less frequent posting

1. It's hot. Oh dear lord is it hot. We are having the type of weather typical of late July in mid-June. And it doesn't look like it's going to get better.

You know how Churchill (and also James Lileks, copying him) talked about the "black dog"? I get one in the summer. I am sure it is the heat, the humidity, and also the feeling of being trapped indoors by the same. I can feel that black dog whuffling at my heels, its damp smelly breath on the back of my legs.

Have you ever felt irritable and KNEW you were irritable? And knew that meant you had to make an extra effort to be agreeable? And been irritated by that? That's how I was today. Oh, I was nice - I didn't snarl at anyone at church or anything - but I could tell that EVERYTHING was annoying me - certain people's odd patterns of speech, the way one of my ceiling fans squeaks, the ants that have invaded my bathroom - everything.

2. Summer classes are tough. I always forget how hard I work for these. (Maybe it's like they say about childbirth - you forget how much it hurts so you're willing to do it again?). I have the added challenge that I have a blind student this year (fortunately it's in the non-majors class so I don't have to concern myself about lab exercises and just what do you do when you're working with a microscope and you have someone who can't USE a microscope?). I do, however, have to have all handouts ready a day in advance so I can send them over to the office that Brailletizes them for my student. I'm happy to do it, but it's another thing to remember and plan for.

3. I have an unprecedented number of people in my summer class having emergencies causing them to miss class. So far: student having staples removed following a surgery earlier this spring (and the doctor FORGOT one of the freakin' staples so she's gonna have to go back), someone having to testify in court, someone with a family reunion, someone with a sick child, someone having to take a grandmother to the ER...it never stops. I try to be compassionate because nothing is really the person's fault...but it makes things harder, it puts an added burden on me to arrange for make-up labs or tests to be taken at alternate times or something.

4. Along with the heat-and-humidity induced "lowness," I have this awful feeling of dread. Something bad feels like it's going to happen. Something bad in Iran, or in the Korean peninsula. I actually said yesterday morning, upon hearing of the little crazy guy in North Korea (I can never remember his name) talking about a nuclear war starting: "OK. If the world is going to end this year, can it please end NOW instead of at the end of the summer so I will at least not have to put up with so much heat?"

Or, as another blogger commented, on the home front: I feel as if this summer is going to be the last summer I get to enjoy certain things. Like the last year I'll be permitted to eat ice cream sundaes. Or go out for a drive in my car "just because." Or run the air conditioning at a temperature that is comfortable for me. Or read whatever I want on the internet. Or something. (And then of course we are exhorted to fly the flag and say the pledge of allegiance as a symbol of our freedom. Well, I'll fly it and say it but not because YOU told me to. I'll fly it and say it 'cos there are men and women out there with enough guts to sign up for the military to go and protect the rest of us, 'cos there were people in the past who figured out how to make this country work...)

So I don't know. I can't tell how much of my feeling of impending doom is just my usual summer dysphoria, or how much I'm connecting dots that don't need to be connected, or what.

Pwnt.

So, a colleague and I were talking, and the topic gets on to the whole "Twilight" series.

My colleague asks me if I've read it. Going into indignant-book-snob mode, I glared at him and said, "Do I LOOK like a 16 year old girl?"

And then I realized I was wearing capri pants from the Old Navy, a t-shirt with a kitten on it, and I had my hair in a ponytail.

Um, yeah.

A friendly note...

...to the 20-something woman walking SLOWLY through the wal-mart texting this afternoon:

You know, when it's 4:30 pm, and the place is cram-jammed, and most of the folks there are just desperate to grab their boxes of pasta or cartons of milk or whatever, and pay and scram, probably it is not a good idea to walk slowly around that blind corner out of Frozen Foods with your eyes focused only on whatever you are tapping into your little Borg-screen.

I didn't appreciate having to stop short - in HEELS no less, which I had been wearing since 6:30 am - while trying to negotiate my cart around the approximately 580 other people in the aisle.

Seriously, whatever it is? I'm quite sure either it can wait 'til you're done shopping, or your shopping can wait 'til you're done texting? 'K?

Seriously, I am beginning to think they should make the noon hour and from 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm "Distracting Electronics Free Hours" at the wal-mart - so that people can, as I said, get in, buy their box of pasta and carton of milk, and scram, without having to deal with traffic jams caused by people who are allegedly multitasking.

cosmic joke

Don't ever let anyone tell you God does not have a sense of humor.

Today was Bring-a-Friend Sunday at church; they had a brunch afterwards. (There's a big push to try to grow the church right now; we are trying to get a new minister and I think they're worried that we're not big enough as we are to support one).

One of my friends at church is a lady who's been the police chaplain for years. (So long, in fact, that most everyone only knows her as "Chappy")

So I saw her, and there was a seat left next to her, so I sat there to eat.

And she introduced me to the "friend" she brought - a young man who is new to the force. And his girlfriend.

And do you know who that might be?

None other than my plagiarist.

I tried VERY hard to be friendly, to not be uncomfortable, to smile, all that good stuff, to make it clear that it was behind me...but I have to admit, it really isn't, and I was kind of uncomfortable. (And she's probably coming to the women's league meeting tomorrow night. Well, at least I'll be prepared for that...part of the discomfort was that I was caught by surprise).

Walking out after the brunch, as soon as I was alone, I kind of looked heavenward and muttered, "I hope You got a good laugh out of that one."

Bring out your dead...

My new cross-country ski exerciser came today. I was relieved when I got an e-mail a couple days ago indicating UPS was going to deliver it; originally the company selling it claimed that a freight company was going to deliver it and I would have to "contract" with them for a time-of-delivery. (My experience is, the more different parties you have to deal with, the more likely something will get badly screwed up).

And I have a pretty good UPS guy. He hauled it up the front steps (it weighs something over 65 lbs) and asked me where I wanted him to set it. I had him just leave it in the living room (right inside the front door) as I wanted to put it together there (so it would be easy to move the box and packing) and I'd need to get the old one out before putting the new one in place.

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel Murphy is laughing at you?

This has been one of those days. I got the thing out, unpacked, started putting it together. Seemed that two of the bolts were missing (&$*%#^@$). So I called the company. I had to pass through the forest of "press 1 for English, then press 2 if you are calling about something you've already ordered, then press 2 again if you want to sit and wait to talk to a really real person instead of pushing buttons forever...") I told the guy the bolts were not in the bag indicated. So he said, "OK, I'll send a set out Monday."

Great.

Then, going back to the thing, I noticed that the bolts, rather than being in a bag as the instructions implied, were already on the machine. Frack. (I didn't call the guy back. So they spend $5 to send out a new set of bolts; serves them right for having unclear instructions). So I kept working.

Then it turned out one of the lockwashers that held on a vital part was broken. Frack. I thought about calling them back, but crap, I want to be able to use this thing some time soon. So I looked at the old machine - yup, four lockwashers, and they are all accessible/removable.

First one I pulled off catapulted away and I can't find it.

Second one, trying to force it on the new machine, it popped out of my hand and went down the heat/air conditioning register in the floor (Frack.)

Number 3, I got it off, and got it on the new machine. (thank goodness). The rest of the put-together wasn't too bad.

So then I took apart what I could of the old machine (feeling like I should be humming The Dead March or somesuch) and carried it out to the curb. Yeah, I missed the bulky waste pickup for this month, and the dump doesn't re-open for drop-offs until Monday. So I'm leaving it at the curb. I don't care if that looks a little trashy over the weekend. (Frankly, I'm hoping one of the avid recyclers/thing-takers that exist in my town will remove it. The frame is some kind of metal (it's too sturdy to be aluminum, but I'm not sure what it is), so maybe someone could get a few bucks for it. Or maybe someone will "steal" it like they stole the $9 sprinkler I had in my yard a couple years back.)

Anyway, the rest of the day was kind of a Murphy-and-his-horse days ("F Murphy and the horse he rode in on"). First off, a trip to the pharmacy for a prescription I've been taking for YEARS - it isn't for any lifethreatening condition but I'm not as healthy or happy without it. The pharmacy dude acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. He acted like I had no prescription with them. I was bracing for him to ask, "Are you sure you dropped it off here yesterday like you said?" in which case I was planning to say, "No, not really. See, I have multiple personalities and one of the other ones was in charge yesterday." Of course, knowing pharmacy dude's general wattage, he'd probably take me literally.

But finally pharmacy dude figured it out (they "owed" me a month's worth of the script, thanks to their having had limited stock the last time I refilled).

Then I went to the post office.

You know what I hate about small-town post offices? The fact that they usually have one window open, and that people who drop in, if they know the clerk (and this being a small town, they usually do), feel like they might as well stick around and chew the rag for a while. As a line forms behind them. I had to mail a package or I would have left. Anyway, I hate that. I think it's the height of rudeness to obliviously carry on a conversation that has NOTHING TO DO with the service you have already had completed as people are waiting.

Then, to Lowe's, which as it turned out completed the Trifecta of Stupid.

I had ordered a new screen door. The couple who are installing it had come out and measured, they had reported what size was needed, I had told the Lowe's people what model and color I wanted, and supposedly they had the whole price quote ready.

Problem was, the guy who called me to tell me it was ready - the guy who knew what he was doing - had gone home for the day by the time I got there. Instead, I got Moe, Larry, and Curly, none of whom apparently knew how to retrieve the invoice from the bowels of the computer. Finally, after calling in a fourth (Curly Joe?), they decided they had it sorted and told me to go up to the checkout, that they could print it out and charge me there.

