Since I am paranoid

I don't like to advertise on the Internet when we are not at home. So

I didn't post that we actually went to see my folks, who live in the northeast corridor. For the past 13 years, visiting family has meant flying into whatever East Coast airport is cheapest from Central State and renting a car and driving between our parents, who live 12 hours (on a good day) apart by car. We called it the I-95 Christmas.

The highway traffic has gotten worse year by year, such that the last 3 times we have made the drive, we have vowed to not do it again. But this year, we were able to do something about it.

We don't live on the coast and are pretty darned far from the dreaded I-95, but we could get train service from the city we are living it that eventually connects it's way up to near where my parents live. So we took Amtrak.

It took about as long as driving, what with the traffic we would have sat in all the way there. But we didn't have to drive, enjoyed large, comfortable seats with power outlets and bathrooms on board, and it was about 1/4 of the cost of flying all of us up there.

But the real advantage was coming home yesterday. With the blizzard in the Northeast, Amtrak was the only thing moving out of there. The trip took 5 hours longer (3 hours delayed leaving because it was hard to get workers out to the train yard at the start of the line, then we made a lot more local stops because some trains had been cancelled), but we got home in a day and were WAY better off than people who were planning to fly or drive.

We'll definitely do this again. Oh, and would-be thieves...we're home now. Better luck next year.

Holidays

My folks are with us for the holidays. Bun and Offspring are super excited, but I finally got them to bed. Then I checked my e-mail, which had a message from about 10 of my grad students saying they had made a donation to Heifer, International, in my name. Completely unexpected, and very appreciated, especially since Heifer is one of my favorite charities.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

Tuesday

Such imaginative titles. I know that's why you guys come back.

Anyway!

We got up at 2 for the eclipse last night. It was becoming cloudy at night (and 25 degrees), so we watched a bit, and then tried to ask Mitzi the astronomer from NASA a question at the live chat (Mitzi was too busy for us, but our question was if the eclipse didn't look red because of the high clouds, if anyone knows the answer...). Got back to bed at about 3:30 Felt a little bad for the neighbors, who were treated to a VERY excited Bun shouting "A shadow is eating the moon!" at that unholy hour.

We picked up our car today, Spouse and I had lunch at a great Korean place in the city where he works (bibimbap = YUM), we did a bit of clean up Christmas shopping (sonic toothbrushes for me and Spouse - whee) and went home and took a nap. Spouse's hand has 10 stitches in it (protip: need stitches? Go to an Urgent Care center. We were able to check in over the Internet so no waiting when we got there, the doc was great and whole bill was $72, including medicine. I shudder to think what we might have paid at the ER) and it hurts a bit, so he didn't have a great day, but he did pretty well.

We got takeout from a favorite local restaurant and rented The Santa Clause from Amazon.com (protip: buy someone a DVD, and you get $5 in free download credit). We watched it, ate "poop cookies" (Bun's choice of recipe and the logs spread kind of unappetizingly, although they taste great), and then had Prof family Christmas. We always open our inter-family gifts prior to our holiday travels. Most of the gifts go to the girlies, and the favorites this year were Bun: A pink and purple sleep mask that reads "Beauty Sleep"; Offspring: Her own copy of Gray's Anatomy.

Bun has school tomorrow, but Offspring doesn't, so we are taking Offspring and a friend to a science museum. Oddly, the friend is with her Dad and stepmother for the holidays, and the stepmother didn't mind us taking the friend, as long as it was no more than 3 hours, because she needs friend to do the work to get ready for Christmas (her words). Odd and Cinderella-esque.

Oh, we also test drove a Prius while we were in town. Liked it - more comfortable than we expected.

Moonday

So here at Chez Prof, we are all atwitter about the eclipse tonight. It will be nice to have something good.

Today the kiddos finally went back to school, so Spouse and I celebrated by taking the car for repairs (I swear we are just signing our december paychecks over to the dentist and the car shop!), getting the other bicycle for our adopted family and delivering the stuff (not as awkward as it could have been I guess), getting Bun's Santa present, taking Spouse to the dentist, and then coming home, following Spouse attempting a home improvement that resulted in him cutting the crap out of two of his fingers on a rusty drill bit. This was followed by a great trip to the Urgent Care for 10 stitches.

I have never been so grateful for my mandatory first aider training I had as a Girl Scout leader. It let me say helpful things like "sit down and put your head between your legs so you don't pass out," "keep the direct pressure on it," "when was your last tetanus shot" and "yeah, I'll driving you to the doctor now."

Spouse has a bit of a needle phobia, so I was afraid he would have a rough time with the stitches. We went ahead and picked up Bun since we didn't know if he'd be done before her daycare closes, so I didn't go back with him. It took almost an hour, but he didn't pass out, so I guess that's a bonus.

