1. I am now older, though whether I am any wiser is an open question I suppose. I spent most of my birthday grading exams because that’s the life of an academic, but I did get to spend some time with family and friends and we’ll do an actual celebration of my birthday sometime after Christmas when we all have time and energy for it. The odometer has now officially flipped over to the next digit and my resale value has declined accordingly, but I am okay with that.
2. Speaking of odometers, my car hit 200,000 miles this week. I bought the car new back in 2007, and most of the driving has been city miles. It’s a reliable little car, and I’m sorry they don’t make them anymore. I almost got to see it happen, too. Kim and I met up with Lauren and Max for dinner on Tuesday to celebrate the end of finals. We drove up separately so Lauren could have the Vibe for a few days to get some errands done. When I parked the car it had 199,997 miles on it. I considered driving it around a bit, but Lauren agreed that she would take a picture when the odometer flipped over and so she did. Happy milestone, little Vibe!
2. Speaking of odometers, my car hit 200,000 miles this week. I bought the car new back in 2007, and most of the driving has been city miles. It’s a reliable little car, and I’m sorry they don’t make them anymore. I almost got to see it happen, too. Kim and I met up with Lauren and Max for dinner on Tuesday to celebrate the end of finals. We drove up separately so Lauren could have the Vibe for a few days to get some errands done. When I parked the car it had 199,997 miles on it. I considered driving it around a bit, but Lauren agreed that she would take a picture when the odometer flipped over and so she did. Happy milestone, little Vibe!
3. The Christmas tree is set. The presents are (mostly) wrapped. We’re about as ready for the holiday as we’re going to get. This is a relative measure.
4. For Tim, because he asked – here is a photo of The Worst Deck of Cards in the World:
It is a talisman in our family, and we would not part with it.
5. Oliver got back safely from his trip to the UK. He and Dustin are fans of the band Sleep Token, which seems to have a very Deadhead-like community of sociable fans and this summer they found out that the band would be playing in Wembley Arena. The tickets were surprisingly inexpensive so they bought some, on the theory that if they couldn’t figure out how to get there they’d only be out the price of the show. But Dustin is an Air Travel Wizard and it all worked out for a lovely time there, seeing the sights, traveling around, and gathering at various social events with their fellow Sleep Token fans. They even got to meet up with our friends Richard, Magnus, and Ginny! So, win all around. It was, by all accounts, a memorable show as well.
6. Picking Oliver up at O’Hare was an experience, though. Happy holiday traveling, folks! It’s a zoo out there.
7. The Colorado Supreme Court – a notably nonpartisan court, according to the legal experts I’ve read recently – has now explicitly ruled that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection against the United States and is therefore disqualified from holding office. I have no doubt that this will be appealed to the Supreme Court and the Court will dismiss this on some technicality in a straight-line partisan vote with the ineradicably tainted Clarence Thomas voting with the majority. But the walls are closing in, and it is possible, just barely possible, that the malignant stain of MAGA will be bleached out of the American political scene in my lifetime. One can hope. The fact that Trump has any support whatsoever is a damning indictment of American morality, patriotism, and intelligence.
8. The end of the semester is always such a madhouse, and my office looks like a tornado ripped through a paper mill. It’s not going to change until January, either. We’ll see.
9. My favorite student evaluation this year was the student who said I needed to develop a sense of humor because I didn’t seem to find any of their jokes funny and that was just awkward. I’m going have that one framed, alongside the one from a few years back when I was teaching on a campus in a deeply right-wing area that said the best way to improve the class would be to get a Republican to teach it next time. A toast to you, kind students.
10. We’ve passed the Solstice and from now the days get longer and the nights get shorter, and I may be one of the few people in the world who regrets that but so it goes.
Thank you, I think. Those are truly awful cards! I sure wouldn't want to play a game with them if money was involved.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on how used to the cards you are versus how used to the cards your opponents are. Oliver used to clean up back in middle school, though they didn't play for money.
ReplyDeleteWe've never found the cards for sale anywhere else. Not that we've tried hard, to be honest. Sometimes I wonder about the thought process that went into those cards though.
1. Aren’t we all. (Belated Happy Birthday. Shit - I forgot again! Sorry … ) Relative Human Resale Value = #miles(bad terrain) ÷ years. Just sayin’.