Nope! No go. The tattooed guy who tried to help me couldn't get it, the woman he called over to help couldn't. Finally, I left in disgust, making the comment of, "I'll come back later." and thought the addition "when someone who knows jack is working"

Later, I got a call from a guy from Lowe's - yes, he could get it all sorted, yes, he'd be there until 10 pm. So after my piano lesson (the one spot of non-stupidity in my day) I went out there. The guy (once he showed up at the desk, after my being told, "Oh, he'll be right there") managed to get it taken care of while copiously reminding me that I should only sign off on the final paperwork AFTER I was satisfied with the workmanship. (Seeing as it's the folks who put in my dishwasher, and seeing as it's replacing a storm door with one the same size and made by the same company, I expect there will be zero problems).

And then I very nearly got into a car accident on the way home because someone decided it was a good idea to pull into my lane as I was coming. They saw me but I presume that they figured because the universe revolves around them, the power of their own importance would keep my car from hitting theirs. Well, my foot on my brake took care of that. Not because they're so very important but because I didn't relish having to have bodywork done on my car.

In between all those things, I cleaned house and cleared out several months' worth of cardboard boxes I'd been hoarding -first, because a friend was moving (she didn't need all the boxes) and second, because I do order quite a bit from Amazon. And Stash Tea. And Superbuzzy. And Elann. And Vermont Country Store. I had broken down all the boxes and was saving them to recycle - yeah, yeah, I know, but it's my understanding that cardboard recycling is actually one of the more cost-effective ones. And besides, I don't always have space in my smallish roll-cart for all the boxes, and they fine you if you have stuff outside the rollcart.

So I drove to where the recycling bins USED to be.

Nope, none there.

Drove to another place where I had known them to be in the past.

Again, nope.

So I went back home, with a backseat full of stacked cardboard (you don't want to leave cardboard for long in an enclosed car in warm weather; it fast develops a smell not unlike spoiled milk).

Called the Solid Waste department. Asked where the bins were at these days. The guy started slowly listing them, finally as soon as he said, "At the wal-mart" I cut him off and said, "That works for me."

So I drove over there. Could not see any bins. Drove around the whole dang store. No bins. I'm on the verge of hunting down an employee but figured they'd give me the patented "not my department" stare. So I started to drive off, figuring, well, maybe I can take them down to the waste transfer station.

Then I saw the bins. In a distant corner, almost as far from the wal-mart itself as it was possible to be and still be on wal-mart property. So I shed myself of several months' accumulated boxes (plus a stack of newspapers) and went home again.

In the end, I finally hopped on the new exerciser. I was only able to do about 15 minutes, partly because I've been away from it so long (being on vacation plus the old one finally broke only a day or two after I was back) and also because this new one is tighter - I kept having to adjust things to make it feel right - and the new handgrips are a LOT heavier. Which is probably good in terms of a workout but it means I may have to slowly build back up to being able to do the hour I did in the past.

But crikey, what a day. I hope this means that all of my dealings with stupid and/or lazy people are done for a while. I'm beat. I find that dealing with "dumb" really gets my goat. I can deal with problems - I understand that lots of stuff that goes wrong is beyond someone's control. I can deal with stupid bureaucratic rules where Someone has to sign off on Something and that Someone is not readily available. I can even shrug and smile in the face of certain balls-ups and say, "Stuff like this happens."

But when someone just stands there, mouth hanging open, not knowing what to do - and not even wanting to TRY (that's what really gets me - not the ignorance but the laziness) and makes whatever I am trying to get done take far, far longer than it should because they have really no interest in either making the situation work or finding someone who can make it work - that's when I start to fume.

"Eve and the Fire Horses"

Once in a while, I tend to flip away from the channels I usually watch, and once in a while I'm rewarded.

This movie was on the Sundance channel last night (I think that's what it was - it was one of the "high number" digital cable channels that shows movies).

There will be spoilers here. The one big spoiler at the end I'll try to put in white text (so you'll have to highlight over it to read it) but I don't think I can avoid some of the lesser spoilers and still talk about the movie.

It's a movie about a Chinese family living in Vancouver. The parents are from China, the children born in Canada (as far as I could determine - I missed a few minutes towards the beginning). It starts in the late 60s/early 70s and tells the story mostly from the point of view of Eve Eng, who is somewhere in early childhood when the movie takes place (7 or 8, maybe younger? I can't always tell with kids).

It mainly focuses on the differences and the conflict between "keeping tradition" and "assimilating."

The children's grandmother (there is Eve and her sister Karena, and then what I assumed were a set of cousins - an older boy and girl) is the big tradition-keeper. She has a small shrine in the house and every morning pours three cups of tea "for a god who never seems to be thirsty" as Eve comments in her childlike way.

We see family celebrations - Ma Ma (the grandmother) has her 70th birthday. Eve dresses up and dances a traditional dance for her; Ma Ma is thrilled (this is partly to establish the good relationship between the two for a later scene). The family enjoys "long life" noodles and other foods. (There is some conflict; the know-it-all teenaged cousin points out that putting food aside for a god is "stupid" when there are people starving in the world - this breaks a big family tradition that you should NEVER say anything unpleasant at table. It's not clear if this is a Chinese tradition or just one for the Eng family, but at any rate, it's sort of a typical modern-teenagery thing and just shows some of the conflict between tradition and modernism).

One of the interesting aspects of the movie is that the children speak to their parents in English, but the parents speak to them in Cantonese - it's clear that each understands both languages (though from one scene it's not clear how well the mother speaks English). It's an interesting aspect because growing up, I knew two families of immigrants where that took place - in one case, the parents spoke to the kids in Hindi, and the kids spoke in English to their parents. In the other case, it was (I think?) Polish - maybe one of the Slavic languages (I was too shy to ask). In both those cases the parents asked the kids to 'translate' for them - for example, when my Indian friend's mother was speaking to me - they spoke the language but were so shy of their accents that they didn't want to speak it in front of a comparative stranger. So that part rang true, and it really wasn't intrusive (they had, of course, subtitles for the Cantonese parts)

The girl's mother conceives another baby - they "learn" it is a boy using the tradition of a ring held over her stomach - but then loses the baby in a very graphic miscarriage scene (standing at her sink) after chopping down a tree.

(The family is scandalized by it - both that it was an unladylike thing to do, and also, cutting down a tree was believed to "cut the cord").

After that, the girls' mother sinks into depression and often won't leave her bed. A pivotal scene early in the movie shows Eve getting ready for "picture day" at school (one of the things I like about the movie is how those little moments - like "picture day" are so reminiscent of the early-1970s school experience. I am sure part of it was to show the absolute everydayness of Eve's "outside" life, as compared to the tradition of her family and her imaginative flights of fancy).

Anyway, she wants her mother to braid her hair. But her mother is still depressed, and Eve's father won't let her in to see her mother. So Ma Ma insists on braiding Eve's hair...she does it very lovingly and sweetly but Eve (and oh, how this is typical of being a child) wants her OWN mother to do it, so Ma Ma doing it is Not Right and she can't smile or be happy...even when Ma Ma offers to go and do one of Eve's outdoor chores for her. (Later, we see Eve pouting as the photographer takes her school picture).

This is one big spoiler for the movie (if you really hate spoilers, stop reading now, though I will say it's not so much a spoiler in the sense of telling you the end of "The Crying Game" or "The Sixth Sense" as it is a somewhat natural and not unexpected part of the plot. But I'll leave it to you. I don't think the movie would be ruined for you knowing the spoiler here, but if you think it would be, and you are planning on seeing this movie, like this week, you might not want to keep going. But whatever.)


































Spoiler ahead











In the course of doing the chore, Ma Ma has a heart attack, or stroke, or some other medical emergency (it's never really discussed). She's taken to the hospital. She lives long enough for her son (the girls' father) to take them to stand outside and wave at her (another 1970s memory: not being allowed into the hospital to visit people if you are a child - having to wave at their window from outside).

But Ma Ma ultimately dies - as the girls learn one day coming home from school.

There is an elaborate period of mourning...during which the girls' mother rouses herself from her bed, walks to the shrine, and pours the three cups of tea.

It's a little scene, but it's meaningful - a torch has been passed, the mother realizes she is now the matriarch in that house, she now has new responsibilities, it is time for her to stop mourning the loss of her unborn son.

Eve feels sad and guilty - she thinks she's responsible for Ma Ma's death, since Ma Ma was doing her chores (and she was rude in her last interaction with Ma Ma).

The girls are taught that Ma Ma could be reincarnated - as a goldfish, or a bird, or a flower. (I don't know enough about Buddhism - I think the family is at least nominally Buddhist? - to know if this is a typical belief).

Eve has a vision (I think this is the first of them) - she thinks she sees Ma Ma down in the basement laundry room. But Ma Ma walks past her, won't acknowledge her presence - which adds to her sense of guilt.

Later, Eve gets a goldfish and envisions it singing Chinese opera (there is a story that her grandmother sang opera for the Emperor. It is not clear if this story is true or one of Eve's embellishments).

The father goes off to China to bury his mother and for an extended visit (his brother - the father to the cousins - cannot travel because of a kidney condition)

During this time, Karena gets converted to Christianity and becomes a Catholic (but, I would argue, she gets it wrong - she believes that she can win paradise for herself - and, more importantly, it seems - for Ma Ma by "being a good person" and "winning people to Christ."). Karena becomes VERY strict and pious about her belief; Eve is more of a syncretist. (There is a scene - it's not as twee as it sounds - where she sees Jesus and the Buddha dancing in the living room - just as she had previously seen the Chinese goddesses "dancing with wild abandon").

Also, the girls' mother decides to become a more strict Buddhist (or to take up Buddhism; as I said, I don't understand Chinese religions well enough to know if they were Buddhist to start with). She starts meditating daily and will not eat "things that bleed" on the first or 15th of the month.

