tuesday lovely tuesday

7:40 am

                I am sitting in this arm chair and my back was stiff when I sat down, so it is going to be very stiff when I get up. Just to be forewarned…  still I do want to write, so I will deal. And when I am done I will do my stretches which should help.

                Coming off a bout of nasty grading. It was not that bad, I say in retrospect. After all, I only had 2 sets, and we did have them just do the results and discussion. This week they turn in their independents which will be utterly nasty. Oh well. So I basically spent all weekend on that. Well I say all weekend, but really there were plenty of breaks. We walked Tigger in his wheels nearly to the Park. I carded several ounces of brushed light stuff, probably from Crystal. It is now all ready to spin which is nice. Friday night we went to dinner at ABC with L, which was nice. Ok the original idea was to get supper at Panera bc one of the spring break groups is doing a fundraiser there. But K got the day wrong. I’m glad that I showed them the flier before we ordered. They looked at it funny and then pointed out that it was the wrong day. Oh brother. So I guess we’ll have to go back there on Wednesday. We went to abc instead and it actually did turn out to be fun. I was so so so tired from the week. Oh, then late on Sunday I decided I needed some groceries, so I also decided to walk to the mall to get them and then K picked me up to come home. So I got in a walk. AND I got underwear and socks at Walmart. Woo hoo. And I made some bread and cooked up the rabbit – made a stew with cinnamon and orange peel, tomato, red wine, onions. It is certainly different and pretty good. So you see, it was hardly steady grading, there were plenty of diversions. But oh, boy it sure does take a long time.

                And today? I have more to grade! Just the microscope calibration worksheets. Trouble is that a lot of them are wrong at the end when we got rushed, so I think I may have them finish them in lab. One thing I could do would be to take that mirror to Easthampton to get looked at. I realize that would be the day to some extent, and that is annoying, but still, if I don’t do it now, when will I? It would be satisfying to get it done. K “tidied” yesterday so he moved a bunch of my stuff which really irks me. He put the mirror on top of my shelves. It is fine there, but really I should get it fixed.

                Yesterday after work (crazy day of running between 200 and  145) I went to Williamsburg to meet the fair co-chair and we went over the brochure. It was tedious, we went line by line. I sure as hell hope it turns out well, it was a lot of work. We met at a Chinese restaurant, and I had some sort of stuffed tofu special, and it was not that great. Of course I have tons of it left over, so now I have the rabbit stew and that for lots of left-overs.

                Poor T is really dragging his legs right now. I do feel awful about it. Now he is whining at me but I don’t know what he wants. He does like to sit by the front door with just the glass storm door so he can look out at the world. I opened the main door and that is where he is now.

                I think I will also bake the rest of the bread dough I made Sunday. It is in the fridge. I have been impatient the last few times and baked it right away after 1 rise, but I read something about how the gluten actually develops if it sits for a long time, which is why you do not need to kneed. So I left it in the fridge and we will see how it is.

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The Joy of Grading

7:20 am

                So suckola Sunday. Mainly bc once again I have to grade. I did 6 of them yesterday, I have 6 more to go. So for today’s breaks I will have to: cook the rabbit I thawed (so it must be cooked), finally check in with fair stuff (I think I will need to meet the cochair somewhere tomorrow), check in with Mom tax stuff as sis said she was going to Mom’s and wanted to know what I need her to bring for taxes.

YUCK YUCK YUCK. 

                Oh, I did manage to finish spinning the thick angora on the Lendrum  and ply it and skein it. I have one more skein of that stuff to spin. Well, I only have 1.5 ounces. Maybe I will card up another .5 ounce so I can get 2 full skeins. I think after that I will pull out a whole bunch of brushed stuff and card it together so I can make a bunch of skeins that will be the same. In fact, maybe I will not spin this next bit but will instead combine it with the other stuff.

                The other interesting thing is that I am continuing to read the Mumbai book and it is utterly depressing. Wow, so as a break from depressing grading I am reading a depressing book. It really helped yesterday when K finally got home (after going out with T to bring the tire rims to get their studded snows put on, I guess for L next year) with half and half for me. So I could finally have a cuppa tea. he got the fruit, so maybe it will help.

