Lettin' it go....

Well, it's icy in all the surrounding towns (but our streets are dry), so they cancelled classes for today.

I changed the update on the course's online information board to tell people their papers were due Monday.

I have (mostly) let go my desire to have these graded by the end of the weekend.

(I am not good at letting things like that go. When I make plans and those plans change, my life is disrupted for a while - no matter how minor those plans are).

I DO hope that everyone who was going to turn in a last-minute-written piece-o-crap is going to take this snow day as a sign from God that they better spend the weekend redding up their paper until it's decent. (Not unlike that old Simpson's episode where Bart prayed for snow because he hadn't studied for a test...)

I've decided not to go in to my office today. I could. But I bet they don't have the heat turned on yet (whoops!) which is probably partly why they closed the campus.

(Although I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps the administrator who is in charge of this decided either he wanted a 3 day weekend, or that his office was going to be a little nippy, and he didn't want to deal with that. You know, seeing as they didn't close school yesterday until after it had started sleeting).

****

It's December 1. This means that it's going to be hard for me to concentrate on work until the holidays are over. I love Christmas, I love it so much, I love the whole run-up to it - the baking and the decorating and the cards and the tv specials and the old movies that were they about any other holiday I'd roll my eyes in cynical scorn. I love it all. I want to open up my arms wide and embrace the whole thing.

But it's conflicting - exam week is coming up (yes, SIGH, I am going in to my office tomorrow to mostly-write the final exams for my classes. Mostly-write because there's still a week of class and I'm not sure how much of the concluding material I'm going to be able to cover). Also, this is a prime time to work on indoors-research - data analysis, and journal searches, and the sort.

I know a lot of my more "professional" colleagues sort of disdain the three-weeks-off. They may spend the 24th and the 25th with family, and they may be forced into traveling to distant relatives for a few days, but I know there are people who look a bit askance at me for taking off after classes and exams are over.

But whatever. My parents are like 71 and 72 and they've had health issues over the past two years and I'm d.....d if I'm going to give up the chance to spend time with them to work on some kind of cold dead paper that I could just as well work on when I get back in the boring and decidedly non-festive time of January.

****

Tracey is talking about one silly little Christmas tradition she and her beloved have. I love those silly kind of little things. I don't really have any silly little traditions, but then again, I don't have any sort of an audience for those.

I have a tree, which I put up so early that it makes the natives 'round here roll their eyes (to them, only "Yankees" put up decorations earlier than one week after Thanksgiving). I have little candles in my windows (not REAL candles, the little night-light-bulb kind. I'm not that much of a fool.)

I have a silly red and green knitted hat that is as goofy and silly as any hat out there that I pull out and wear each December - I should get it out - last year one of my colleagues saw me wearing it, shook his head, and said, "only you could get away with that, ricki."

I also bake cookies for my department and bring them in on the first day of exam week. Maybe I could use part of today's snow day to get a jump on that...even though exam week is still a week away.

I also ALWAYS ALWAYS watch all of the Christmas specials that I can fit into my schedule. Watched "Charlie Brown Christmas" last week - and once again, I started to cry when Linus recited the passage from Luke. When did that begin? I never cried over it as a child. I don't know why it makes me cry as an adult other than that it's one tiny bit of quiet and peace in a season that seems to so often have become about:

a. buy buy buy. Get your sweetie a luxury car or a big honking diamond or she might think you do not love her.

b. rather stupid toys being pushed at children. Look, when I was 6? I did not need a toy puppy full of machinery that makes it bark and wag its tail and (ugh) lick me with a "wet" tongue (is the fake saliva sold separately?). I had an imagination and that worked just fine.

c. "There's a war on Christmas!" "No there isn't!" "The Christians are being too pushy!" "They're trying to take Christ out of Christmas!" Ugh. Just. Shut. Up. Okay?

d. really rather bad televised things made last week that are trumpeted as "destined to become a classic!" NOOOOOO! Don't say that. "Destined to become..." is pointless. Things only become classics because they are GOOD and because they RESONATE with the people who watch them. A Charlie Brown Christmas is a classic. It's A Wonderful Life is a classic. A Christmas Story ("you'll shoot your eye out, kid!") is a classic. Some piece of drek featuring this year's toy character you want to fly off the shelves is not going to become a classic because you declare it is "destined" to.

e. The sad-making news stories about
1. People who got burned out of their houses ("Christmas irony")
2. How many calories are in that eggnog
3. People behaving like idiots and trampling someone's grandmother at the Wal-mart in order to save $40 on a big-screen tv
4. People who do charity scams this time of year

All of it. It's nice to have a little quiet and a little peace and a little reminder from Luke that all of a through e really doesn't matter.

Which, again, is why I go "home" as soon as my grades are handed in - somehow, it is easier for me to cling to the True Meaning of Christmas when I am surrounded by my family and my old friends from "back home" that I don't ever get to see any more.

There! I've let go of the grading madness! I'll work on research here at home today, write my exams tomorrow, and grade the papers next week. And I might just bake some cookies this afternoon and bring them in Monday. Yes, it's early - but isn't it nice to spread a little unexpected Christmas cheer. (Or, I suppose, Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Cheer, as I teach at a public university)