(When the dad comes back, he remarks: Just how long have I been gone?)

Karena decides that they have to become even more pious, for the sake of Ma Ma's soul - she makes up the club of Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow and sets rules for how she and Eve must behave - most importantly, they must convert people. (There's a funny-uncomfortable scene when Karena invites a boy she likes over for an "afterschool event" where she tries to convert him - the audience already being aware that he is Sikh, and, as he says, doesn't "go in for that Jesus stuff")

Eve invites the blonde girl next door (whom Karena had, earlier in the movie, dismissed as PWT - "poor white trash") to come to Sunday School class with her - and the new girl winds up being more popular and fitting in better than Eve, whose flights of fancy give the nun teaching the class fits.

One of the more memorable scenes of the movie - because it rang so true (how psychologically brutal little girls can be to each other!) showed the girls (with PWT girl being part of that group) ganging up on Eve - and making her swear on the Bible not to "lie" any more (Eve had spoken, with typical childhood embellishment, about her Ma Ma's opera singing, and about how her dad escaped a car wreck).

"It's for your own good, Eve!" they tell her (Oh, gosh, I remember that tone - that horrible, smarmy, "I'm more grown up than you" tone. I once had a couple "friends" take me aside and tell me a list of what they perceived to be my "faults" - "for my own good" they said. And I also remember my two "best" friends ganging up and telling me that NEITHER would be my friend any more unless I picked - and told them - which one was my BEST best friend. Even at 8 I could recognize a Hobson's Choice - I could lose one friend permanently, or risk losing both, though that maybe temporarily. I chose not to choose - they didn't talk to me for a couple of weeks but eventually both talked to me again.

Yeah, I wouldn't be a kid again on a bet.)

Anyway, they pressure Eve into swearing on the Bible never to lie again, lest she die next year "starting in February" (Chinese New Year, not the Western calendar year).

And so life continues. The uncle's kidney condition gets worse; the girls' father agrees to be a live donor at considerable risk (this is still the 1970s) to himself.

After the operation, the girls' mother is called to the hospital, late at night.

And then, Karena makes an important decision. This is the Big Big Spoiler, the one I'm going to speculate about how it affects the end of the movie. Read on if you dare. Highlight to read; font is set to white as a default.

Karena decides Eve needs to be baptized, in order to protect their father. So she fills the tub, makes Eve get in - and tells Eve the longer she stays under, the better.

This leads to the main conflict and ambiguity of the movie - Karena holds Eve under the water. And later, you see Karena (alone) being baptized the "traditional" Catholic way (sprinkling) in church. And Eve makes the comment that she "died" that night.

And it is not at all clear if the death is symbolic in the way that every baptism is a symbolic death - or if she literally died for a second or two, but then revived once out of the water - or if she is in actual fact dead, and visiting the family as a spirit.

On the IMDB boards this is debated, with the conclusion being "she's not really dead" - because her mother looks at her and smiles.

And yet, I wonder about a couple things - first, why would Karena be baptized alone? Would not both sisters be baptized at the same time, seeing as they're being baptized as children, not as infants? (If you're Catholic and reading this and have insight as to why, please comment). And second, the whole "If I tell a lie may I start to die before February of next year" seems almost a bit foreshadowy on second thinking.

And at the very end, Eve sees her Ma Ma again - in the same place as she last saw a vision of her - but this time, Ma Ma smiles at her - all is reconciled.

So I wonder. I think perhaps the ending is deliberately left ambiguous, even though I (like, I think, many American film-viewers) don't particularly deal well with ambiguity - we want ANSWERS. But maybe we have to be content with the slight ambiguity of the ending. I don't know

At any rate - it was a very good movie. Probably not the best for wee children - it's pretty philosophical in parts (boring to small kids), and the miscarriage scene is pretty horrible (I had to look away). But it does give an interesting insight into Chinese-Canadian culture, and assimilation vs. tradition.

Never a dull moment

So, I am sitting down in my office to start on my day's work, when I spot something moving out of the corner of my eye.

I look over, and see a mouse on the floor. A white mouse. (So I knew it wasn't just some random mouse that wandered in from outside, unless there's some escaped population of labmice around).

I am not really afraid of mice, but I don't like to get too close to them; years and years ago, one of my grade-school classrooms had pet mice and I remember one day the teacher let us hold them and one bit me. Yeah. (It didn't break the skin but it kind of hurt all the same).

So I stood looking at the mouse in brief amazement, and then thought, "I should capture the little booger and return him to whomever he belongs to."

(Then I remembered that one of my colleagues had had a couple white mice as "demonstration" animals for a class he was teaching in the interim - it's one of those classes for teachers who want to goose up their qualifications and learn how to do experimental science in the classroom).

Fortunately, I had an empty coffee jar on my bookshelf - one of my colleagues had been saving his instant coffee jars for me to make kill jars out of for capturing bugs (yes, I know, it's complicated...). So I grabbed the jar, dumped out the tiny bit of residual coffee, and with a little effort, popped it over the mouse.

And then I went down the hall and found Colleague, and asked him, "Have you had an escapee in the past couple days?"

He was kind of embarrassed - yes, he had, but apparently had not seen fit to WARN us (like I said, I'm not afraid of mice but some people might be). So he came down and retrieved it.

But yeah, never a dull moment at my U.

Gob. Smacked.

I learned a piece of news last night - and had it verified for me this morning - that utterly blows my mind. Because it seems to me - on the outside of it - to be such a monumentally stupid thing to do. One of those "how could you think that would be a good idea?" situations.

Someone I know (at best an acquaintance; this is not someone I would really consider a friend) who was in a position of considerable power (and a six-figure salary) has been fired...apparently for Financial Misappropriation.

(As my verifying source said: "He must have really sucked at it...they found him out in less than a year").

But anyway - if this person is guilty, his career is destroyed. Gone. No one would ever hire him again for a position even several rungs below the one he occupies now.

I guess greed makes people stupid? This guy had, as I said, a six-figure salary, use of a nice house, use of (I believe) a car provided for him, decision-making power - all the stuff that is kind of even beyond the American Dream, maybe the American Dream on steroids.

I couldn't see EVER doing something like that myself. (I make a mid-range five-figure salary - not huge, but certainly enough to be comfortable on, especially when you're kind of stingy like I am). Even totally beyond the "I am doing something that is wrong and I am not the kind of person who does things that are this wrong" discomfort, the fear of getting caught - and the consequences that would deservedly bring down on my head - would prevent me from even being tempted.

Maybe the being-able-to-foresee-consequences is just part of the makeup of people who DON'T do that kind of thing. I've mostly managed to avoid trouble (and have managed to avoid all BAD trouble) as an adult because of my highly honed ability to anticipate consequences. (On the flip side, it makes me more cautious about other stuff - part of the reason I am still single is that I am too good at seeing the "downsides" to trying to forge a relationship with this guy or that guy)

The way I look at it is this: I have a decent five-figure salary. I have tenure. I have a fair level of job security - probably greater than 90% of Americans. If I don't screw up, if I keep doing my job well, if I keep doing research, if I don't do something monumentally stupid like having an affair with a student or stealing money from my department, I keep my job as long as I want it.

In other words, I have a Golden Goose that will keep laying nice monthly eggs for me, as long as I do what I would be inclined to do anyway. And I have a very strong interest in keeping that "Goose" healthy and laying.

I could not see going, "Now, if I were to cut this goose open, I could get all the eggs at once" - which is what I figure this individual I'm referring to tried to do.

I wonder what his "exit strategy" was - was he going to hope that what he did (if he actually did it; I don't think that's been proven yet, so he's only "alleged" to have done what he did) would not be found out? Did he plan on resigning his job and going far, far away before people found out? What?

I'm trying to have some sympathy here. Maybe he needed the money for some reason other than greed - I don't know. Maybe someone in his family was very sick and needed experimental treatment that their insurance didn't cover. Maybe he had gambling debts. I don't know. I'm trying to be sympathetic even if I can't excuse what he did.

When I was in grad school, a woman who was one of the departmental secretaries was caught embezzling. She took the money because her daughter had cancer. Ultimately, the department fired her, but didn't press charges on the condition that she paid the money back (which she ultimately did). I suppose I can understand the desperation of having a sick child and not being able to pay for the treatment - but then again, as I said, this guy had a six-figure salary and primo health insurance for himself and his family.

I'll probably never know why he did it. But it makes me sad that he did.

Just another lesson that people who look like they have it made in the shade may really not. And another lesson to myself to be grateful for the Golden Goose that I do have, may it always be healthy for me.

Summer of Spending

I've decided to let it be that.

Yesterday, I went to Lowe's (I needed a particular garden tool) and while there, made arrangements for someone to come and measure for a replacement storm door. The one I have is one of those metal-clad over plywood ones; it's quite old and the metal has started to corrode and expose the plywood. So not only does it look ugly, but when we get heavy rain, the plywood gets wet and swells up, making the door hard to open and close. And I'm sure it could be growing mold.

As fixes go, this one's fairly cheap; I think I'm looking at about $300-350 all told.

I did also look at the Pella windows in Lowe's; they're expensive but not as expensive as I thought. If I'm eligible for the "pocket" replacement (I don't know if I am; it depends on if the sills are still fairly sound) it would be within the mental budget I set for replacing them. Depending on labor. I know they say that someone who is a "competent" DIYer can do the pocket replacements themselves, and I'm arguably probably at least "competent," but it's a matter of having the time to do it - I think I'd rather pay an expert to do it (especially if the windows have shifted off true as the house settled) and then I don't have to worry about what happens to the old windows - they get hauled off for me as part of the installation fee.

