Ooh, uh-oh.

If I'm going to be commenting this extensively on my students' papers, I had better start typing instead of handwriting. Otherwise, it's going to take me about 40 hours to get through 32 papers, if tonight's grading was any indication.

Earlier tonight was an "I Love the 80s" party at Good Shepherd's junior-high youth group; I told Micah I'd help. Rather-depressing but true: 80s gear is coming back, just with thinner cloth (I am not a conspiracy theorist or a Marxist, but Target has convinced me that the "layers" trend is merely a way for clothing companies in a bad economy to maximize profits--not only do they save supplies in making things thinner, but one must buy multiple items if one cares at all about personal modesty). I bought some magenta-colored legwarmers on clearance. They really do keep your legs warmer, dumb though they look.

So we had pizza, chocolate-chip cookies, and lemonade, and played "live-action" Pac-Man (Micah's idea, and it was a good one: strategically-placed masking tape along the sanctuary pews formed the "maze," and scattered squares of white and pink paper made the "pellets," both regular and ghost-repelling; one person played Pac-Man and could run, while two people were ghosts and were forced to walk) and some Uno. We judged the best 80s costume (the junior-highers, all of whom were girls, did a really good job prepping, or at least their moms did a really good job finding old clothing of theirs). It was fun...for Micah and me. The girls probably also had some fun even when they weren't a) eating pizza or b) sending about 29185795 text messages, but you might have to ask some of them.

Okay, seriously, I need to be more diligent about going to bed on time. Even when I'm correcting papers.

Around the Catholic Blogosphere

Confession: I love blogs written by smart Catholic women.

Which is not to say that I don't also love Protestants' blogs, or my friends', or whatever, of course. But there is something about the blogging that comes out of Catholic women raising their (often many) kids that tends to be creative, wry, often peaceful, and sometimes outright brilliant.

This love, really, is the fault of my pastors (Anne particularly), who themselves write for blogs and therefore link to ones they find interesting. In Anne's case, said sites tend to be the journals of homeschooling parents (since she herself is beginning to homeschool her children) and smart, Christian, mostly-conservative women (since she identifies with all three of those labels). Often these two categories go hand in hand: smart Catholic women seem to like homeschooling their kids. So sometimes I'll read posts she puts up from other people's blogs, and then I read more from the same site because I'm interested, and then I find that those blogs link to other people's interesting-sounding posts, and before I know it, I've used up the free time that I was going to use for something else.

I say all this as background to the things from Catholic-girl blogs that I feel like posting today; this morning these two (which I'd never before read) were helpful reads:

Here, I'm not sure I agree with every point of her interpretation (I do have some of the qualms that "Bubbles," from her comments, does), but it's certainly something to think about, and they may well both be partly right.

From the same woman. If you don't feel like going back to her November '06 archives to read Parts I and II, note that Part I was a description of having to watch her grandfather's murder (he was shot) years before, and Part II dealt with the aftermath of her parents' death.

And I may have excerpted this one before, but I'm doing so again, from Jennifer F.'s Conversion Diary, even though I feel responsible right now to know more about politics, not less:

I'm starting to feel that for me, in this phase of life, it's just not my calling to be all that passionate or involved in politics, to put much time or effort into trying to better the world through changes in government policy or other large-scale initiatives. Right now, as trite as it may sound to some people, I feel like my calling is to just make my little corner of the world the best that it can be: to work on the immigration issue by continuing to lend a helping hand to some friends of ours who are immigrants from Mexico; to preserve the environment by making sure that our household uses our God-given resources prudently; to reform social security by having lots of future taxpayers; to (as Kimberly Hahn once put it) change the culture, one diaper at a time.

Yet I feel like I'm violating some sort of law when I embrace that mentality, that it's carved in stone somewhere that everyone must have an opinion about every issue all the time. And other people evidently know of this law, or would at least seem to from the looks I get when I say in social settings that I don't have an opinion about certain major issues.


But about that use of free time. I really have to start correcting my students' papers sometime today. They're all due back on Friday.

Is it the first Wednesday after the first Monday in November yet?

For the record, I did watch about the first hour of the presidential debates, maybe even more, but then I got distracted and missed the rest.

