She shoots; she scores!

This time last semester, when I was teaching at Alma Mater U, I had to cancel one day of classes for department-wide assessment scoring. I was, shall we say, less than enthused about it because part of it involved also giving up Saturday to assess remedial-level writing. Total buzz kill, y'know?

In one class, my students were wondering why exactly they had the day off. So, in a voice meant to drum up false enthusiasm as much for myself as them, I blurted out a little too loudly and a little too enthusiastically, "Remember those essays you wrote a couple classes ago? A bunch of us instructors are gonna get together and score!" By the time I could hastily add "essays," the class was dissolved in giggles, and my composure was gone as well. (It didn't help that that was the day we were talking about dangling modifiers...)

This semester, even though I am not teaching there, my former boss called and asked if I'd be interested in the scoring. After a bit of hesitation, I decided on it. That was today, and it was actually not as painful as the first time. I got paid, got a free lunch, and got to catch up with Awesome Grad School Cohort in the process.

It was, indeed, quite... satisfying.

Cop-out

If I were to wait to blog until I have something worth saying, I might as well pack up this blog and call it quits.

So here's a picture of a tree.

Its bark is certainly worse than its... you know.

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Now playing: Austin Lucas - Bruiser
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Nifty

I was poking around on Flickr today, when I stumbled across a section called The Commons, which brings together photos from all sorts of archives.

So far, my favorite is this one from 1900:

The story behind it is thus:

This city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag. After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples.

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I left my heart behind

"I wonder what the job market is like... Think I'm gonna look into that. Surely they could use English instructors," I mused to my friend.

"You should! You could move in with us, and we could split the rent three ways."

"Tempting..."

I was only half joking. Can you imagine seeing this view every day?

Free show

While this (last... past tense, dagnabit) week was my spring break, it is not my friend's, so I had to wait a few hours in the airport before catching the shuttle to her place. No problem; I putzed around on the internet and then finally settled down to some grading, which I brought with me, knowing it wouldn't grade itself in my absence.

Sometime between when I finally settled down to grading and when I looked up in need of a distraction, I noticed a young, shaggy-haired man, standing off by himself, juggling three pins intently. He wore a white sleeveless top, the better to show off well-tanned arms, kakhi shorts, and a black fedora with a feather over his right ear. Up went the blue and green pins, followed by the orange, which detoured behind his back before becoming airborne, followed in turn by the blue, and so on. They'd stay up a bit, then come clattering to the floor with hollow thuds. Then he juggled them all in front of him, until again, some would clatter to the floor.

I went back to my grading. When I looked up again, he had four pins: the green, the orange, and two blue pins. His companion, whom I hadn't noticed before, made an attempt at a backflip that ended with him sprawled on the floor. Having decided to give up on the acrobatics, he joined his juggling friend, a yellow pin somehow materializing in the process. They juggled pins back and forth after a couple false starts when they were negotiating how far apart to stand. I don't know if they were trying to provide entertainment for anybody else, or just themselves, but I enjoyed the show, and several people wandering by stopped to observe them. The second juggler finally wandered off, bored, leaving the original entertainer to goof around, less enthusiastically, with the yellow and blue pins.

I finally decided to grab paper to capture my impressions of the scene before me. When I glanced up after three paragraphs crammed onto the back of a half-page grading rubric, the juggler seemed to have vanished. I could see neither his shaggy, emo-haired head nor his jaunty feathered fedora. One last glimpse, and I was ready to assume he's gone, off to catch a flight or a shuttle, when I see what looks like a musical instrument case standing on end by a pillar. The juggler has one more trick up his sleeve--he pulled out a banjo and begins picking out what sounded like an improvised tune.

All told, I may not have gotten much grading done, but the grading will be there, waiting for me to pick it up again. When you've got an impromptu show in front of you, it seems a shame to squander the opportunity.

Industrious hooking

Spring break's here, and I'm headed off for a visit with a friend. I put off making the arrangements for a few weeks, then found a decent deal for a four-day getaway. I'll be crashing with said friend, and I wanted to make her something as a token of gratitude for the hospitality.

See?

And closer. I hope you can see a bit of the cerulean in the center portion:

Start to finish, it took one week. Yes, I work best with deadlines :).

Also, if the pattern looks mildly familiar, well, you've seen it before.

In no particular order

A list of things I have wanted this week:

• More sleep
• Self-grading papers
• Inspiration and time to write
• An exciting new crochet project. Or two. Or...
  
• ...New yarn?
• My current book club selection to get more interesting, faster, preferably
• Patience to deal with the semester's first plagiarist
• Self-grading papers
• Motivation
• Money, either in the form of a paycheck or the selling of crafty things
  
• Self-grading papers
• More time than even the day off I got mid-week
  
• Sleep
• Self-grading papers
• Self-grading papers
• Self-grading papers...
  

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