Reconciled

Fall semester: day twenty-seven

My first paycheck of the semester is in the bank; my mother deposited it yesterday afternoon, and it was already showing up as "pending" last night. That means, more than likely, it processed and dropped in at the end-of-day cycles (I haven't checked again this morning). This is good; it allowed me to pay my rent (not that I couldn't before, just that I wanted to wait on that check to get in there) and reconcile my bank account so that I know what I have and what my budget for the future is going to be.


While I am tired, I am not "sleepy" tired. I came home from teaching yesterday, made a big lunch, watched three episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! back to back on YouTube (oh, sweet sweet YouTube), and then worked on a number of small things around the house -- I took out a blanket for the bed, brought the trash cans up, etc. Nothing major, nothing strenuous, nothing of real consequence. I stayed awake until around 10PM, when I finally went to bed. A lot of this was helped by the fact that my allergies had mostly tapered off as well...at least for last night, anyway. Upon getting up this morning, they had returned full force, and even after being awake for more than an hour, I am still trying to remove snot from my sinuses.

I'm sure you needed that visual.

The car is leaking more fluid again -- looks like coolant, probably because I just refilled it -- but not a ton of it. Probably coming from the overflow valve again or from the thermostat, which sticks sometimes. If it keeps leaking I'll put the rest of the can of radiator stop-leak into it, which should (as it's in the name) keep as much coolant in it as possible because, ahem, it should stop the leaking. After putting more oil and coolant in it Sunday, I had one of the smoothest, quietest drives ever to and from class yesterday. I guess the trick is to keep everything almost constantly completely full. I'll be putting gas in it this morning before my jaunt to West campus for the day anyway, as it needs a good fill-up now that I've put about 215 miles or so on it since the last one -- now is the best time possible, as gas prices went down twelve cents per gallon this week. At least here, anyway.

The car's still getting used to the weather, too -- yesterday morning it was 57, and in the afternoon it was 80. Yeah, temperatures bouncing back and forth, etc, you know the drill. It looks like most of the next ten days or so will be the same, according to the forecast. Right now, at 7AM, it's 61.

My in-class conferences/peer review sessions went amazingly well yesterday. Everyone was there but three students, and nearly everyone had me look over copies of their papers -- which were, for the most part, pretty damn good. I was impressed by a fair share of them, actually. These students who I thought were extreme slackers and who didn't care about this class have actually started producing admirable work in it. This gives me hope for the rest of the semester. I'm going to need that hope to keep going, as they're turning in a paper every two-to-three weeks from this point forward, some of them more complicated than others...and then they have a practice exam and a final exam to take as well. I did, however, leave that class yesterday with a new-found confidence and pride in my students, instead of the normal soul-crushing defeat and disgust I feel most days. So, that's a plus, right? That means I'm not failing as a professor, right?

Before I went to bed last night, I flipped through the chapter I'm covering in there in our next class, and printed their new assignment sheet and Unit 2 timelines for them. I'm excited to get the semester moving forward at an ever quicker pace now. Those papers come in tomorrow, and we're covering comma splices and run-ons, which I noticed in some of the drafts and pointed out -- so it's a pretty apt lesson plan the Director's wife designed for that class.

I'm collecting papers this morning in the 101 class. I told Daisy that since there are only 10 of them, and I've technically read five of them already (workshop copies), I'm going to sit down and grade them all in one session if at all possible just to get them out of the way. It shouldn't take me more than a few hours at most, and it will clear up some time to begin grading the 011 papers when they come in tomorrow. It'll be the first set of papers I've sat down to grade since early May. For some reason, it seems...feels...right? I don't know. While it's a tedious task, it's something that I'm so used to that when I do it, I'm like Neo in the Matrix -- I can uncross my eyes and look at a page and all of the errors and problems pop out at me, like I'm reading code. As I actually got a decent amount of sleep last night (only eight hours-ish, but still decent) I should have enough energy and mental capacity to knock all of those papers out with one swift blow.

I posted a message on Blackboard a bit ago, reminding them that hey, they have to upload their papers through SafeAssign before they'll be graded. Only four of them have done so thus far, though the ones who have did so early. They also happen to be my better students (from what I can tell at this early juncture, anyway).

I have decided to go full casual today, and have put on skull-and-crossbones socks (what I call my "paper grading socks," much to most students' chagrin), a safari-esque overshirt, an X-Men t-shirt, and shorts. Oh, and Sperry Topsiders, one of my favorite pairs of shoes that I barely ever wear anymore (mainly because they're so uncomfortable to stand/walk long distances in, like I do when I have to teach on main campus). This is the most casually I've ever dressed for teaching this semester, but as it's West campus -- where I have no one to impress -- and all I'm doing is collecting papers and assigning the next one, well, it's not like I have to look super-businesslike. These kids already know my style pretty well, though I tend to class it up at least a little bit when teaching them, even.

Last night before bed, I went through the spare room and unpacked some of my fall clothing -- mostly what I purchased at Goodwill in Omaha after graduation. I got a few pairs of pants and a dressy shirt or two up there, so I readied those items for wear next week when I expect it to be cooler outside than it is now. I've already worn a fair amount of those clothes; all of the corduroy pants I own, for example, were purchased on that trip -- three or four pairs.

So that's my day for you. At least the weather is somewhat nice and should remain that way for a while. I'll be leaving the house soon, and actually...I'm somewhat excited to see what these kids can do in their papers.

I must be crazy, right?