And I have to admit, if new windows are more noise-deadening than the old, single-pane (or rather, multi-pane-glazed-into-a-wood-framework) windows, that would be welcome. It seems my neighbor is fostering a new dog (he's a cop and I think sometimes he "adopts" dogs that are involved in neglect cases) and it whines all the time. At least at night they take it indoors, but still, the whining gets hard to take even during the day.

So that's something else I might look into. And I would get the low-e glass, which would have the added benefit of letting less heat into the house in the summer.

I'll just have to look into it more. This is frankly something where I'm willing to pay extra to get reliable workers - a lot of my friends "know a guy" but usually when pressed, they admit that their "guy" will come and partly finish the job, then disappear. And I most definitely don't want that, ESPECIALLY when it comes to a job where they are removing a part of your house that provides protection from the outside world.

I'm thinking maybe, if I do it, I will schedule it for the time in August when classes are out, so I can be home while the workers are there, just have a couple days' block when I will be around (and also be available to move furniture and stuff; it seems like they have to be IN the house to do the window replacing, which I admit skeeves me a little bit; I don't like people tramping around my house that I don't know.)

Well, crap

I guess a person should never comment about "coming into some money." Because then something will happen to require spending of that money.

I use a NordicTrak cross-country ski simulator. It is the only exercise I'm able to keep up with - running destroys my knees, and besides, running here in town in the summer is death because it's close to 100* and sometimes as high as 60% humidity. I've tried other things but find them either boring or annoying. With the NordicTrak, I can hop on, put on some music or one of the radio talk shows, and I can usually make it through the hour without wanting to kill someone.

So I got home today and tried to use the thing. It had been acting up a bit, I thought it needed lubricating, and I tried that. That didn't help. So I gave it an inspection. One of the rollers is shot, it makes the ski "slip" at the back of the motion. Which is bad, because it's potentially stressing on the knee, and it's also very jarring and makes trying to work out unpleasant.

I called the company and talked to a not-very-knowledgable (or so it seemed to me) person who told me it would cost just over $150 to replace ONE of them (there are two). "Shouldn't I replace both at the same time?" I asked. She didn't know. (On the website, it claims that a "set" comes with 2 for $150, but it also claims they are out of stock).

I NEED this thing. I weigh enough as it is and I am unwilling to go into starvation mode to make up for the calories I am NOT burning by not exercising. And as I said, alternate forms of exercise are just not for me. Nor is joining a "Curves" or "Butterfly Fitness" (both of which exist in my town). For one thing, I'm just not a joiner. And for another - I like to work out early in the morning (like 5 am) when classes are in session, and neither place is open then.

So, crap. A Hobson's choice.

So I looked a bit further on the website. They had a "weekend special" - a new copy of what I had for just under $600, plus free shipping.

So, now I had a dilemma: spend the equivalent of half (or one-quarter, depending on whether the website or the person on the phone is right) the price of a new one for a single replacement part (there are other things on the machine that are worn but still usable; I've used this nearly daily for the past 10 years), or buy a new one.

As hard as it was for me to do (parting with that kind of a chunk of change - hell, parting with anything over $100 - is hard), I decided to order a new one. That will save me having to replace the rollers with a part that may or may not be out of stock, that will save me dealing with the worn waist-pad, that will save me from wondering when I need to replace the skis. I hate planned obsolescence but I'm telling myself 10 years is a good long run for a piece of exercise equipment.

I hope I made the right decision. I hate spending money. I'm telling myself that I didn't have my tax refund earmarked for anything AND I got paid today (and I've had a fairly cheap spring so far - nothing else has broken (and now I am crossing my fingers and spitting to ward off anything else breaking). But still, I hate spending money. The old Scrooge McDuck in my soul is groaning and saying, "Lassie, ye shoulda jes' bought the rrrrrollers."

She nails it

This article by by Diana Senechal: Solitude: a Flashlight under the Covers addresses one of the things that I am made uneasy by, but never quite could put into words, as concerns the brave new world of social networking.

People are never "alone." There is not the time to sit and steep in one's thoughts.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we are all wired into the matrix by force; those of us who want to avoid the whole mess still can. (Though for how long? I have heard rumblings of some college campuses "suggesting" their profs start Twitter accounts as a way of staying in touch with students).

But what concerns me is that like so many things, people will go into it thinking it is totally harmless, something fun, and then they find themselves trapped. Or it changes their life in ways they're not totally aware of.

In the article Senechal talks about students being "bombarded" with group work (and I will admit to one of my prejudices here: I HATED "group work" when I was a student. I hated it both because I seemed to always wind up in a group with at least one slacker who took the attitude of "Well, YOU care about a good grade, so I can not do any work and you'll pick up the slack because I know you still want an A" and also because I was often the one who was on the losing end of personal dynamics - there is an old saying, if you put three little girls in a group, two will become best friends forever so they can pick on the third? I was that third little girl.)

The other thing Senechal mentions is the sense that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, the modern classroom abhors silence. I refer to the trend dismissively as "dancing ducks and explosions" - the need to have more, better, and louder, to drag the kids' attention in, because it has (apparently) been so weakened, stunted, and shortened from television exposure - in other words, give 'em more of the same because they can't cope with anything else..

And it frustrates me - this even seeps in at the college level. I've had students ask me why I never show movies in my classes. (In Ecology? I can't think of any that would be appropriate and would actually teach something better than either going out into the field or discussing research that has been done). I regularly get complaints, especially from my non majors, that the class is "too hard" and "too boring" - mainly because I DON'T show movies, nor do I do the kind of touchy-feely, "Let's sit around and talk about how things make you FEEL" discussion.

Because it seems pointless to me to ask a student how they "feel" about stem cells when they can't really tell me what a stem cell IS.

But anyway. I know I rail too much about what I see as the rising tide of noise in modern life - the babel sounds of cell phones when you're in a grocery store or waiting in line somewhere, the need for the news to be BIGGER and LOUDER and MORE SHOCKING in order to draw eyes to the screen, the proliferation of televisions EVERYWHERE - in the grocery store, in the waiting room at the mechanic's, in the dentist's.

But solitude - periods of quiet - are necessary to getting useful work done. I have, myself, had to reconfigure my office so that when I am WORKING on something (as opposed to sitting in office hours desultorily grading quizzes) I am turned away from the computer to resist the temptation to surf. Because I know that kind of multitasking leads to bad work and having to redo things.

So I do feel a concern that maybe some folks have thrown themselves too headlong into the world of being "connected" at all times - I think it would be terribly hard to write a book, or solve a complex math problem, or compose music - if you were also sort of "on the alert," waiting for the next Twitter message to come in. (Maybe that's just me. I know I do my best work when I know I cannot be interrupted by the phone or by someone stopping by my office "just to talk." I've actually unplugged my phone and closed my office door when working on something really complicated to avoid those distractions. And I do need to be better about avoiding the temptation to surf the web when I should be working concentratedly; perhaps the reason I have four articles in various stages of not-being-ready-to-submit rather than four articles currently in press is that I spend too much time sitting in my office doing just that).

But near the end of her essay, Senechal brings up a happier note: that solitude and especially the hunger for it, does still exist. Describing the girls in a book club she leads:

"Many of the girls have special reading places: nooks and stairwells, forts made of blankets and chairs, and the great classic hideout, the place under the covers with a flashlight. Like Sara, they know how jarring it is to be interrupted when reading. They find the places where they may read without pause."

I used to sometimes, in the summer, take my book and climb up one of the trees near my house; it had an area where several branches fanned out, making a place where a person (well, a small person, like I was in those days) could sit and read. I also sometimes would sit under the (unused) dining room table in the afternoons to read.

Of course, I grew up in a household where someone reading was not likely to be disturbed, so I more commonly read stretched out on the sofa in the living room or sitting on the floor of my bedroom, but I do remember that kind of solitude, where you could read for an hour or more without having to be "in touch" with anyone else.

And I would hope that anyone who desires (or needs, but might not necessarily realize they desire) that kind of solitude - free from interruption, free from the trivial nibbles of information that daily life seems to want to throw at us - can get it.

I have no idea

...why this cat is making these sounds. (I presume it's scared/upset about something, based on its posture, and the fact that this is kind of growling).

But all the sadness about poor kitty being scared aside, it's actually pretty funny.

I can't help but laugh at "oh Don Piiiaaannnnno"

I love Mythbusters

Tori, on last night's episode, after finding out the "build team's" job on a particular day was to fire semi-automatic rifles as prep for a myth:

"Today CAN'T suck!"

I love that enthusiasm. I wish I still had it. Sadly, I've always been too good at anticipating things going wrong - "borrowing trouble" as my dad says, that I don't think I've ever in my life walked into a day of work and thought "I get to do x y and z. Today CAN'T suck!"

(I also kind of love that Mythbusters has the stones - in today's culture - to have a host admit to the fact that he enjoys firing guns. On some other networks either they wouldn't even bring guns into it, or the hosts would have to squirm around and be all "guns are ICKY." Not that I own or even really want to own one, but it seems odd to me to pretend that a TOOL - something that can be used for good or bad purposes, depending on the person - has some kind of moral quality to it.)

Rollin' in it.

Well, this has been an interesting couple of weeks, money-wise:

1. My dad insisted on paying me the cost of my train tickets. (He and my mom have, upon occasion, helped out my brother and sister-in-law, who live in a more expensive area than I do but have more financially precarious jobs - my brother, in particular, works for Intervarsity and is dependent upon people's contributions to pay his salary). I hate to turn him down TOO vehemently (though I feel like I should pay for my own dang travel) because I know it makes him happy to be able to do it. (I deposited part of it and got a bunch as cash...either to spend on the "last weekend of freedom" shopping trip to Boutiqueville before summer classes start, or to put in my hidey-hole just in case a Bank Holiday or some other foolishness gets called and people start to panic. (And yes, I got it in small enough denominations that I could actually reasonably buy stuff with it if that second came to pass).