As was also the case yesterday, I've accomplished relatively little today. I also have a feeling I'm going to accomplish relatively little over Rosh Hashanah break (I know that correcting my students' papers will get done because it has to, and I did finish The Jew of Malta today, but I was also supposed to start writing my paper draft for Duchess of Malfi over this break, which I can tell already is not going to happen), but I do, on the other hand, get to see Jess tomorrow, besides Joe and Andrea. And I get to eat some chicken barbecue made from a recipe that's apparently over 100 years old.

So, you know. Apparently saving myself some paper-drafting misery next weekend (draft due date: October 7) is lower on the chain right now than my social life and reading CB's Haps and Mishaps.

Priorities...right?

My Brain as a Computer Monitor: Usually in Sleep Mode

Well, my internet's back. Don't ask me how; it spontaneously started working again in my room, even before the maintenance guy came. Or, well, it works via ethernet. I'm not going to bother to try the wireless again, lest the whole problem re-rear its ugly head.

So instead of doing anything productive after class today, I've spent something like three hours catching up on a bunch of the internet stuff I've been missing for twoish weeks.

I should start grading my students' papers tonight, but this begins Rosh Hashanah break (technically it doesn't start 'til Saturday, but what with nine out of the sixteen kids in my second section of WRIT 111 telling me I'd have to mark them absent tomorrow, I went ahead and cancelled both my classes), so really what I'd like to do tonight is goof off. And that most likely is what I'm going to do tonight, save a semi-reponsible trip out to get groceries.

So here're some belated additional TLAPD links, plus some TfD comics:

TLAPD 1

TLAPD 2

Otto or Tom might appreciate this. I mean, they don't read this blog or anything, but you know.

Thank you. This has always been a particular point of English snottery for me.

On the other hand, I've had this one coming.

Technological Victory Shall Somehow Be Mine

The problem is apparently not with my computer. It's apparently with the wiring in my room, and/or maybe our wireless network.

Tonight, with my computer downstairs in the common room, I discovered that even with nothing at all but the tower plugged in, I could still hear my system kicking into forced reboot. So the problem was either the tower, or the only thing left connected to it, my wireless receiver. Curious, though not all that hopeful, I disconnected the receiver and tried another restart.

Slowly, hardly believing it, I noticed that a couple of minutes had passed, but I still hadn't gotten a forced-reboot noise. I plugged in the monitor and saw, lo!, that Windows had come up normally. Normally! For the first time in twelve days! Well, at least within the apartment; it's been starting normally for everyone outside of the apartment.

I shut the computer down, took it upstairs (receiver-less), and tried it there. I got most of the way to a full Windows boot, but now it cut out at the welcome screen and got stuck going through the reboot cycle again. Sometimes, when everything was unplugged except the tower, monitor, and mouse, I could get a full boot, but sometimes not. And attempting to plug in anything else, the keyboard included, ruined my chances.

But when I took it back downstairs, the tower, monitor, keyboard, and mouse were all plugged in, and everything still booted just fine, first try.

It does make some sense. My wireless receiver has for months now been nonresponsive (despite my apartmentmates' usually working--though the room to one side of mine has needed its internet fixed a couple of times, so maybe we're just a problem child within the wireless world); I've been using an ethernet cable instead. The common room is within the wireless network reception area, so if the receiver was causing the reboot, that would explain why disconnecting it was enough for me to get a full boot downstairs--and on campus and at Circuit City, since both of those places have better-established wireless networks. But there's no ethernet jack downstairs, so I can't get any internet down there, so I can't just keep it down there.

That I'm still getting an eventual reboot upstairs is funny, but honestly, the electrical outlets in my room have never (even when things were working) looked any too well connected to the wiring. Not that things ever looked dangerous, but I have always been mildly surprised by their functioning properly.

So I've put in a workorder on the wiring and internet in my room, describing the problem. Hopefully they'll fix whatever on earth is wrong.

My apologies to Windows Service Pack 3, which initially I insulted, for the confusion.

Also, remind me later to put something up about today's WRIT 111 class; it was very funny.

Yo-ho!

