should not be curled amongst the knitting boxes with his little tootsies pressed against the stack of knitting books. but he is cute.

37. if i'm going to do this all again tomorrow, i'll need to sleep soon.

~~~

and there you have a catalog of my more prominent thoughts this weekend. the warm towel trick is not as long-lasting as i'd like, festus us really into that tub of yarn (into curling on top of it, not actually in it, or i'd be doing something a great deal more active than blogging right now), and i still feel i'm likely to fail this assignment i've been working on.

to top it off, i have not yet had the opportunity to read the two books and seven articles for next week.

and the bookstore hasn't gotten beowulf, so i can't begin translating my 80+ lines.

but the macaroni and cheese was good. would have been better without the meat. i don't know why, but i can never seem to remember that i prefer my macaroni and cheese unadulterated. i keep adding crap to it, and only afterward remembering that purebred noodles and cheese sauce is much superior to the mutt version.

this summer, i sort of got used to this thing where a person goes to bed between 10 and 11, and then wakes up between 6 and 7. i like it very much. but i fear that soon, i will become again one of those people who go to bed between 1 and 3 and wake up between 7 and 8, and then run around in the mornings because there's lateness looming on the horizon.

i discovered last semester or the semester before (can't really recall which) that my body is [shocking news to follow, please sit down] no longer all that young. it isn't willing to go on less than 6 hours of sleep anymore. it selectively ignores alarms, goes back to bed after a shower, breakfast, and a trip through the closet, and generally misbehaves.

this might be part of being 20-something, though i really had been thinking i was going to be capable of all-night shenanegans until the age of 35 at least. i mean, 30 is that milestone year of 'where the hell did my youth go', and 40 is the 'holy crap, i'm ancient' year in popular culture. i was thinking i had some more all-nighters packed away in there somewhere is all.

but i don't. they were all used up in the masters degree. now i've got to get used to this adult schedule (and to tell the truth, it's much easier as i get older). it'd be a piece of cake if most of my necessary classes didn't take place between 6 and 9 at night. ah well.

speaking of all of that, i'm drained, exhausted, and etc. so that's it for now. enjoy the holiday.

love and peace