2. I got a letter from my insurance company telling me that they had miscalculated the cost of my coverage (I added the piano I inherited as a separate "fine instrument" carriage - it's over and above the homeowner's policy) and that they owed me $26 and were enclosing a check (which was enclosed)

3. I got a letter from the IRS. Now, I have to admit, I hesitated before opening it. Calculating my taxes this year were more complex because I had to do some calculation of depreciations because one of the investments my financial manager (aka my uncle the stockbroker) thought was a good idea involves a limited partnership in some forest products company or somesuch (I don't remember correctly what it's called). So I was afraid that either I was going to be audited or that I was getting whacked with a big bill because I calculated the taxes owed on that investment wrong, even though I followed the directions the corporation posted online.

Nope! It was a "Hey, you overestimated what your taxes were" letter (I guess I didn't apply the Capital Gains tax table right, or actually, I think what I did was use the regular tax table instead of putting in the lower number the Cap Gains table gives). My refund is $700 and some change greater than what I thought it would be. (And that money should be in my savings account now, or at least by the start of next month). Yeah, I know, $700 sounds like a lot to screw up but I looked over the taxes again and the change makes sense so I'm not going to question it. (I remember now dithering about it - because I was so discombobulated about the depreciation and Schedule E business and everything - and I think I just filled in the wrong number because it seemed to make sense at the time.)

4. At some point I should receive a check for $150 in return for evaluating and commenting on some proposed textbook chapters (which kind of sucked, and I told them that, but I also suggested how they could make them better, so I think I earned my money).

So I'm more flush with "unexpected" (and yeah, I know - I have to declare that $150 next tax-time and I will be doing that) income than I usually am.

So now I'm faced with an interesting dilemma: do I take some of this money and just go and blow it on something delicious and fun, like an mp3 player or a new digital camera or just a really GREAT day at Boutiqueville buying whatever grabs my fancy, or do I sock it all carefully away, figuring that things are going to get worse somehow? (Or do I figure inflation's going to go up, or a VAT - as Mr. Bingley points out, may be coming - and have one last "lost weekend" of spending money gleefully before the Titanic sinks [to mix metaphors]). Or do I slowly dribble it away buying stuff online (like I often do when I have some spare cash...I see a pattern I want here, an old book I want there...)

Or another option: do I go all responsible and use it to fix a few things around the house that kinda-sorta need fixing, but that I've been putting off? Like getting a new screen door because the metal on the old one's corroding? Or having the old clapboard stripped off my garage (it's a PITA to paint every couple years) and replaced with siding? And the ultimate thought: do I take some of the carefully-husbanded money (a few hundred dollars chunked over every month from my paycheck, at least in months where I don't have any other unexpected expenses like big car repair) out of my savings and have new windows put on the old place? It really needs it but the thought of having workmen tramping all over my house gives me the fantods, and also, workmen around here are known for doing things like starting a job and then mysteriously disappearing for three weeks - and that would most definitely not work if they had poked out two or three of the old windows but not yet got around to inserting the new ones. (I have heard of people replacing their own windows but the thought of that - and of trying to find a few other strong backs to help me do that - gives me the fantods even worse than thinking of workmen tramping through my house).

Actually, I don't know the first thing about window replacement, other than that there are some disreputable companies out there selling crap. (If I could at all afford it, I'd go with a well-known brand like Pella or Andersen. But I don't know how much those cost, even, or even if the old windows on my house are a "standard" size or if I'd need a custom job. And I REFUSE to do what many owners of old houses in my town have done - board up portions of their nice big old windows and have stingy little modern "energy efficient" windows inserted. Because I think the treatment I'd have to face for depression brought on by living in a cave-like environment would outstrip any money-saving on energy I'd see). So I really need to do some research first - but I'd love to have new windows in the house before winter, because the old ones leak heat something terrible. (Funny, they don't seem to affect the air conditioning in the summer...I don't feel hot air seeping in when I sit near a window in the way that I feel a chill in the winter).

Nope

Apparently my secretary did not complete the transcription of the student comments. But that's OK, I can wait to see them. I think I'll actually work better today for not obsessing over them.

(She's taking a break this week; she had built up a lot of vacation days she was going to lose if she didn't use them. We don't have that thing here, like many campuses do, where you can apply unused vacation towards your retirement at the end of your career - it just evaporates each year.)

Procrastinating

I have a journal article I could be working on, but it's hard to get up the energy to go in to my office (I'm at home now). Because I have student evaluations almost certainly waiting for me.

I HATE student evaluations. Even when I get good comments (which I usually do), those are not the ones I remember...it's the bad comments, the ones that are written to vent rather than to be constructive criticism, that stick with me. They're the ones that keep me up at night, that make me wonder if I'm any good at all at what I'm doing. If maybe I should just hang it up and go do something else with my life because apparently I suck at this teaching thing.

I know that's not literally true, but it FEELS true when you are reading a comment from a student who says something like, "This class sucked. I don't know when I'm ever going to use any of the crap I learned."

One of the ongoing problems I have - and I really don't know how to overcome it, I've tried, is that I give other people's opinions far too much credence. I'm not good looking at what someone (anonymously) says about me and saying, "Well, that person obviously doesn't understand." Or "That person was probably unhappy because they weren't getting the grade they thought they were entitled to." Or "That person is an idiot." So evaluation time is ALWAYS uncomfortable for me, and I always have a hard time forcing myself to go in and read the comments.

I know someone who, after she made full professor, would just bung her comments in a drawer, unread, and leave them there. Her response being, "If they won't be made to sign their comments - to OWN what they said - I shouldn't be forced to read them." I kind of like the attitude in that although I understand the need for anonymous comments, in case you have a certain student in another class you teach.

But I do think the anonymity poses a problem, perhaps even more now in the days of the Internet: people have learned that the cloak of anonymity allows them to say things they might not otherwise say. And that's a double-edged sword. I can gently complain about what I think is a foolish decision on the part of the campus administration without fearing losing my job, but on the other hand, people can write horrible nasty things in comments on websites - stuff they'd never say to a person's face - and feel like no one can touch them. And I think evaluation comments are like that. From informal discussion with colleagues, it seems like the "mean" comments have gotten "meaner" in recent years - and that students feel no compunction against using profanity in their comments, which seems unprofessional to me. My secretary says she "rarely" edits when she types them up (though once she did not pass on a comment that was sexual in nature to one of the female profs. And seriously? What kind of a student would think it was acceptable to put that on an evaluation?)

So I really do need to go in and read those comments, though I kind of dread it. (I cried the first few times.) I really would like to get all positive comments although I realize that's not possible. The people-pleasing instinct is strong in me, but the high-standards instinct is fortunately a bit stronger. I just wish people could see my "toughness" or my "too much math" or my "too much information" as the fact that I have their best interests at heart, or my "needs to 'dumb down' the material more" as evidence that I think highly of their intellects and expect that they can rise to the requirements.

(I will admit at this point that I consider the "too much math" or "this class was hard" comments a bit of a badge of honor. OF COURSE it's supposed to be hard, it's a junior/senior level biology class! Of COURSE there's math in it, it's ECOLOGY for gosh sakes!)

Here's a question

This is something that's bugged me since late last week.

What would it do to a person's credit rating were they to cancel all their credit cards? I don't mean because there's an outstanding balance, or because of bankruptcy, or something like that. But because the rules got changed and someone who WAS responsible winds up having to pay to use the card even if they pay it off in full each month.

Because I am one of those folks the credit card companies like to call a "deadbeat." (Nice bearded-Spock universe that one comes from: the term is used to refer to credit card customers who pay off their bills IN FULL and ON TIME each month. I am totally anal about that - I have never had a late bill, even if it meant calling the credit card company before I went on vacation to find out my balance and sending a check to them early, before the bill came).

But now, the lovely new legislation designed to save people who put that trip to Bermuda or those Jimmy Choos on plastic when they didn't, you know, actually have the money to pay for them - and when they'd never have the money to actually pay for them is coming down the pike.

And it looks ugly, folks.

Okay, an up-front disclaimer: I know people have emergencies. I know someone who actually put medical bills on a credit card because he knew there was no way his health insurance would cover the particular (experimental) treatment. And that it's going to take him a long time to pay it off. But he didn't have time to try to find alternative sources for paying, and that seemed the best thing to do at the time. And I don't think this guy would ever default; he'll just be under the heavy burden of high interest rates for a while. I don't get grumpy at the people who have real emergencies where the credit card may be the best, or the only solution.

But once again, it comes down to irresponsibility. I knew people in college who got credit cards (I was not allowed to have one [by my parents] until I was 21) and who bought all kinds of junk, new stereo systems, video games, all kinds of stuff they didn't remotely have the money for. Their justification? "I'll have the money someday, when I get a job." or "If worse comes to worse, I can declare bankruptcy."

No. NO NO NO NO NO. Bankruptcy is for real emergencies - like health emergencies, or loss of a job followed by inability to get another job while also trying to pay all your bills. It is not to be considered because you want stuff now.

So it's people like that - who've gone crying about how they're so mistreated - that now the government's reining in the credit card companies.

And while I admit some of the things are not such a bad idea (no credit cards for under-21s unless they can prove they can pay, for example), it looks like the credit card companies are going to whack those of us so-called "deadbeats" because they now have to be "nicer" to people who haven't used the cards responsibly.