ReplyDelete3. Speaking in relative terms, we have a houseful of them again this weekend. (Including three guest K-9s)
4. Pretty certain that I’ve gotcha beat:
https://www.amazon.com/Joyoldelf-Waterproof-Playing-Pattern-Backing/dp/B07R3R4RJ7/ref=sr_1_23?crid=M6R6HAJ6M16Y&keywords=red%2Bfaced%2Bplaying%2Bcards&qid=1703432264&sprefix=red%2Bfaced%2Bplaying%2Bcard%2Caps%2C786&sr=8-23&th=1
Also, WTF???
7. Hope in one hand, Shit in the other … See which one fills up faster. #cynical
10. No longer keeping track of the Solstices. Just keeping track of which days I’m still willing to / capable of sucking air.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Happy and Survivable New Year!
Lucy
A Glad Yule and a Happy New Year to you and Sue!
ReplyDeleteSorry for the delay in responding - just got back from Tennessee a couple hours ago from spending Christmas with my side of the family. We had a lovely if rather chaotic time. Post coming soon!
1. Thanks! Never a bad time for birthday wishes! :)
3. I hope your household full of relatives went as well as it could go!
4. Speaking of WTF, those are some seriously off-putting cards. Do you actually use them? Given a choice I'd definitely take the pink ones.
I'm hoping to have a bit more time to do blogging coming up, since my 130% semester is now over. "He who lives upon hope dies farting," said Benjamin Franklin - a variant of your comment, I suppose. But so it goes.
Apologies not required. Nor explanations, as far as that goes. Life, it is understood, happens. Or so I’ve been told. 😉
ReplyDeleteHoping your Christmas in Tennessee was better than you hoped it would be. Also, from what I’ve seen on the news about the weather in the upper middle part of the country, glad to hear you’re all home safe and sound.
3. Sue started feeling poorly on Saturday. Worse Sunday. Pretty much spent Christmas in bed. Fever of 104.1 by early Tuesday. Urgent Care visited Tuesday morning. —> Influenza ‘B’. She is a bit of a poor patient but is handling it like a trooper. A Storm Trooper, but … well? what do you expect from a flu-ridden berserker???
4. Novelty only. Haven’t a clue what ever possessed me to purchase them. I do, however, break them out whenever someone suggests a hand of rummy - shuts that down in a hurry…
I was saddened to learn that Tom Smothers of The Smothers Brothers died yesterday (Dec 27). There goes another chunk of my childhood. 😪
Lucy
Oh, no! I hope Sue is on the mend soon! At least a flu-ridden berserker is easy to evade, I suppose. Please tell her I am wishing her well.
ReplyDeleteChristmas in Tennessee was lovely but rather ad-hoc. I hope to get a post up later today and I already know the title of it: A Bear Grylls Christmas, mainly for his catchphrase of "improvise, adapt, overcome." Let's just say that very little went to plan and it turned out well. It helps to have good people, and I am very fortunate in that my family is full of them.
I saw that about Tom Smothers! Sigh. Former WI Senator Herb Kohl also died yesterday, which was also sad. He was one of the good guys. I met him once. He came to the 2011 protests at the WI State Capitol (when Governor Teabagger's plan to destroy unions and education was rammed through the legislature without lube). He was a little guy - maybe 5'4" and a buck ten dripping wet - and he showed up with one aide. So much for the right-wing hysteria about what a raging riot those protests were. Of course I was there with my elementary-school-aged kids, so I already knew that. I've been in rowdier grocery lines. But he showed up when it mattered.
I may have mentioned previously that my first ever student comment, back when I was a graduate TA, was "Ewan is harsh, and occasionally evil."
ReplyDeleteOnly occasionally, mind.
This year's large intro class required, for my first time ever in almost 30 years of teaching now, a curve to meet the syllabus statement that if the average grade was below a C+, I would curve it. To get the average up meant that my top student scored 168% (!) and I still had 40% Fs. [Along with at that point 40% As - there was *not* a bell-curve distribution at work here.] Among the large number of exchanges with students who purported to be surprised that not handing in the one major written assignment, failing to take any of the extra credit options (which could gain one about 20%, before curve, if effort were truly applied), and averaging 24% on the exams meant that they were at risk of failing, there was one that stood out.
The student in question had asked for explanatory feedback on how her assignment had been graded poorly. I had noted that for a 2-3 page assignment with a very clear rubric she had submitted two sentences, one of which was a repeat of the assignment title and the other of which was not English, and that this had been by some distance the worst submission from the class. She informed me that "Your mistake was in telling me how poorly I did, which was very disrespectful. It is clear that emailing you is not improving my grade and hence I must end this interaction. Have a fabulous semester!"
