News and Updates

1. So apparently I can receive email at the address on the sidebar but I can’t actually respond to it. This has been going on for a while and I thought I’d gotten that resolved only to discover that I had not. I will have to get that looked at again to see if I can find a solution. In the meantime, thank you for the kind words, Llana! I did get your message.

2. We’re done with classes down at Home Campus and this coming week will be the end of classes for Remote Campus and as much as I enjoy teaching and advising and seeing my students I have to admit I’m looking forward to the break.

3. Standing between me and that break there is a pile of grading and at least one new lecture to write. Last year my US2 class stopped at 2008, and I’d really like to get to the Trump Insurrection while I’m still legally able to discuss it (in the event that der Sturmtrumper seizes power again I suspect that all sorts of things will be declared crimes against the state) but it looks like I will run out of time around 2016 this year. We’ll see how much I want to condense. I have all sorts of things I need to put in to make that discussion thorough and I’ve been trying to organize it all over the last couple of weeks, and to be honest it really hasn’t done my blood pressure any favors.

4. Don’t you think he looks tired?

5. And can we just skip ahead to the part with the Daleks now?

6. Summer plans are afoot, and if all goes well there will be quite the variety of things to write about, though that will depend on energy levels and advisability. This is a billboard, after all, not a diary.

7. I am not sure why the cat insists on hollering at us at 6:40am. It isn’t food – we have the feeder set to go off at 6:30 and it does – I hear it go off a minute or so after my alarm does. It’s not that she wants company, since I come down around 7 and she ends up hollering again at 7:10 or so. She is old and not that bright and who knows what goes on in the mind of a cat in the best of times.

8. I find myself on yet another hiring committee, and while it is a necessary thing and it seems to be going well it is, in the end, one more thing on a long list of things. I do miss my carefully maintained anonymity when it came to being tagged for committees. I suspect it will not return.

9. I don’t watch much television these days, not out of any particular objection to doing so but more because I find it makes me uncomfortable and I have to go somewhere else and do other things. I’m not sure why. I can certainly stare at a computer screen indefinitely, so it’s not as simple as screen time. And there are many objectively good things being aired right now, as I discover when I do force myself to sit through some of the things that Kim watches (Stanley Tucci is a marvel, and that’s all there is to say about that). I keep hoping this will change, but it has been over a decade now and so far it has not. We'll see.

10. I may have found a recipe for pasta amatriciana that actually works, and there are few things in the world better than stumbling into a good recipe.