Two possibilities seem to be an annual fee (which I could deal with provided it was not enormous; I think my first credit card, because it WAS my first, carried a $40 annual fee) and no grace period.

I really, really do not like that second possibility. What it means is, every purchase you make, you start being charged interest from the moment of purchase. The only way to avoid it (and you probably couldn't even then) would be to send in a check for the purchase amount the very day you made it - essentially removing one of the big conveniences of these cards.

It's not like interest is the only way cards can make money. I was talking this over with a small merchant (a quilt shop owner) in my parents' town and she said she sent off $600 in fees for TAKING credit cards to the companies (I don't remember if she said last month, or last year. She does a considerable business but $600 a month seems like a lot; it may have been last year). And every business owner who takes cards would be paying.

She agreed with me - that if the cards went to "interest from date of purchase," she was cancelling hers. (She is no fan of Obama, I learned from the conversation).

So this raises the questions:

1. What WOULD it do to a person's credit rating, if that person (say, me) was to pay off all her cards in full that last month, not charge anything else, write the issuers and say, "Your decision to charge interest from the moment of purchase is unacceptable to me; please close my account." Would having no credit cards make it harder for me to take out a loan if I really needed one? That's one thing that scares me a little.

2. How would a person travel? Deal with emergencies? I've run up against a lot of businesses that won't take checks any more - I guess they've been burned too many times by bad checks. How would I order train or plane tickets without going through a travel agency and paying them by check? What if my car breaks down when I'm 300 miles from home and the only repair shops won't take checks, and I have no cash?

3. Are debit cards really that unsafe? I mentioned to my dad, "Well, I'll just close out the credit cards and get a debit card then" and his response was that if you lost the card, or if it was stolen, you were screwed - someone could empty your account.

4. I really, really don't want to give up being able to use Amazon. Or Etsy. Or any of the many on-line craft-supply sellers I buy from. It makes me sad to think of losing what is really pretty much my only "fun" shopping (short of driving an hour's round trip) because of some IDIOT who claimed they couldn't understand the fine print and the credit card companies "screwed them over" when they were actually buying luxury items they could not afford.

5. Will other people give up their credit cards if the "interest from date of purchase" or if exorbitant annual fees come into place, or is it just a few cranks like me? Because if it's a lot of people, then online merchants could be hurt - and they could come back at the credit card companies - and maybe things would change. But if a lot of people just shrug and go, "meh, cost of doing business" or if they even go "Well, it's OK because that means the credit card companies are being controlled" then those of us who choose to opt out are kind of screwed.

6. I wonder if armed robberies in shopping areas will go up, if the crooks figure that people are carrying big amounts of cash to avoid using cards. The big reason I use credit cards is so I don't have to carry a couple hundred dollars of money in my purse if I'm going clothes-shopping and school-supply shopping and grocery-shopping and stuff all in the same trip (Which I usually HAVE to, because there's almost nothing in my little town aside from Wal-mart, so if I want to do "big" shopping I have to bunch my trips and drive the hour's round trip to the next largest town)

I realize I'm "borrowing trouble" (to use my dad's phrase) here, but I want to be able to plan. I want to be sure to order all the stuff I could want - to go on one last big buying spree - before paying off the cards and then cutting them up. (And then going, as I said some months back, "Laura Ingalls" - where I buy nothing but the necessities, where I opt out as much as possible from the consumer culture. Not because there's anything so wrong with IT, but because the government has made it undesirable to me to shop.)

mantra to self

I will not poke the crazy.
I will not poke the crazy.
I will not poke the crazy.

People who have stupid opinions will not change their minds based on what I have to say.

I will not poke the crazy.

(One of the discussion boards I frequent has someone who flounced in and kind of dropped a random snarky comment in the middle of a discussion. It's obviously someone who's agendized and who didn't pay attention to what we are actually saying. But it's so hard not to fire off a response pointing out how if they had ONLY READ OUR POSTS FIRST and if they had not LEAPT UPON THEIR HIGH HORSE without hearing what we were saying first, they would see that what they had said made no sense. But I also get the feeling that this is Crazy that doesn't need Poking).

I will not poke the crazy.

ETA: it pays not to Poke the Crazy. One of the board moderators went on and basically told the person who posted the Crazy comment, "You are misunderstanding what these folks are talking about and you posted a knee-jerk response. Please do not do that in the future." Hah.

Distractions and idiocies

I'm back. Break was good. More about that later. But I want to write about something that I had been thinking about, that an offhand comment of my dinner companion on the train kind of brought to a head.

Perhaps you are as sick as I am of the "new frugality" news stories. Or the "surviving the current recession" news stories.

I was frustrated by them when they first came out. Because so many of them were what I might term "Oy-doy*, Captain Obvious!" stories

(*I don't know what you said when you were growing up to indicate something that was really stupid. We either said "Uh-DUH!" or "Oy-DOY!" depending.)

Stories like, "Oh wow, you can, like, save SO much money if you take your lunch to work instead of eating out."

Um, duh. I've been doing that SINCE I WAS FIRST EMPLOYED. Part of it is frugality, true, but there are three other reasons I carry a lunch:

1. I can eat exactly what I want - I just have to pack it in the morning. So I can boil up a few eggs at the start of the week, or buy the berries I like, or even take a container of cereal and a little thing of milk if THAT'S what I want to eat. The restaurant choices here are not so broad - the choices are basically something fried, a hamburger, or some kind of salad. And I get sick of salad.

2. It's healthier. See the fried things above. I can take more fruit or vegetables if I want. I usually take plain yogurt because I like plain yogurt and it's easy, but it also means I get a bit more calcium in a day than I might otherwise. If I have some kind of good salad made up at home (I have a black bean/corn salad I like to make), I can throw a little jar of it in my lunch and have that. It helps me use up leftovers.

3. I can avoid the giant sucking sound on campus each noon - the exodus of cars to the local eating places, the giant traffic jam leaving and coming back. I can eat in the peace of my office and either check my e-mail or just listen to music or maybe even read over something I've written and think about it.

And really, those reasons more than the frugality one are why I carry a lunch.

So a lot of the early stories on "how to save money" made me roll my eyes because they seemed so dumb and obvious - stuff I did already, stuff that I would think a reasonable person would figure out on their own if they decided they needed to save money for some reason.

But now, the stories seem perhaps a bit more insidious to me.

And here's where the comment the guy I ate dinner with on the train last week makes sense.

We were talking about gardens. I remarked that my mom had a big garden every year; she's good at getting stuff to grow, and she lives in a good climate for growing stuff. And that I had less success; either bugs got my plants, or it got too hot and dry, or something. And he kind of laughed. "Yeah," he said, "my wife and I tried growing a garden one summer. I couldn't believe how much it cost for tools and sprays and all of that. In the end we probably wound up paying more for each tomato we got than what we'd pay at the grocery store."

And then he thought for a moment.

"You know," he said, "I wonder about all these stories on the news where they're talking about people planting gardens, where they're encouraging gardens as a way of saving money...I wonder if it's sort of, you know, a distraction."

And I think he's right, there. If you like gardening, if you enjoy the process and the product and all that, God bless you and go with it. But telling people who have never gardened before - or people who (like me) have gardened a little but not done much - that they "need" to have this neo-victory garden in order to save money or eat local or some other nebulous goal - well, maybe that is kind of a distraction.

The other thing with gardening - it takes time to be successful. For my mom, that's great - she's retired, and as I said, she enjoys gardening so it's like a hobby for her. But I work full time - in the summers, as well. I don't have the hours to pour into a garden to make it work to feed myself on a regular basis. (Even the Ingalls family didn't have a garden sufficient to feed themselves - in the Big Woods they hunted and foraged, and a lot of the time on the prairie they existed on cornmeal and beans from the store). Telling people who are already working long hours that they need to add this on as well seems...well, it does seem like they're being distracted from something else.

And then my dad showed me an article that he got from one of the online services he uses. "Four weeds you can eat!" it trumpeted. Yes, another "recession busting" article - this time telling people to go out and forage for wild greens as a way of reducing their food bills. (I hope they can find neighborhoods where the lawns aren't too heavily sprayed). Again - if a person enjoys this kind of thing, if they see it as an adventure, well and good. But telling ordinary Americans to go out and learn what purslane and lamb's quarters look like so they can go and pick them and cook them up and eat them....I have a bad reaction to that. (And not just because I've TRIED lamb's quarters).

Part of it may be the fact that I remember the story of one of the professors at one of the universities I attended: he had grown up Jewish in the 1930s in one of the countries (Poland? I don't remember for sure) that Hitler invaded. He, his family, and some friends fled into a large forested area and hid out there until they were able to escape to a country where they could get asylum and get to the US safely. They survived by eating wild mushrooms and the weeds they could find.

And part of me goes: as a country we are not yet reduced to that. We are not yet in such dire straits (and God willing, we never will be) that we have to hunt in the hedgerows and the by-ways for greens that we can eat.

Perhaps my reaction to the story is overblown, mainly because of my knowledge of what the man I mentioned above experienced, but I feel a certain revulsion about being told I need to go out and find dandelions and purslane and other wild plants and cook them up and eat them, because times are "so bad." I can find other ways to economize if I have to, thank you very much.

And again, it brings up a pet peeve that I have: the idea of the one-size-fits-all solution. Perhaps for some people, going out and foraging for wild food is exciting, fun, and worthwhile. For me, with my sometimes-oogy stomach, and my weird food sensitivities, and my allergies, it could be a very dangerous exercise. Likewise the suggestion that we dry our clothes, sheets, and towels on an old-fashioned clothesline. That's GREAT for some people - it's cheap, it gives things a nice smell, maybe stuff wrinkles less. But for someone like me, with serious pollen allergies - well, hanging my sheets and pillowcases out to dry would make me very miserable. (In fact, many of the anti-allergy guidelines warn specifically against drying stuff outside on lines).