Today was a light enough day in WRIT 111 (all they had to do was write cover letters about their writing process, to be handed in atop their "This I Believe" essays, which were due this afternoon) that I actually told my second class that it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Whereupon there was a flurry of disbelief and URL entry as J. and S., who both had their laptops open, checked the internet to verify my assertion. When they found out I was right, things degenerated into several minutes of chaos, ending with J. subscribing me (my e-mail's accessible to the class) to the Talk Like a Pirate Day website's newsletter and me consequently demoting him from "hearty" to "bilge rat."

I don't regret any of it.

And here be a pair o' pirate-chicken cartoons for yer own enjoyment:

Zzzzz

Whew. This week is taking it out of me.

Okay, so I took down the last post because it was too whiny. Instead, hear this: my computer is still down and pretty much on its last legs, according to two computer geeks and counting (Joe, too, is impressed that I got six years out of my machine with nothing but a power-supply replacement, probably especially given its pretty-much-daily use), so rather than pay the money to fix something that probably won't get much better (especially if it's the power supply again that's the problem), I may end up just buying my apartmentmate's laptop PC (she just got a Mac; she's selling her PC), assuming she doesn't price it all that high. 'Cause then, if I had a problem, I could take it to BU's ITS, which doesn't service personal desktops, only laptops(?!).

Also, I think I'm going to attempt some sort of bodged zucchini-and-spaghetti dish for dinner, because I have to use up my zucchini but am too lazy to dredge and fry it for a second round of zucchini parmesan, the first round of which was too messy and inconvenient when I tried it on Monday night...or Sunday night...when did I do that? Hm.

"The system is down, yo."

So maybe my computer and Windows Service Pack 3 (or at least one of its subsequent updates) do not get along: late on Wednesday night, some hours after an updating, my computer spontaneously rebooted itself, totally independent of any wish or accidental button-pressing of mine, and ever since then it's refused to load Windows except in Safe Mode. And I can't run the internet in Safe Mode.

Therefore, happy though I am that my data is all still there and is mostly accessible, all my internet-ing has to be done from computer labs until such time as John e-mails back with his best guess about what's wrong, or until BU's techies fix it if that fails.

So if I've been a little absent or terse over e-mail/AIM/whatever lately, then, as the cliche goes, it's not you, it's me.

I shall triumphantly return soon. In the meantime, enjoy your lack of obligation to read my posts about what I had for dinner (oh, the suspense!) .

Try not to think too hard about what a "digestor" does. It's pretty intuitive.

So it's been a nice evening, don't get me wrong, but there was one blight on the walk I took. Fair warning to any visitors over the next few months: the wastewater treatment plant near campus is having serious problems with its digestor, which means that basically everything from Bunn Hill Road to the westernmost section of Pennsylvania Avenue (translation: an area of land encompassing campus, my apartment, and the area I sometimes walk around for exercise) has become an extended version of the small section of Vestal Parkway that last year I nicknamed "Sulfur Strip." They say it will take ten months to fix, though Joe thinks it won't take that long for the air quality, so to speak, to get back to normal.

On a completely different note (or so I hope it is), last night I made some really delicious white-bean-and-ground-turkey chili, the recipe for which was loosely based on this but ended up very different therefrom. Here's my version:

Sweat in the bottom of a Dutch oven:
-one smallish onion, chopped
-two big cloves of garlic, chopped

Then add:
-1 pound ground turkey (you could probably use hamburger, but I feel like that violates the proper spirit of white-bean chili, since hamburger figures into the kidney-bean stuff)

Brown that, then add:
-half a packet of taco seasoning (or the equivalent spices)

Brown a little more, then add:
-two cans of cannellini beans (one of them mashed up and added as thickening)
-one can of pinto beans (this should also have been cannellini, but I was out of them after the two cans)
-one can of corn
-about 3 or so cups of chicken stock (or broth, but if you use broth, use regular spices instead of taco seasoning, or it'll probably be way too salty)
-about 1/2 cup or so of light cream (left over from previous cooking project in August--clearly this is optional and you could just throw in another half-cup of stock, but I needed to use it and, believe me, that decision was rewarded in full)
-cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon to taste

Cook it for a while; cook it down if necessary, as I did because I like it thicker than it was naturally going to be. It makes a lot; I froze four cups' worth and have already eaten the rest over the course of about three meals.

I also made prune bread and applesauce bread later last night, which means that I wasn't nearly as responsible this weekend, time-wise, as I should've been. But it feels like a long time since I've cooked something that took upwards of an hour, though really it's probably only been three weeks. For me, though, even that's a long time.