We have a family tradition of sickie treats, so I dropped Spouse off at home, tasked Offspring with making dinner (thanks Chore Wars and went to the store for some spicy V8, root beer and salt and vinegar chips (and bandaids and ibuprofen. He declined the addictive pain pills, so I think they expect him to hurt quite a bit tonight. But at least we'll have the moon to distract us.

Sunday

So today I had colleague and her family over for lunch. They picked the day and time and this was the first time they had free since October. She has a daughter Offspring's age, and they had fun playing together. It was a nice warm up today, so they went outside with her son and Bun, who decided to make a mud pie. In her new Christmas dress. Mud + fake fun != a good thing. Oh well. The conversation started with "Did you go to Undergrad U?" "Yes. Go Slugs!" "We're you in the honors program?" "Yes." "Did you know Dr. Schmedlapp?" "Yes, he was my advisor." "He is his (pointing to her husband" Dad." Weird.

We are working on a craft project for the girls to give to our relatives. You can read about it at about.com. 30 minutes my patootie. I am at about four hours right now, just from editing and resizing the photos, not to mention getting them printed and going to the store for the marbles and magnets. We haven't even assembled them yet. This reminds me why I am not wild about craft projects! On the plus side, they look like they will be pretty cute.

Enjoyed this

which a bunch of people shared on Facebook:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/368914/december-16-2010/jesus-is-a-liberal-democrat?xrs=share_fb


In that light, taking the girls out today to get presents for the family we adopted through the local Christmas charity here. We've always done this, but this year I didn't know where to do it until Thursday, so I'm glad we found that out.

This agency gives you the whole intake form for the family - it's amazing that people can live on so little.

Snow days

We had a bit of wintry precipitation yesterday, and so my girls have had no school yesterday or today. It's a good thing I wrapped up the semester, so I don't have a lot of work stuff to do, but I was really counting on yesterday and today to get the rest of Christmas stuff finished (still need to get a few gifts, get stuff for the needy family we adopted, 5,000 errands, etc.), and I was also looking forward to some quality time with Spouse, which we really, really need.

I think I'll have two days next week before the real holiday business, but I do have some work stuff, too, since classes resume Jan. 3 for me this year.

So I should enjoy the girlies now, and I think I will go do that.

I know you've been waiting for this

feel free to skip the rest of this entry while I try to engender some accountability by liveblogging my exam grading. While you are waiting, please to enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/user/historyteachers#p/a/f/0/kJULC0jsgdA


10:50 - well that was exciting. I finished the test grades for my u-grad class range from 78-96, so not too bad. Also watched/listened to The Sing Off while grading.

11:30 - turned off the TV and worked out the final averages. The chariot of B swung low for some students, and I feel like my grades are too high. I'm going to bed. 33 finals and 7 projects to grade tomorrow.

8:30 a.m. - back at work. Need to find a student group's basket project, which requires my finding the combination lock code for the student who left it there's locker.

9 a.m. - Off to the dentist for 3, count 'em, 3 fillings. woot.

10:41 a.m. - Back from dentist. Located project. Debating if I can have a cup of hot tea to drink while I grade my head off. Going to try it.

12:12 p.m. - Tea successful, projects disappointing, but graded. Have a lunch meeting and novocaine still hasn't worn off. That should be fun. Need to grade finals after lunch.

1:50 p.m. - Back from lunch meeting. Had soup, but still managed to bite my cheek hard a couple of times. Will regret that later. Looking at 33 more final exams, then the clean up and entry before morning. Have to leave in 40 mins to run errand for Spouse that will take a couple of hours. Ack.

5:50 p.m. - Back from errand. Snuck in a coffee with a friend who works at the errand site (bad MommyProf!), but did get 10 exams graded before I left (good MommyProf!) so maybe it all washes out. Just told Spouse he should get dinner together so I can finish grading.

7:58 p.m. - Spouse heated leftovers and made a vegetable. Girls had banana pancakes and broccoli. Fortunately, they LOVE broccoli (another way in which my family is weird). Finished all finals submitted with names on them. Beginning detective work on the others.

8:52 p.m. - 4 finals left. Then a few irritating things that came in late. Don't stop believin' (the song Bun just calls Journey...)

9:11 p.m. - Spouse is showing Offspring the Khan episode of ST:TOS. Line: "My name is Khan. Please. Sit and entertain me." We all crack up.

11:14 p.m. - Grades all calculated. It's all done but the agonizing. I've submitted the 3 I know for sure at this point. 30 to go.

11:32 p.m. - And...entered. Let the e-mails begin.

5:20 a.m. - Snow day for both kids, and I can't sleep. I think I have PTSD from this semester.