I am happy that the major computer meltdown that cost me a year of files happened *after* I had compiled all of my grading and submitted said grades...
No, your mistake was considering her to be a student at all. Sigh. I hope you had a fabulous semester anyway.
ReplyDeleteI find occasional evil is plenty - one can't be evil all the time as it is simply too strenuous. But that's a priceless comment.
The thing is that I know exactly who my student comment was from and in a sense they were correct. The jokes were not at all funny. This student also had negative social skills and insisted on barging into any conversation to spread these anti-jokes, which only made things more awkward.
Did you have an inverted bell curve this semester? I did, and a lot of my colleagues here at Home Campus did as well for their classes. I had a lot of As, a lot of Fs, and very few Cs. The class average was therefore about what it always is, but seriously - that was unusual. My numbers were nowhere near as skewed as yours (168%? That's a hell of a curve!) but I did have a student fully complete an exam and score a 2/100, which is impressive considering that a) they have 90% of the exam a week in advance on the study guide, and b) one of those points was a gift. I taught my first university level class in 1989 and I had never had that happen before.
I saw that about your computer meltdown! It gave me the academic equivalent of the Poor Posture Disease that all men get when a baseball player gets shorthopped by a ground ball. You said you were able to recreate most of them, but still. I hope you did something nice for yourself after that.
[SNARKY_SIDEBAR]
ReplyDeleteImma gonna jump in here and object to the following comment:
“ … one can't be evil all the time as it is simply too strenuous.”
Oh, yes, dear blog owner, one can. I offer in evidence the previous existence of my paternal grandmother (may she forever… — not going to put that in here).
Grace was evil from the day she was born until the day she died 93 years later, and she demonstreated that being evil is not only not strenuous in the least, she rewrote the definition of EVIL and pursued a refinement of the definition of despicable for the entirety of her life.
I learned her firsthand lessons well. 😈
[/SNARKY_SIDEBAR]
Lucy
Only the good die young, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI guess if evil is your nature then it doesn't come at any additional cost in energy. It would be too strenuous for me, though, as I am a basically if not entirely good person.
I'm glad you're free of her, at least.
Physically, yes. The mental ghost, however, remains.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, it is her family name that is my middle name, and the name which I have appropriated as my handle. 😈 So, that, at least, is self-imposed.
Such is Life.
Lucy
I am hearing from all across the country that the inverted bell-curve was not just me. I guess that's a relief, if not a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI can top your 2/100, though. I had a student whose score on the first exam was -1/100. They had failed to do the mandatory intro assignment, which came with a 5-point penalty on exam 1, and they only scored back 4 of those points.
And yes: the folks who come to the exam, sit for 75min, and then hand back an essentially blank test... wtf? Especially when my instructions *tell* them that I am pretty easy to cox extra points from if you tell me a good joke, offer entertaining excuses, or even draw a good rat picture. [One exam was on Talk Like A Pirate Day... you can imagine the extra credit option there!]
[Another extra credit option is art-based, and has the delightful effect of making my office full of the best neuro art from across the years.]
Computer.... jfc. It truly was a scene from a bad mid-80s computer-virus movie: the files vanished before my eyes. I think that the effective toll is going to be one complete dataset and two manuscripts, with the rest coming back from online repositories, emails, and such. Bleagh.
On my list of goals for 2024 is to catch up in person. Just so you're warned.
Sorry I missed this in the “to be approved” queue. It’s been like that.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite historical facts is that Leon Trotsky’s real name was something else. “Trotsky” was his jailer. He claimed the name and made it his own. He had the power now. I hope that the power is yours now.
That comment was for Lucy. 😊
ReplyDelete@Ewan
ReplyDeleteI will admit I have never had a student score below zero on one of my exams, though at times it has felt like they should have. I don’t get the people who show up just to turn in a blank exam or one that might as well have been blank. Save yourself the trouble, kid! Sleep in, get lunch, go on a hot date, whatever. This one’s a lost cause and you sitting in an uncomfortable chair to describe how little you know about my class isn’t going to help you. Sigh.
I wish you well in reconstructing the lost files. That is such a nightmare.
Don’t threaten me with a good time. ;).
If we can meet this year, that would be lovely!