Okay, that's all for now.

Short, Boring Post

Today will be a good day for things that should get done: I got some much-needed extra sleep; we're getting some rain that at least feels much-needed, though I'm not sure it actually is; I'm hoping to get some much-needed exercise (though not out in said rain...among other possibilities, I wonder if my DDR pad really is kaput or not); and I should probably do some much-needed organizational/practical work as far as WRIT 111 goes. I'm also hoping to make my first white-bean turkey chili, entry perhaps to follow.

But I guess I should start with a rather-needed shower.

The Deadheads Win This Round

So the BU bookstore's main competition is a place called Mando Books, which's right nearby and appears to be run by deadheads--whether or not it actually is, Grateful Dead bears, tie-dye, and incense are prominent aspects of the store's decor. A little odd, but okay. They're often cheaper than the bookstore and it's nice to be supporting something smaller-scale than a Barnes and Noble subsidiary. So that's where I bought my books on the first day of class.

However, I neglected to notice something that I know they mentioned but which I didn't quite absorb: the return receipt was marked September 3rd.

The add/drop deadline is today, September 5th.

So, having finally gotten to drop Postcolonial Fiction for real yesterday--it took a few days for my independent-study paperwork to come up on BU Brain, so I didn't drop it until then because I didn't want to be short on credits--I was all set to get a book refund for that class. I'd thought about doing it earlier in the week, but kept forgetting--but now it was Friday, all was squared away, and I figured I'd better do it now because sellback must end whenever add/drop did.

Except that when I found said receipt, my doom became apparent: Wednesday was, without exceptions made, the last refund day.

So now, in part because I didn't drop until yesterday, and I guess in part because it never occurred to me that the refund date might be different there than at the actual BU bookstore, I am stuck with a little over $100-worth of books relating to postcolonial fiction, which I'm pretty sure is a completely useless subject unless you're an English major in a postcolonial-fiction class. I could sell them back for used-book prices, and I guess I might walk back into Mando and at least see whether the price for the theoretical textbook is halfway decent (the rest, being paperback novels, are unfortunately probably going to serve me better as Swaptree fodder than buyback candidates), but I feel like somehow this should not be my fault, even though for several reasons it is (including that my paperwork probably had come through by Wednesday and therefore I should have checked for it), and that I should be able to get my dang hundred dollars back. Or at least the $32.whatever for my theoretical text.

I also feel, after the whole Riverside Shakespeare deal, like I really suck this semester, and possibly in general, at this whole textbook-getting thing.

Link of the Whenever

A Latin-to-Spanish helpful-phrase dictionary.

I don't know why I think this is funny, but I do.

Upon Having Watched Both Presidential Candidates' Acceptance Speeches

(Okay, so Sen. McCain's was still in progress as I typed some of this. But after watching Sen. Obama's run forty-plus minutes last week, I just didn't have the fortitude to watch CNN.com's streaming video for that long a second time. I was listening as I wrote, though.)

I wish, annoying as the process would have been, that I had more of a history of watching these things; I'd have more of an opinion of how much I believe is genuine and how much is mere convention.

And I wish, frustratedly, that I had statistics to back up my gut reactions to certain sections of each speech. I should probably hang out on that fact-checker site more.

And I can't help thinking, in a very petty way, oh no, Senator McCain's running at least a thirty-three percent frequency of sticking a random "R" into the first syllable of "Washington."

Oh, joy, another election year. Of all the things I miss most about high school, I'm pretty sure optimism tops the list, but even my tenth-grade self could never get up a lot of excitement about seeing all my friends and relatives filled with scorn for each other. But that's life in America. I suppose it beats bowing to whatever military faction happens to be strongest and best-armed, which I think is how politics still works in some other countries. So maybe I should, I don't know, register to vote in someplace other than Rochester. And crack a political book eventually. And hope that whomever we end up with, I don't have to spend another eight years listening to everyone whine and moan about a) the awful state of the country, or b) the other side's lack of true patriotism, or c) any other dang ruddy political thing.

Bubble tea!

Agh! It's so frustrating to have a teaching blog but not have any time to post on it.