I do know that some people do have lots of difficulties going on. For a lot of people, it's necessary to economize. But somehow, I think these news stories - the sort of "oh noes" type commentary and the breathless pushing of how "wonderful" some new time-consuming thing (like growing a garden) is, without consideration of the costs or the consequences, I think it adds to the problem. Not just the problem of people feeling fearful and uncertain, but also adds to the problem of people beginning to say, "Something must be DONE!" and that "something" turns out to be governmentally-mandated, and it turns out to come with all kinds of unpleasant side-effects. (I am, for example, dreading this new credit-card business going into effect. As someone who pays off in full on time every month, I expect I will be one of the ones either assessed an annual fee or in line for the "interest starts from the moment you purchase something." Which means I will have to learn once again how to live without a credit card - which will probably make travel very difficult and will require me to do things like drop my beloved Amazon Prime service, because you can't mail off a check to Amazon to pay for your books.)

ice has melted

Thanks, Dave, that was good.

Well, I turned in (most of) my grades yesterday, am going to turn in the last few today. I have a short meeting (we are hiring a new instructor and have to choose one - choose between someone who nearly put FACULTY who KNOW THIS STUFF to sleep and could not answer a couple of not-so-complex questions on the topic, and someone who had us laughing (in a good way) during her lecture and was able to field even tough questions with grace and good humor. Should not be a long meeting, I anticipate.)

And for any of the special snowflakes who want to complain about their grade:

they can kiss my surprisingly-well-toned-for-a-fat-girl butt

Any special snowflakes who think I've "ruined their lives" by allowing their grade to be the B or C that they EARNED:

they can kiss my backside

Anyone who wants to beg for a D instead of the F they so richly deserve, because the F means they're off the team:

pucker up, bucko.

I'm done, I'm ready to go visit family for a week, I don't want to HEAR it. The time to express concern about your grade is mid-semester, when I can still help you, when there is still something that can be done. NOT at the end of the semester when I cannot offer any tutoring that would help, when there are no more points to be assigned, when I'm already too busy with other things.

Not one of the three people who've come crying to me in the past day or so about grades came in to see me during the regular semester or expressed anything but complacency about how their grades were going. So it's too late, baby, now, it's too late.

Argh.

There will probably be no new posts until the end of the month.

I am stuck in a blizzard of Special Snowflakes right now.

Send a shovel. Or some ice-melter.

Awesome!

Dolly Parton got an honorary doctorate from University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

I love Dolly Parton. I am not really a country music fan, but I think she's got a great voice, and I particularly love a lot of the "roots" stuff she does, like her bluegrass albums.

It makes me so happy to hear of her getting this honor.

I know, some people aren't big fans of honorary doctorates - I've actually heard people claim they "take away" from people who have earned doctorates. As someone who HAS an earned doctorate, that strikes me as kind of an odd stance to take. It's an honor. I doubt many people who receive honorary doctorates NEED them to promote themselves in their careers or get a job the way people with earned doctorates use them.

I'm not so much a fan of the "politicized" ones - where they take someone that may in some way be majorly offensive to a large chunk of the student body (like someone who agitated for Hamas or some such at a school with a large Jewish population) but I can totally get behind the idea of honoring someone who has done the stuff Dolly has done.

She's such a great American character. And yes, I do think she's pretty uniquely American, I'm not sure you could get someone just like her in another country.

She just strikes me as someone who is a good, decent person, who has done well with her talent and with hard work, and who gives back.

She's also quoted on one of the UT pages:

"Learning is all about taking chances, and rolling up your sleeves and working hard," Parton said. "To learn more means to work more. Nobody ever makes it without hard work."

You go, Dr. Dolly!

just because it's called an "appeal" doesn't mean it's appealing...

I had a "grade appeal notice" this morning.

From a student who has done BOO all semester. Who was rude when he came to class, who skipped most of the classes, who didn't turn in half the work he was supposed to.

And now - OH NOES! - he finds he won't graduate with the two Fs (one from a previous semester when he took my class and FAILED and one from this semester).

So he went and cried to an administrator. He's working three jobs, wah wah wah. He won't graduate wah, wah, wah.

Well, this little graphic pretty well sums things up. (Except $300 is waaaaaaaaay too cheap. In fact, technically, any price would be too cheap because my integrity is worth more to me than money. But whatever. The part about going back in time still stands.)

I e-mailed the person back and politely said, the guy sucked rocks in my class and he was rude to some of the other students; I don't think he deserves a mercy pass.

Blowback HO! I'm just bracing for someone to come to me with a Very Sad Face or for the thing to be changed without my approval.

But you know? I don't flippin' care any more. Dude is never going to get a kick-ass job with the attitude he has. I'm DONE with people who think they can slack their way through college and then get a better-paying job than the ones their profs have. I'm DONE with people who think it's funny and cute to be rude to the other students and the prof.

One week. One more week. This time next week I will be packing my bags to go visit my family.

I know several people....

...who would call this a "useful educational tool," not a FAIL.

a minor celebration

I decided I deserved one, both for my clever detective work at finding a way to check the plagiarized paper, and as a reward for a crappy week.

So after I got done with an afternoon meeting, I drove over to the local meat market. It's kind of out of the way for me, but they have the best meat in town. I don't eat meat a whole lot (because of some family health-history things, I try to keep my consumption of saturated fat low, and it's also cheaper for me to be semi-vegetarian) so when I do I like for it to be as tasty as possible. (And then I also don't feel qualms about spending $8 or so on a steak.) The other nice things about the meat market: the people there are really friendly and really knowledgeable. And they sell things by-the-piece - a lot of the groceries here have gone away from having meat counters, so if you want, say, a pork chop, you have to buy a "family pack" of 10 of them and freeze the rest (well, if you're someone who lives alone). So I like that I can walk into this place and buy ONE steak. Or three spare-ribs. Or a half-pound of hamburger. Or whatever. They seem to do a good business, which makes me happy. (They're on the road out to the lake; I bet they get lots of folks in the summer stopping off to get burgers or steaks to grill out).

I know there's some debate as to the "best" steak cut, and different people have different favorites, but for my money, my favorite cut this place sells is the KC Strip. So I got one of those. I don't do anything too elaborate with good steak - but a little Montreal steak seasoning on it, and cook it up in the grill pan. (And I like it RARE. Still practically mooing. I usually ask for medium-rare in restaurants because I'm less certain of the beef's origin and how it was handled, but I trust this place well enough to cook rare meat from them.)

I also cooked some corn, and fixed some fresh strawberries, and cut a couple pieces of bread to eat with olive oil and herbs.

And it was good. Most of the time I eat pretty quick-grab stuff (a lot of salads, stuff like hummus, yogurt), so it's a real treat to cook a "real" meal now and then.

(And I have half of the steak left to be eaten cold on a salad or in a sandwich.)

SRSLY, I cannot make this up

So I announce to my class this morning that they weren't getting their grades just yet because there had been a "plagiarism incident" that I was having to investigate. I told them that an individual in the class had plagiarized, I didn't specify how. I went on a bit with my spiel - about how I was disappointed in the person who did this, about how they were earning a 0 for the project, about how I did the project because I believed it benefited THEM to get some further writing and research experience, and that it was actually a lot of work for me to do this.

I laid it on a bit thick but then that's the prerogative of a professor in this situation.

I was very calm. I am not a yeller. I am not someone who finds it easy to get angry in front of other people. But I almost think it's more shocking - or at least, it is for me - when someone comes in and very quietly, very calmly says, "This thing happened and I am disappointed and a little bit angry." It's easier to write it off when the person comes in, guns blazing, flecks of spittle flying from the mouth.

The room got pretty quiet. (Incidentally, the plagiarizer was absent. She may know that she's caught, I'm not sure)

Then one of the mouthy guys in the back puts up his hand. "So, does this person know already?" he asked - I detected a note of nervousness in his voice.

"The person in question knows they did something wrong" I said. "I haven't confronted them yet, no."

"Are you going to tell them?" he continued.

"Oh, they'll find out."

(And all the while I'm thinking: you just earned a second going-over of your paper, dude.)

I did say that if the person came and confessed, while it wouldn't change their grade, it may make them feel better about themselves.

And I left it at that. We'll see if anyone else confesses. I'll be surprised if they do. (I think the guy in question was concerned that his citing was slipshod - he's been graded down for that - but to the best of my determination, his paper is NOT plagiarized. But we'll see. If he "cracks" and confesses he gets a 0).

I'm going to wait until Friday morning to post the grades. Just because I can.

I swear, if I ever get sick of teaching, I could probably do interrogation for the FBI.

And so it concludes...

I found something this morning that incontrovertibly proves the student plagiarized the paper. Something I can photocopy and send off to the Dean if it were to go that far. But I know it won't. Because I'm making a copy of that very thing and attaching it to the student's grade sheet, to show why she got the big fat smokin' ZERO that she did.

I have alternated this morning between doing the "smug dance" and feeling giant relief.

While I'm UNHAPPY the incident happened, I'm relieved that I can now prove it, and that my suspicions were spot-on. (And that my department chair will not have to stick her neck out for me). And that this student really can't reasonably do anything other than apologize for her actions. She can't pull the "No, I didn't copy" because the papers are IDENTICAL. She can't pull the "feel sorry for me" card, because I'm fresh out of sympathy.

(And this is all because I'm a slob who never gets rid of things when a normal person would. Score one for packrattery.)

sadder but wiser

...that should be my student, not me. But it is me.

