The weather is abominable. We started out the day with thick, slushy, wet clumps of snow coming down with rain, and now we’ve got fierce winds and an icy fog of blowing blizzardy stuff everywhere. So I fixed myself a dinner of baked salmon and washed it down with Fire Rock Pale Ale.
If I close my eyes and turn up the music loud to drown out the howling winds, I can almost — almost — imagine it’s Hawaii.
I’m struggling with some annoying problems with my computer right now: every once in a while, it spontaneously dies without warning, and the system says there’s something wrong with the battery. It’s happened now several times today, always right when I’m in the middle of writing something. I’ve ordered a new battery, but until then, I may be spending some time getting apoplectic with the stupid friggin’ unreliable machine.
Do not be alarmed if updates are irregular, I’m busy punching the keyboard.
A slightly late Christmas present arrived on my doorstep this afternoon: Søren from Denmark had a case of 12 interesting beers sent to me. Thank you! Now, of course, I must drink them all. Immediately.
No, wait, that would be unwise. I shall drink one a night until they are gone. Tonight, I am sipping on Trout Slayer Ale, just because the combination of mighty fish and slaying makes me feel macho.
Mmmm. Mild. Lemony. Not very ferocious at all.
I hope you all had a pleasant holiday—I had the strange experience of having all three kids come back to our house for the weekend. We’d just gotten rid of them all, and here they were, hangin’ about, being normal people, having a quiet couple of days together.
It’s a good thing none of the kids have kids of their own yet, or I’d start feeling all patriarchal, and we can’t have none of that.
Anyway, everything is getting back to normal now.
Did you know that if you decorate your Christmas tree with squids and octopuses and cuttlefish, like ours:
…that on Christmas Eve, you’ll be visited by Santa Squid?
We have our nets and harpoons and great big barrel of formaldehyde waiting by the fireplace, in hopes that the Tentacled One will stop by.
We’re also expecting all three of our kids to be here for Christmas dinner, which will be groovy. Right now, the house is resounding with the traditional sounds of Christmas, the gunfire and zombie growls of Black Ops on the home theater system.
Merry Christmas to all of you, too!
I want a prize. I just submitted the grades for two of my three classes this term, including the big intro biology class with two lecture sections. No one gave me a beer when I mentioned my classes were done…I need one now.
OK, so I have to finish the one last class — but that one had the take-home essay final. I want a reward now, not tomorrow when I finish that pile.
Fine, be that way. I’ll get back to work on the papers, right after I get the driveway and sidewalk cleared (we’re in the middle of a big snowstorm predicted to drop 5″-7″ of snow on us by the morning). But I better get that beer when they’re done, this time.
Last final exam for my intro biology class has just been turned in.
Somebody gimme a beer. Now.
It’s the last day of finals week here at UMM, and lucky me, I have two exams scheduled back-to-back today…so I’m about to go into the classroom and proctor away (the most boring task in all of teaching), and I don’t emerge again until at least 3:30. But then the semester is done!
Except for the grading.
The awful, horrible, daunting stacks of papers that must all be graded before I can live again.
If you don’t see me again, it means the grues got me.
This will be an anxious week. It’s the last week of classes, I have piles of stuff to finish grading and get back to the students, and the students themselves are looking more than a little stressed. The last labs in my development course are falling apart thanks to animal intransigence and the incompetence of shippers. We have two job candidates visiting this week, and I’m on the search committee. And the end of my book writing project is in sight, with just the last little bits of polish and duct tape needed to make it all hang together. As usual, the universe has converged on this one little moment of time to maximize my personal tension.
So expect long periods of silence here, punctuated by brief eruptions of tooth-grindiness and fury. Trolls, lie low if persistence is a goal. Outbreaks of drama in the threads will be met with a combination of neglect and exasperation (oh, so nothing will change there, at least). Goats may spontaneously combust.
I am seriously looking forward to finals week when my tasks will be reduced to administering the last few bits of classes that got off to a bad start, and nothing else. But first I have to make it through this one.