Today was a big reminder that I am not at home in the world of graduate literature studies: several of my lit colleagues with no composition background are turning up their noses at our WRIT 111 This I Believe project on the grounds that--well, that basically it's forcing our students into trite, tie-the-world-up-with-a-bow boxes when they write statements of belief (I disagree; I think a good writer can make something significant out of something deceptively simple), and that we should be teaching them something "literary" and more advanced, like (no kidding) Plato. Or at least Malcolm X. "There's no content," they say. "Oh, that's right, Kinney outlawed content in this class."

No, she made it into a composition course, wherein we're focusing primarily on how good writing achieves what it wants to--and I think these essays are a good way to talk about that. But they, not accepting that, want to make it into a course where we talk about Grandiose and Authority-Questioning Ideas and, oh yeah, mention once in a while how you might do that in terms of actual practical advice. In other words, they want a lit course paying lip service to composition. Um, I worked in our Writing Center last semester: let me tell you, your personal definition of intellectual stimulation often comes at a heavy practical price for your freshmen. Some of you might want to take some class time to go over thesis statements as you're going over the validity of your writer's ethos. A lot of English majors here cannot write well, so let's not blow our chance at teaching them, please.

The thing is, I should have more charity for them (the other graduates, I mean): I'm the only one in my professionalization mini-group that's actually taken ENG 589, the pre-teaching course that'll soon be required for all TAs and 111 instructors. I came into that course skeptical about a lot of composition things, too, but had a semester to read material about it and see the composition side of the argument...and it actually made a lot of sense. My colleagues, however, aren't new like me, and this is the beginning of standardized 111. So they have to abandon courses they've carefully designed and taught in favor of a common syllabus whose guiding principles they're being asked to take on faith. I can see why they're suspicious, but I wish they'd be more open-minded. Or at least not slam Dr. Kinney with the vitriol that a couple of them display. I know it's primarily because I really like her that I'm annoyed, but one reason I really like her is because she did a great job in class of making a case for composition without quashing our objections and without automatically buying into some of the major prejudices of our department (particularly regarding what literature is). So she deserves better, but the others have no way to see it because she's only their boss, not their professor.

It's hard to love people properly when they make me mad (and to talk about them in loving ways, as you can see). I pretty much want to take them down via brilliant monologue (debate if necessary, but monologue would suit me better) and prove that I am right and they are being elitist jerks and should bow to my superior wisdom, but instead I have to, you know, learn to love them and show them the respect I would want. And realize that I'm probably not actually smarter than they are, given that I've been teaching for all of a week and a half. Sigh.

Anyway, the title comes because my friends here have been really great over the past couple of days--Jon and Tuttle in particular decided that I was really stressed and deserved some niceness, and in Jon's case that came by way of his spontaneously bringing me bubble tea and hanging out. I guess the title should've been "Bubble tea! Voicemail!", 'cause Tuttle's contribution was a very nice message left on my phone. Thanks, guys. Sorry I've been a little out of whack outside of class. On the bright side (besides it getting better some), I totally believe in the wonderful power of brotherly love, courtesy of people like you. Probably, like you guys watched me, I should do what's right by the other graduates by watching for what they need.

...Even though part of me is still saying, see? Hard life experience, more or less brought to an upbeat close, right here. You may not like it, but sometimes it's real.

Here we are / here we are...

I spent Saturday night and part of Sunday in Alfred, which was wonderful--I know of no place so consistently joy-inspiring, even though I always ache to live there again--then went to Syracuse for the rest of the weekend to see some of my family (Jo included, but Sean excluded because he was already back at school), which was nice. Monday involved a Labor Day cookout, which brought things full circle--the same group of us had gotten together for a Memorial Day cookout (except for my cousin Drew, who hadn't been there then but was there this weekend), so now we've celebrated both the beginning and end of summer with copious amounts of delicious food. Plus, back then I started in Syracuse and made my way to Alfred, whereas this time I started in Alfred and went to Syracuse. Oh! This time around, Tom was in Lyons, so I stopped to see him on my way home. Heh, he didn't even ask about Alfred 'cause he was so eager to talk about teaching.

So the schedule-making thing from last month lasted all of about two days, heh, but I really am going to start getting more sleep. I need it. In fact, I'm headed to bed right now.