                Now I guess I have to feed the buns, get dressed, do something for breakfast, and start grading…………………………………………………………………………. Oh total utter blah. I can think of nothing cheerful to write about. Nothing nice to think about. At least, since I start my grading with the worst papers, these next ones should not be too too too bad.

                Monday is going to be really busy. Dentist at 8, drive in to work, meet a student at 9:30, lecture, then set up the lab room rather frantically. Well, I think I will not go to lecture. And I will drive straight in after the dentist so I am hoping I can get started with the lab set up. Then we meet for lab conference such as it is. Practice with ferns, remind myself what we will be doing in lab, all that. Then I am meeting another student at 3. And maybe others, who knows. Then somehow I will have to meet the co-chair somewhere.

                Okokokokokok I had better get going.

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grading grading grading grading. With a bit of a ski thrown in.

7:30 am

                Seems so lame to spend any sort of time in these pages writing about how well I did or did not sleep, except that when you think about it, one spends a good third of one’s time sleeping, so why the hell not discuss it at great length. Or at least 1/3 of what I write… so – I did not sleep great last night. First off I was cold and was all huddled up trying to be warm. Then I had that back twinge again that I have been having that is rather worrisome. I have decided it could well be due to the skiing – just doing something that I have not done much of, so I am using muscles that are not used to being used that much. It is probably good, as long as I do not actually throw my back “out.” And then Tigger was annoying. He got up at 2 and wanted to go outside. No way I was doing that, even though K often does. Well K is not here. So I gave him one of his additional pain pills and told him to go to sleep. He eventually settled down, and then I managed to sleep and have interesting dreams until he woke me back up at 6:30. Not too bad. I will say however, that he does not seem to be doing well at all. In terms of his legs and getting around. It seems like it has gotten harder to thump himself around the house dragging his legs around, so he just pretty much stays put. I really hate to see it.

                Yesterday was a bit of a bust. I did go skiing early, and that should have been lovely. It was lovely, the snow had not yet left the branches, and the fields were open and snowy and all was very pretty. I skied up along the field to the bike trail and then took that to 116. Someone had driven some sort of thing with fat wheels (some sort of winter bike thing?) so I skied in that trail. It was not actually the best and I will say that it is hard to ski where people have been walking (and letting their dogs walk – one of my pet peeves) so that while there may have been a decent ski trail there, it is now all bumpy and messed with. Anyway it was all kind of rough and hard to get going on. And once on 116 I had to walk the rest of the way to town. At least I managed to get to the library to return and pick up books. I now have the bookclub book about Mumbai so that it good. I already started it and it is certainly interesting and will be a pretty fast read. Then I went to Black Sheep which was crowded and loud and not as great a place to grade as I had hoped. And of course the buses are rare on Sat so I ended up waiting at the bus stop for quite a while and got home later than would have been ideal.

                Oh boy, it is really windy today. And it got cold again, so I had better get out to give buns water and food soon. Then I will have to finish the exam page. And THEN there is the set of cleavage reports. Oh joy and rapture.

                Well, I had better do some stretches, and then bunnies, and then breakfast. Maybe today I will make the French toast. I did spin the rest of the angora and now it just needs to be plyed. Then I think I will get out the lendrum and finish the angora I started on that. It is much thicker. And I can finish all the carded angora on that. At the grocery store they had several boxes of Kool-Aid with red color on sale, so I bought one. Maybe I will dye some of the brushed angora as deep a red as possible. Then I could blend that in various ways, the way I have done with the blue. I finished knitting a pair of angora wristers, and started a new knit bunny.

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MORE Snow!

7:30 am

                Lovely wet sloppy snow fell over night. A surprise. It is sticking to all the branches right now so is very nice. I will really need to get out in it at some point soon before it all melts.

                K is off on Long Island doing Sandy relief, so it is just me and the Dog and the Grading this weekend. I was so utterly exhausted when I got home yesterday, around 5:30, that I did nothing except sit. Well, besides feeding buns and dealing with the fire and making supper. And I did spin a little bit. And I spent a long time on the phone, first with L then with K. Today I will have to be very productive as I must finish the exam and get started on the cleavage reports.

