A time to be born…
Our new nephew arrived in the wee hours of Dec. 26, cute as a small button! though purplish.
A time to die…
After a couple of days in which it became increasingly difficult to ignore that something in the vicinity smelled terrible, an exterminator removed a dead possum from underneath our house. The smell took a [...]
Archive for December, 2008
29 Dec
Turn! Turn! Turn!
23 Dec
Cherry on top
And even a cursory glance at this year’s creative writing job wiki confirms my feeling of gratitude.
I haven’t been following things closely enough even to know whether there was a job on offer this year that would have been strongly tempting. It would have to have been close to home since I can’t even envision [...]
22 Dec
A question and a sigh of relief
The question: Why have I been putting off–why am I still putting off–entering my No Longer New RU (NLNRU) grades? It’s not as though they’re not all A’s, anyway (it’s a graduate creative writing course, for pete’s sake; I gave one B last year, to a student who was out of state for the last six meetings [...]
22 Dec
Under the weather
The cold came and got me. Main symptom is a sandpaper throat. I hope this isn’t going to be an annual tradition.
Fortunately, I don’t see any reason not to stay at home in my pajamas most of the day.
20 Dec
Zero
Winter break is here.
[Insert sigh of relief]
You know, I’ve been teaching for so long that I tend to forget that at Starfleet Academy my weeks are still filled with doing things for the first time. The AP class is filled with classics of American literature that I’ve simply never happened to teach. I compose many of my [...]
19 Dec
The gift
Although I’ve always chipped in for the class gift for the Snork Maiden’s elementary school teachers at the holidays and the end of the year, and usually add a bookstore gift card to the end-of-year present, it didn’t seem plausible to me that students would give gifts to their high school teachers. I certainly never [...]
16 Dec
The rule of four
Is it a bad sign that I’m counting down the days to winter break?
Actually, I don’t think so. I still really like my job. And my goodness, am I grateful to have a “reg’lar job” this year and not to be patching together a bunch of different adjunct jobs. I’m tentatively scheduled to teach another course [...]
14 Dec
Five
One more week to go. The end of this last week was hard, in part because the two roughest days in our block schedule landed on Thursday and Friday for me. But that also means that the easiest day falls on Monday, so I’m mostly putting off batches of grading and prepping for Monday and [...]
11 Dec
Seven
That’s how many more school days before the break.
I may make it.
The first time in over 20 years that I’ve approached December not finishing a school term. No final grading (although a lot of little grading). Exams are in mid-January.
It’s still a busy time, with holiday programs and other “special” commitments. The Snork Maiden’s soccer team advanced [...]
5 Dec
Hello cupcake
The house smells like cupcakes. Anyone in my homeroom who brings in books for a book drive tomorrow can have a nice yellow cupcake with chocolate frosting. I’ve already put a few donations of my own into the bag, including the copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that I picked up at AWP last [...]
