jliedl.ca

from my ice-coated house to yours:

I think I have all of the essays marked. At least that is, the ones that came in somewhere close to on time and in the prescribed manner (via WebCT or hard-copy, not email). There are still two batches of tutorials to round up for the two big classes and, then, the exams. Just shy of two hundred. Oh, boy!

But I’m taking the 23rd-26th off because it is the holiday season and I need a real break. I marked right through the weekend to finish up the essays for the class that wrote their exams on Monday morning. Three days of nothing but calculating senior marks or marking essays makes for a really interesting perspective on the world. Not a nice one, mind you.

So, in hopes of enjoying a holiday season full of all the things that make winter bearable: family, friends, good food and a little fun, after tonight, I’ll put down the marking pen and not look at work materials until after Boxing Day. Hoping all of you enjoy some sort of a break, too!

All I do is mark student work, drive the car places, sleep, eat, mark student work and go to obligatory meetings. And desperately try to finish my holiday shopping!

Yes, it’s that boring. I’m planning on taking the 23-26 off from marking to have at least a little bit of a holiday. In the meantime, check out this cool Teaching with Interactive Timelines tutorial that I’m going to be using in winter term’s early medieval survey.

My university phone has been acting up ever since they finally got my extension hooked up. It will hang up on both outgoing and incoming calls at random intervals.

Fed up, I went to my secretary to ask what I could do. She sent me to the cupboard, to retrieve an unused phone from there. You know, the whole “check out to make sure it’s not the equipment itself.”

Except, of course, that the old phone is set up for another TCP/IP address and wants the one for this office. Which I can’t give them because that’s administered through the phone that I now can’t use to phone out to the phone people to fix the problem either way.

Try carrier pigeons if you want to get hold of me with any reliability in the next two months. I think that’ll be the best bet.