Now what I need to do? Have the students turn in electronic copies as well as paper copies of EVERY paper. And then I get to file all of those on my computer hard drive, for ever, I guess.

And I KNOW - I KNOW IN MY BONES - that I will get Special Snowflakes going, "But if we have to e-mail you copies of our papers, why do we have to print them out? Can't we make YOU print them out for us?" Gah.

And I KNOW some people will send them in this stupid opensource program a lot of our students have, that claims it's "just like Word" except you cannot open documents written in it in Word (Or at least *I* can't).

Someone else in the department suggested scanning all the papers. Oh, great, I'll get my assistant RIGHT on that. (It rankles me that I have to do ANY extra work because of the cheaters, let alone spend three hours plus of my life scanning damn papers).

But this is the way it is. The honest people get screwed, the cheaters find a new way to cheat their way through. The honest people wind up paying for the cheaters; they wind up wasting their time because of the cheaters; perhaps their degrees wind up being worth less because of the cheaters.

It makes me mad. I know doing the right thing should be its own reward - but one should not be punished for wanting to do the right thing. (I could just turn a blind eye to this crap - which would mean of course I would have even more cheaters next semester - and save myself time and agony).

The student is getting a 0. My chairperson and I concur there's sufficient evidence, even without my having the old paper, to nail her for it. So she's getting back a grade sheet with a big fat zero, and a "See me" written on it. (The thought of that makes me want to vomit. I hate confrontation. I'm really tempted to wuss out and say, "See me if you disagree with this grade" meaning, "If you realize you're busted and that you have no way to claim you actually did this work, then you can leave me alone" but I don't know if I can say that)

I just want to make this go away.

One of my colleagues smugly told me, "Oh, we're all so glad you do this project" (Yeah, because then YOU don't have the heartache. I do an awful lot of crap other people don't want to do)

I'm telling myself next Friday is "screw you guys, I'm goin' home" day - the day I leave for a short visit with family - but next Friday is still a looooooooong way off.

I'm not a drinking woman or I'd be breaking out the tequila. Or something. I really wish I could make this whole mess go away.

Hulkette SMASH

I can't get rid of the anger and the sick feeling over the plagiarism, plus a couple of Entitled People I had to deal with today.

I think I need to go to the dollar store or the thrift store, buy some really cheap old china, and throw it at the tree in my backyard. (Except then I have to clean up all the smashed bits of china, which makes it less satisfying).

I still have many, many scholarship applications to review tonight. I was given these today and am told "we are meeting to discuss them Wednesday."

Yeah...administrators think profs just sit in their offices twiddling their thumbs, wishing they had something to do.

*$&#^%#$@#$#@!!!!!

I'm grading student research papers this afternoon (I have to go back over to school shortly to pick up the "I just couldn't get to the printer on time" ones - which get a partial reduction for lateness.

I have 17 of 23 papers. No idea how many are going to come in this afternoon.

But I have a bigger problem.

One student, whose project failed, grabbed me on a day when I was busy and distracted and said, "I need to do an alternate project but I have an idea" and laid out some basic ideas for me. Because I was harried, I kind of waved my hand and said, "Yeah, yeah, go with that."

Well, now I get the paper.

And it is eerily like a paper I read last semester....over this same topic.

Frack.
Frack.
Frack.

Because I am not organized enough - and frankly DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH FILE CABINET SPACE - I do not save copies of past students' papers. I feel I should not HAVE to.

But apparently, now I HAVE to. Or not hand the papers back and irritably say: you have to come look at your grade in my office (Cripes, what a nightmare. I will have 20 uptight pre-meds NEEDING to see their paper probably on the very day I don't have the time or energy to sit there and babysit them.)

I am F.U.R.I.O.U.S.

Furious at myself for not taking the time to photocopy at least the first page of previous papers (but again: I SHOULD NOT *H*A*V*E* TO) and hanging on to them. FURIOUS at the student for apparently trying to pull a fast one that I now cannot prove.

I can go to the faculty member in charge of the lab where she ostensibly did the work and ask her if she was in there, but a response in the negative doesn't necessarily mean that she copied the paper. (A response in the positive, on the other hand....maybe it's not a problem. But the paper is so damn similar, down to the same species of experimental organisms used (not necessarily common ones) in the previous paper that I am VERY suspicious).

I think all I CAN do, other than asking said faculty member, is to grade the paper as HARD as I possibly can. To be really really mean on it. And then if the student comes to whine, demand to see their lab book, evidence of ownership of the animals in question, grill her with questions on the project design.

But....this sort of SHIT (and yes, I'm using that word) is why one of my colleagues stopped doing research papers. At the time, I was scandalized - how can he do that? How can he let the jerks win? How can he reduce the effectiveness of the education for the students who give a damn?

(Simple: because he lets me continue to put up with it.)

Part of me wants to shrug and go, "Eh, it's HER soul. Karma will get her in the end for doing this, if she cheated."

But another part of me goes: "You do not want to get a reputation among the students as someone who will overlook cheating."

The thing is, I don't know 100%. I am afraid to be TOO accusatory.

I don't know what to do. And I have all other kinds of crap to do this week - exams to write, scholarship applications to evaluate (that last one dumped in my lap just today).

I am really FURIOUS at this person for putting me in this position and furious at myself for not exercising UNDUE diligence when it comes to cheating.

GAH. I think I'm NOT handing back the papers this year, I will say, "It's come to my attention that old papers may be being copied from, so sorry, you don't get yours back, I'm keeping them as a file to compare future papers against." What can they do? I'm the prof.

Doesn't solve my cheating issue, but at least it may nip it in the bud for the future.

***

Talked to my colleague. Student NEVER came to see her. She says Student has NEVER had the class that would teach her how to do this. She's going to call the student with whom the paper probably originated to see what's going on.

She seemed kind of unhappy that the student who may have been the originator may be complicit in this. I am furious too.

Seriously, if I am ever driven from the teaching field, it will be because of all the DAMN CHEATING. I bust my ass to do a good job, be honest, prepare the students well, and then some of these ASSHOLES think they can just cheat their way through and that they can fool me.

Well, no more. They are NO LONGER getting their papers back. In fact, hell, I may not even put very much in the way of comments on them. They don't deserve it! They don't deserve for me to take 8 hours of of my life, to spend more time grading a paper than some of them spent writing the damn thing.

I'd fail 'em all, but I'd get in trouble for that.

I feel sick to my stomach now.

Alainis Morissette, white courtesy phone, please

I heard this on the radio this morning.

Apparently Congress is taking up the issue of the BCS and how a "national champion" is decided in college football.*

(I guess they have nothing better to do?**)

One legislator - I think he was from Texas - excoriated the system, saying, "It's a failed system, just like Communism."

So of course the GOVERNMENT has to step in and tell the colleges how to run their show.

(Facepalm).

(*As a college professor who has taught "student athletes," I would argue that the LAST thing we need to do is to make college football more like pro football. Already the college football players tend to have overblown senses of their own importance - a giant sense of entitlement - and, in some cases, a tendency to criminal activity because they think they will be given a pass because they are SUPERSTARS!

NO. This is college. You are supposedly getting an education and I am sick of having people who probably should never have been admitted to school, who have poor study habits and a worse attitude, acting as if I should give them a passing grade because of who they are.)

(**That said, I'd much rather see them screw up college football than screw up the health care system in this country. Or screw up people being able to invest money for retirement. Or screw the tax system up worse than it already is)

Gotta laugh to keep down the rage

News item: Northeastern University says grads cannot shake hands with the dean, citing Swine Flu fears

So, I present to you, my Top Ten list of alternate "congratulations" the dean could share with the graduates:

10. Chest bump.

9. Interpretive dance moves

8. Do the Hustle

7. Air kiss

6. F-i-inger W-i-iggle

5. "Gang" hand symbols. (Alternatives: flipping the bird or "the shocker." And yes, I leave it to you to Google that. Don't do it at work.)

4. Ear tugs, a la Carol Burnett

3. "You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out..."

2. Pat them on the butt like a football coach and growl, "Go get 'em, tiger!" (Though that might go over better at Princeton)

And the number one alternate congratulation the dean could share with his graduates?

1. Turn the linings of their pockets out - the student to signify the years of crippling student loans; the dean to signify shrinking "slush funds" provided by generous donors.

TGIF

Seriously. This is the first Friday in, like six weeks (well, not really, we got Good Friday off) where I haven't had to stick around in my office until 4 pm or later because of meetings.

So I'm done with my grading. I've completed the "final exam review sheets" (really just long lists of topics I want the students to study; I figure these things are mainly Dumbo's Feathers anyway). So, I have nothing more I HAVE to do today.

I think I'm going to run in for a bit tomorrow and work on a paper. And I've been hired to evaluate a chapter for a new textbook; I might start on that tonight.

But at home.
Where I can have a nice cup of tea while I work and the phone won't ring and I have a dehumidifier (it's been wicked humid here and it's upsetting my asthma).

And tonight, getting to sleep at a decent hour. Yes.

I really need to be grading

But it's too much fun to Demotivate...

I have but one thing to say:

We are receiving more-than-daily updates from Campus Health Services about this. With such helpful suggestions to the students as, "If you THINK you might be sick, call your professor and beg for extensions on crap." (OK, that's an exaggeration.)

But seriously folks: our exam week is coming up. I know you're not supposed to pray for selfish stuff but I am really praying that no one shows up on campus with swine flu, or even suspected swine flu, and they shut us all down and do something BRILLIANT like reschedule finals for the first week of the summer semester. Because I could just see that happening.

Oh, and don't travel in any containers.