Grading jail, day 2

Finished grading major project in undergrad class. They take their final in 45 minutes, and I made that ez-grade. Will probably grade grad finals during that test.

I think I will make it.

*Update: Didn't grade the grad finals, but got papers out for review for conference I am paper chair for. And that's good, too, right? Have now received last paper to grade. Grades due 10 a.m. Thursday. Wondering why grad students don't seem to be able to put their names on their papers...

I can't help but feel

that I am wasting my time writing comments on assignments at this point.

Getting closer

So we are getting closer to the end of the semester, and I am getting ready to lock myself in grading jail. Have quite a bit to do this week, but Spouse and I agreed we'd try to get it all done by the end of Wednesday, so we could have Thursday and Friday to do Christmas stuff, maybe catch a movie, and get life in order before we take off.

Offspring has been having a lot of difficulty at school (as it I got phone calls or e-mails from 3 of her 4 academic subject teachers in the last 2 weeks), so we may be doing a conference as well.

We always have difficulty keeping on schedule when Spouse and I don't have to actually be somewhere, so I am hoping to fight that somewhat this week.

I guess that's it. I need to go nag someone about homework.

Weekly update

Classes...over

Finals to give/grade...three

Final projects to grade in the next week...25

Skippy...graduating in May and I don't have him in the Spring

And, curtain

So I asked Spouse if he could come up with one word to describe this semester, and he couldn't. He's quite unhappy, but it is hard to summarize that in one word.

I tried to do the same. At first I wanted roller coaster, but, unfortunately, that's two words. Coming here has been a HUGE adjustment. It's WAY beyond what I might have expected moving to a similar job at a largely similar university (what's dissimilar is the department). But, as those of you who have been reading this fall, know, it has really been a time of dramatic highs careening to lows. In fact just yesterday, I found out Offspring has a D average in a class because she has not turned in any homework and I had to do course evaluations (low), but my students' work on final projects was actually pretty good, showing that, although they didn't like it, they did learn (high).

But that's two words, so that's cheating. So I have to pick a new word, and that word is:

Drama.

Holy crap has there been drama this semester. For all of us. From Spouse's first faculty meeting, the first week of the semester, where they told him they couldn't keep him after this year, to Offspring's school to my experience in class last week involving having a senior tell me this was the best class period they had ever had (followed by that same class period leading to Thursday's late night incident).

I found a local radio station that plays Christmas music, so I had it on in the car. It's a religious station, and this kid's radio drama came on after a while. It was pretty stupid in its content, but what made it really funny was the cheesy organ that punctuated every major event. I think I need to look into getting a cheesy organ for the soundtrack of my life.

2/3 done

Two classes down. They are butchering me on the evals right now. I have a bit of grading to do, and then I get to think about how to spin all this on my annual review self eval (right now I am thinking "I really don't belong here teaching this class," but that is probably unnecessarily excessively pessimistic). I have what might be described as "a crapload" of things to do at home tonight, so at least I won't dwell on it much.

AS IF.

So it was terrible and horrible

but not so much no good and very bad. I can't go into details, but let's just say that when you have to go into work at 10:30 at night and have to stop by and talk to the associate dean, who also had to come in at 10:30 at night to try to find your phone number because of an urgent situation caused by your basketweaving students, maybe the next day isn't going to be super awesome.

But in the light of day, the drama seemed dialed back a bit, and I am think alls well that ended somewhat ok.

In other news, I don't need a root canal, but might need my wisdom teeth out. Aaaaaaand I passed on the dental insurance.

But in better news, we got the tree up today and the whole family worked on some cleaning, so that's something.

Having the start of a terrible

horrible, no good, very bad day.

How it went

I think it went pretty well. I didn't control the time as well as I might, and having my now 4 year old there made it pretty difficult to have any kind of meaningful class discussion afterwards, so although I think it was a productive exercise that did increase learning about baskets, I am not sure the students could tell me how it did. But oh well.

Unfortunately, I had the students, in groups, design a new type of basket that would have functionality for young children. At the end, each group had 5 minutes to present and explain their ideas to Bun and she chose a winning group who got a little cash prize. Skippy's group did pretty well, and I liked their presentation, but Bun chose another group, much to Skippy's consternation (wherein I heard "the sound" again.)

Oh well, you can't please everyone.

plans for today

Today is Bun's fourth birthday (I know, I can't believe it either!)

So she is going to school this morning. She's in a Montessori school and they have a little Montessori birthday ritual that includes Mommy having to come with 100% whole grain muffins with fruit in them (what's the emoticon for an eye roll?).

This afternoon, I'm doing another newish lesson that will either be brilliant, or blow up in my face (what the heck - it can't really get any worse!), so Bun is coming to class with me to answer questions from my students as they do a lab on baskets for children.

I'll let you know how it goes.