Beer and Candy Canes

I almost forgot to mention the best part of Christmas Eve. After dinner, we all went to a candlelight service at church. The early (7:00) service that we attended included a children's program. At the conclusion of the children's program, my parents' pastor passed out candy canes to the kids and mentions to the crowd (jokingly) that the candy canes had been dipped in beer. Yeah, gotta love small town Indiana, home of beer and churches.

Holiday In Review

The Christmas day dinner this year was...take out chinese food (I chose some yummy lo mein). No, this isn't our normal approach to the day's festivities. We actually 'celebrated' Christmas on Christmas Eve this year. My sister's ex-husband had the kids for Christmas day, so we adjusted accordingly. At approximately 11:00 my sister brought the kidlets over to my parents' house. They were ready to rip into their stockings, but had to wait almost an hour because my brother had decided to go to Home Depot exactly 10 minutes before they arrived. Eventually, though, everything got started.

In the meantime, however, I had a flashback to my childhood. For close to half of an hour my niece decided that it would be fun to play with my hair. As a child, every aunt, great-aunt, older female relative insisted on either playing with my hair of running their fingers through it. I thought this was over. I was wrong. Really, the hair isn't all that special. Those who have seen it probably know that it is pretty thick. What they might not know is that it is too soft - almost slippery, really. Pleasant to run the fingers through, perhaps, but impossible to do anything with. I escaped the big hair era without big hair because my hair won't even hold a curl. Oh well.

The day went well. The gifts were quite nice, as was the dinner - prime rib, a melange of vegetables, an au gratin, good rolls. I happily received these,




which I hope will come in handy on wet, cold Wisconsin days. And I hope to use this soon:


Oh yeah - and I can't say how happy I will be if I never ever see that horrible commerical with the "singing" Victoria's Secret model ever again.

Finally!

I have completed grading the portfolios! I have calculated grades!!! Time to do a happy dance!!!!

Words of Wisdom

When wrapping Christmas presents, try to avoid cutting your finger. Especially on the inside of the finger at a joint. If this does occur, try to avoid getting blood all over the present being wrapped. The recipient will not be impressed by your sacrifice.

Portfolios To The Left of Me, Portfolios to the Right of Me,

here I am stuck in the middle with - more portfolios.

Yeah yeah, I know that was bad. My students turned in their portfolios today. Yesterday was the last official day of classes before exams. Technically, we are suppose to pick up portfolios on the last day of class, but I wanted to give students one last chance to ask me questions, so today was the day. And now I have all of this grading to do and I am doing everything but that. Seriously, bad tv, excessive online activity, unnecessary baking (but my, those corn muffins are good!), even cleaning to avoid grading!!

I'd say that tonight is probably a lost cause. I wonder how many I can grade while watching football tomorrow....

In other news, will the Nuggets-Knicks brawl lead to more re-airings of the Pacers-Pistons brawl a couple of years ago? I was in Indianapolis that weekend and the coverage was unbelievable. Really, it was around the clock on tv and radio. And perhaps more importantly, will the Colts finally actually play a decent game this Monday night??? And when will Iverson get traded? What's up with that?

Now I'm Confused

I was checking my site meter/procrastinating and discovered that someone found my blog by searching for this: image of jesus in a funnel cloud. Yeah, that was what this person typed in the search box. I have no idea how this happened. I'm pretty sure that he or she didn't find the answer to that query in my blog.

Idiot, thy name is...

...k8. Apparently, I didn't realize that I somehow accidently had my comments set for moderation. Needless to say, I was messing around with my blog and discovered a bunch-o-comments just a moment ago. Oops!

Bad Teacher

That's how I felt, anyway. I know better than to make promises, but I promised my students that they would have their second drafts (with extensive comments) back tomorrow. Unfortunately, I was a little migrainy yesterday evening until about 3:00 this afternoon. I had a writing center shift from 6:30 to 9:30 this evening in one of the dorms. Clearly I didn't make much progress on the remaining papers and I refuse to stay up to finish them. If I did, the snarkiness and cynicism of my comments would escalate at an alarming rate, and I won't do that to my students. Still, they are expecting to get their papers back....

Teaching Writing

Most people who know me know that, without the option of not assigning grades, I use portfolios or other forms of deferred grading. I do recognize that students get nervous about not seeing grades on their writing throughout the semester. However, I've always believed this is in students' best interest.

Today was a good day.

It was about 5 minutes before the end of class. We were having group workshop and I went over to check on a group that was finishing up. One student told me that earlier in the semester, she was worried about the portfolio concept. Up until last week, she didn't think that her writing had changed during the course of the semester. But, when she was looking at her papers from earlier in the semester (in anticipation of the portfolio), she saw a big difference and she said that she knew just what she needed to do to revise the papers she will place in the portfolio.

Yay! I love it when students can see the changes for themselves. I also love it when they talk about it with each other - or at least, in front of each other. I am happy and content.

In Praise of Snarky Kids

I was one - I still am, for that matter - and my 10 year old niece seems to be becoming one as well. In a good way, of course. Here is a brief scene from Thanksgiving day:

My niece and I are sitting at the kitchen table sampling slivers of pie. Seeing my sister (her mother) put on her coat, I ask "Where is your mom going?" "Probably going out to smoke." my niece says, somewhat annoyed. I say, "Don't you ever start, it will make you wrinkle prematurely." "Yeah, that's why my mom wears so much makeup." I try to not spit out pie while breaking into laughter. My sister asks us what is going on and I contain my laughter long enough to recap the conversation. Defensively, she says "I don't wear that much makeup" and looks over at her daughter. My niece looks like she is trying hard not to roll her eyes as she stuffs a bite of pumpkin pie in her mouth.

Obviously, I loved this. My sister has smoked for over 15 years and shows no sign of quitting. And yes, her skin is aging faster. Of course, her sun worship has contributed to this, too. But this has always bothered me because she got the good skin. Our grandmother had and our mother has amazingly flawless skin that aged/is aging slowly. When she was in her late 80's (shortly before her death), our grandma still had absolutely beautiful skin.

My sister got the good skin and I've always been jealous. And she has abused it and it shows. I baby my skin and avoid the sun and still have a rotten complexion. So, I praise my niece for calling out her mother.

Dinner

I've decided that I want oatmeal for dinner. Is that weird?

The Weekend, The Plan

What I hope to get done this weekend:

1. Read The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature by Nikolajeva. It is due back at the library in 3 days, so this one is a priority.
2. Read Manhood Lost by Parsons. From the preliminary pre-read skim, the book seems to cover issues of gender roles, American identity, and immigrants. Hopefully, it will be relevant to my work. Interesting, but not as useful as I had hoped. Oh well.
3. Read Children Between the Wars: American Childhood 1920-1940. I'm excited about this title. It should be useful for part of the diss and, if my recently sent proposal for the Children's Literature Association conference is accepted, it could be extra useful.
4. Read (yeah, more reading) at least one of the Americanization books on my desk. The stack is getting pretty tall.
5. I have 19 second drafts to comment on by Wednesday. This should probably be my first priority.
6. Plan a trip to the ALA archives. Not specific planning, but find a good time over the winter break to make my preliminary examination of the documents. I am now officially overwhelmed.
7. One last thing - I need to read and comment on my students blogs. I should probably be doing this right now.

I have a lot of reading to do, but it is focused reading so I should be able to get through it reasonably quickly. For most of the books, I really only need to focus tightly on a chapter or two, while still getting a good feel for the book as a whole.