                 I slept reasonably well probably bc I let Tigger sleep in the bedroom so he did not wake me up until 5:30. I also gave him one and a half of his extra pain pills at around 10 so maybe that helped. He’s been doing really badly lately about waking us up with barking in the middle of the night and then K comes out here and sleeps on the couch until he settles down. But I do not want to have to do that. I fed him at 5:30, then let him out and back in again, and went back to bed.

                Lab this past week went quite well. They did their Sea Urchin Independent projects so of course it was hectic, but it went well enough. Next week they do the Lily culture and we talk about their results so that should be more relaxed. As for the next 2 days: as I said I must grade. And deal with Tigger. And I must get myself to the library to both return a book and get the one on reserve for me. It is the next bookclub book, and it is a long one, so we’ll see if I manage to finish it. Maybe I should finish all the stuff I need to do, then walk into town early. As in before all the snow slops off the trees as it is already doing. And I could sit in Raos or somewhere to do some grading. Oh and my friend may come over at some point, but it was left vague. I spoke to her briefly while I was in the middle of cleaning up the lab. Another thing I might do is to make some French toast for breakfast. Or I could be speedier about things and make French toast for lunch when I get home. Yesterday morning K was determined to go to the Hadley Sugar Shack on their first morning. They opened at 7 am and we were there by golly. I guess he really wanted to go bc he knew he would be gone all weekend and so we could not go then. So we went.

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Rather Blah

7:30 am

                Well for whatever reason I am feeling exhausted. Maybe still feeling the effects of all the shoveling and walking and skiing on Saturday, combined with skiing again yesterday and a pretty long day at work plus working on writing something until late in the evening. I’m glad I can be home today, as the labs this week – independent projects – will be hectic.

                I am attempting to type with this lousy bandaid on my finger. I got a splinter (one of the joys of burning wood). Ok, took the bandaid off, much better. Silly old splinter is not healing very quickly and it is sore.

                Today is odd – I have no grading to do yet, but am about to get slammed. They are taking an exam tomorrow, and then Thursday I get one set of lab reports, then next week I get the other set. And I will have to get through them pretty quickly so they have feedback before the next report is due. Well, K is gone this weekend (hey, I said that last weekend) to a Hurricane Sandy relief trip to Long Island. He will leave Friday and get back Monday night. So theoretically I can spend the weekend grading the first set of reports in peace. While dealing with Tigger. And everything else. Like taxes. And FAFSA. And the usual. I had better think of some things I can do for “fun.” Well, certainly I can get in some spinning.

                Sunday I started the next batch of 3 skeins of the dark fawn. I will do more of that today. Well, I also have to deal with the delivery of the new drier. And call Pickering to see if they can come to do the hookup. I would also like to see if they could install a new disposal since the one we have seems to have finally bitten the dust. And I need to call the guy in Easthampton who repairs antiques. I had hoped to bring the old mirror from Grandmere to see if I could get it repaired. Well, theoretically I could still go as the drier will not arrive until noon (12-4 is their “window”) but I have no car. K called me at work yesterday to say that he had a flat tire. He got AAA to put on the spare (he couldn’t get the tire off – there are some sort of odd tools involved) and drove it to NoHo to get it fixed, but of course they had to have it overnight, so I had to drive over to get him and we will have to go back sometime/somehow  tonight. After his class so it will be pretty late. We ended up eating at the Bluebonnet Diner after I got him. Part of why I am so beat – it ended up a late night since I had to write up something for the students that missed lab when we finally got back.

                Mom sent me something (I haven’t even looked at it) and asked re Jack and her payments. So I MUST deal with that asap today. Ok. At least it goads me to do it. Oh blah. What I would like to do would be to go back to bed….. well, maybe I will have some nice tea and brace myself for the day. At least it will be pretty warm today, so the snow will keep shrinking away. And once it is gone I will need to clean up the disaster in the back yard – cages and plastic and drop cloths all over in a big muddle. And I must put away these clothes that are all hung on the rack and put up another load’s worth. It will be nice to have a drier again, though really I should do the rack drying anyway for the sake of saving energy. Here we have such a nice hot stove and such dry air, it is quite perfect for drying clothes. But of course adds several steps to the process.

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