I Love Google Chrome's Incognito Windows

Especially when I write blog entries from Syracuse.

It's past 1 AM and I'm awake, partly because of this evening's chocolate consumption, partly because I slept until nearly noon today (definitely didn't plan that - that's more than eight hours). I'll say this, having graded eight op-eds today: for all I've taught badly this semester, on the op-ed unit I think I actually did okay (it helps that that's the unit that's changed the least over the three semesters I've been teaching). Their MLA formatting skills are significantly worse than I expected, but the overall grades are better than they've been.

It was a very good Thanksgiving: in addition to my immediate family, we had Aunt Lisa and Elizabeth (Uncle Paul's mother - he himself is in Afghanistan, doing the same police-training work he previous did in Iraq) and Uncle Bert and Might-As-Well-Be-Aunt Nancy. I brought minor shame upon my head with my total inability to perform basic kitchen tasks properly (where went all the budding apple-peeling skill I cultivated in Alfred? Oh, yeah, that's right: I didn't really have much, and then Erica's apple-peeling gadget swooped down and rescued me), but my contribution to dinner, Pioneer Woman's apple dumplings (the same ones I've been making all autumn - my family had never yet gotten to try them), appears to have more or less redeemed me. They pleased everyone and won my brother's heart, which is not always a small feat...it helped that, to him, they taste like McDonald's apple pies. I haven't had many of those, but thinking back to my vague recollections thereof, you know what? I think he's right.

Today we went to the Everson Museum to see "Turner to Cezanne" (please put the accent where it belongs - I'm lazy), an awesome exhibit of impressionist paintings from a Welsh collection. It's only going to four cities in America, and somehow little-ol' Syracuse managed to be one of them. Totally worth the long wait in line to get in. It goes on until early January - if you ever want to see it, let me know, because I'm game to go back.

And I put a bunch of my house's dishes, which I brought up from Binghamton in a Rubbermaid-style tub, through my parents' dishwasher. Because that's the kind of kitchen we run at my house, yessir: I can bring up a whole bin full of dirties, and we will still have enough dishware in our cupboards for the seven-person (or whatever) feast that Natasha cooked yesterday for her friends. I have reflected more than once that if we had fewer dishes, we'd probably be forced to be better about washing them. (But then I realize that this is potentially erroneous, and we might actually, in real life, probably be no better, just hungrier. Facepalm. Blush. Sigh.)

Tomorrow I have to grade about nine more op-eds, but that's okay. Really, the battle will be getting up before noon again. As much as I should, it's so seldom that I actually get to sleep for eight-plus hours that I've just been soaking, soaking it in like a sponge (or some other, less cliched item like that) (and yeah, you're gonna have to add that accent, too). Eating, sleeping, arting, grading op-eds, and writing long, rambly, boring-to-everyone-but-me blog entries: this is my Thanksgiving-break life. And it is very welcome. The end.

I'm just so bad at my job. For real. I don't want to make a scene about it, but that's seriously the only thing I can do, make a scene, be the melodramatic panicking girl, cheerfully reassured by one and all.

But I'm just so bad at my job. It isn't okay. Teachers should know how to teach. If they're not ready to teach, they shouldn't be inflicted on students. Don't we think that freshmen are important? Or do we just think that a few years with the real professors will straighten them out?

I'm just so bad at my job. And it isn't okay.

::facepalm::, revisited

I have never had so much trouble getting students to understand the concept of what makes a good eight-to-ten-page researched-argument topic as I have this semester. Some of them have finally gotten somewhere, but even now, though everyone's supposed to bring in two completed pages of their argument section tomorrow, I have like four or five kids that still don't even have a topic because they just. don't. get it. They just guess and guess and guess, proposing inappropriate topic after inappropriate topic, hoping by luck to hit something I'll approve.

I am going to bed before I have to answer any other e-mails that make me question my fitness for and choice of this career.

Yesterday was a good day. That makes it frustrating that today was not.

Alfred, the Latest

Went to Alfred for the square dance - saw Albert, Joe/Andrea (but of course!), Tom, Tim/Maggie, Jessie, bunches of staff...the dance was fun as usual, and this year I think I came in second in the limbo contest, keeping my unofficial-and-largely-unnoted title of Best Female InterVarsity-Alfred Limboer.

I was really out of it for a lot of Saturday, really sort of emotionally muted (I dunno, it's been a long series of weeks?), but Saturday night was gorgeous: the others skipped town, so Albert and I, being the only ones left, had dinner at Sandy's, preceded by fun times looking through Roger's microscope and followed by lots and lots of good talk, first Sandy and Albert and me and then with Roger there as well. I also got a chance after that to watch Ratatouille with Jessie and then talk with her until too-late.

All the staff, of course, were wonderful to us all weekend - with the Jet temporarily out of commission, we were left with about two planned meals unaccounted for, but the Snyders/McGraws/McClains made sure that we didn't want for nourishment, to say nothing of the great times we had at their houses, even though we often gave them comparatively little notice before we came.

Chapel this morning: also excellent. I never remember Paul Young's name, but I always like his sermons (and how would one not take pleasure in listening to his Irish-ish accent?), and this one was no exception.

The one blight on the whole thing is that I've come home lightly sick. It feels like a chest cold, but I'm also running a low fever, as I just discovered a few minutes ago after digging out my thermometer. So maybe, even though we're also going to miss Wednesday the 25th's class because of Thanksgiving break, I may do what I've been considering doing for weeks: maybe I'll cancel class tomorrow. It would save me from not only potentially having to teach sick, but from having to figure out what on earth I'm going to teach them.

But that will be a matter to consider further when I wake up from the nap I am now hoping to take. In sum, Alfred is still wonderful. The end.

Wait. What? Aagh!

Seriously, after a weeks-long slog through paper-grading, and a day today where I met with something like twenty of my students (for ten minutes each) for writing conferences, and after sitting through a 7:30 PM meeting for WRIT 100, I am happy to finally be home and somehow without assignment for the evening.

But since nobody's around to play trivia with, I came back here, and now I'm going to...clean the upstairs bathroom, because it's kind of disgusting and clearly none of my other housemates are going to clean it.

The irony here is...I'm kinda looking forward to it. Like okay, it's more precise to say that I'm looking forward to restoring cleanliness to the tune (well, so to speak) of a back-episode of Car Talk (it's become my iPod fodder for most cleanliness-oriented occasions). But still. I am cleaning the bathroom on my one night off. I'm not sleeping. I'm not cooking something cool. I'm not even sitting around catching up on Homestar Runner while eating cookies. I'm cleaning the bathroom, and when I'm done, if I'm not too tired, I may just start in on the dishes.

In other words, until further notice I am officially a monumentally-boring person. So. You know. There's that.