School, Snot, Sex, Cinema, Etc., Etc., Etc.

Thanks to Thanksgiving, I’m now enjoying a good, long 9-day weekend. I canceled tomorrow’s class, and the school is closed Wednesday through Friday for the holiday, so that puts me back to school on Monday, December 2nd. Pretty nice. Even crazier, I’ve already given my final lecture of the semester. Of the three remaining class sessions, two are going to be review days, and one is going to be an exam. On review days, I just take questions and go over homework, so there isn’t really any prepping to be done. On exam days, I just stand there and stare. So, aside from grading, I’m done for the semester. Cheers!

I don’t know precisely what I’ll be doing next semester. I won’t be teaching, which means I’ll once again be a TA. That’s kind of a bummer—mainly because it has the potential to be a gigantic bummer if my TA assignment is something awful. I won’t know until the last minute what my TA assignment is going to be, so here’s to hope. There is a class on the philosophy of sex being taught next semester, which I would find very interesting. It’s a topic I’ve thought about researching on my own. (There’s probably a joke to be made here, but I’ll leave it up to the reader.) If I don’t get that, the only other choices I marked as highly preferred (which doesn’t guarantee anything) are critical thinking and logic classes. Those are in line with what I’m already teaching this semester, which would be nice, plus they aren’t likely to require the students to write essays, which will make grading much easier. Grading a crap load of essays is such a drain. At the moment, it sounds truly awful.

To briefly catch up on other things, the collective health of my family has gone downhill since I last wrote. Nobody’s in a terrible state, but I thought we were improving, so I find the downturn disappointing. Throats are sore, a couple of kids had fevers for a day, the stuffy noses persist. Melanie and I had to cancel our date for Friday night, which was sad. We had tickets to Catching Fire and even had a babysitter already lined up, but Friday was a low point for the kiddos, so we canceled everything. Via telephone, the movie theater assured me we can trade our unused tickets for another showing, and the babysitter said she could help us out on Tuesday night if we are feeling better. So, hopefully Tuesday will be our date night. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.