and now, tidbits, largely banal and sometimes moody, as I work on grades...

The idea being, this will reward me every so often, plus maybe I will get out of this pissy mood...

The ruler on the floor is proving quite intriguing to Miss Lucy just now. I was remeasuring my foot for Jessica and left the metal ruler on the floor and Lucy just noticed. It was unusual enough to merit the quasi-stalk approach, just in case it proved hostile and attacked her. Full sniff check complete now.

Listening to Shopgirl on CD as I do grade updates. It's read by the author, Steve Martin, and is surprisingly good given how much his narration distracted me during the movie. He reads his stuff better than most authors do, I find, but the much milder narrator voice I had in my head when I was reading it way back when would still be best.

Last day of orals tomorrow, which really is an overstatement I guess since it's just the second of two days. The fact that I think of it as the last in a series is pretty indicative of how I feel about oral days. (The only good thing is not having to do lesson plans those days - oh and being able to dress down, er... dress down more than normal I mean.) Also the second day can be a bit painful since usually the bulk of the people who sign up for the second day are the more iffy students so there will be potentially less interviews which actually result in some semblance of communication. (And more which call for extra exertion from yours truly, which is probably the real issue on days when I'm completely pooped.)

I made crêpes tonight. Only a mini-batch, and they came out tasting kinda funny for some reason altho still absolutely edible :) and were perhaps a strange choice after a day of, shall we say, interesting bowel activity. No idea what sparked it; the only thing I had yesterday that was slightly weird was I ate quite a lot of grapes while watching Brideshead Revisited and didn't really mean to eat that many but got distracted by the show with the grape bowl in front of me and when I finally returned to reality realized I had eaten around 4 cups of grapes. Usually I only eat them a couple handfuls at a time.

Sizeable funk manifested today as well, mostly work induced, or rather work-avoidance induced. Certainly it was exacerbated by the toilet trips, and wasn't much remedied by the crêpes. Neither is it being remedied by looking forward to the late night which is ahead of me (altho not quite as late as usual) nor by the thought of all the stuff I have to get done in the next 2 days. As of Tuesday afternoon all the crunchy stuff will be done and I'll just be riding the tide of finals week through May 7, grading each final as it happens and finishing up that section's grades - thanks to having all the math already done and thanks to Scantrons finals week itself is nowhere near as crazy as it used to be, for me at least. Anyway between the physical and spiritual malaises of the day, needless to say my phone was off as well. So tomorrow will be fun, returning calls and dodging guilt fairies.

The guilt fairies are new. I never used to get them before when avoiding the phone. They're kinda pissing me off actually. What nerve.

Must admit one thing that is making life icky at the moment is my new factory student. Bless their hearts, the factory kids are always so earnest and interested and enthusiastic! On my end this translates to preparing lessons for sessions of 2-4 hours at a pop and then needing to keep them interested that long since they never realize how fricking exhausting it's going to be to do intensive language study for 2-4 straight hours. This one had the nerve to give me a "She's gotta be kidding me" eyeroll at one point close to the end of the last session when I pointed out another exercise to practice. Whatever. Again, it was his idea to do French-On-Steroids, not mine. Gotta keep my eyes on the prize; I'll be quite glad of course when the direct deposits come thru (even tho I always have to put 1/3 aside for taxes on that crap -- oops! I was being positive!!) Anyway the current guy is scheduled at twice a week, 3 hours each session at the moment. After finals he wants to do 3x week... It's not yet clear if he means a third 3-hour session and I honestly can't decide which to hope for. He's leaving June 21 so I think if he wants to do a third 3-hour session per week, I'll just keep focusing on the fact that his tutoring ends June 21 anyway; I can stand it for 6 weeks, can't I?! We'll see; he was hinting - actually more than hinting - that the 3-hour blocks were proving pretty tiring (no, really?!) the other day so...

Reading Cranford now, again by Gaskell... It seems to be just a series of slice of life views of the little town and its inhabitants, no real plot... For a while this was driving me a little crazy because I kept waiting for the plot to start but now that I'm nearly halfway and no plot has arrived I can finally relax and just enjoy it for what it is, um... a series of slice of life views of the little town and its inhabitants... :) Still the characters are kinda funny and quirky and I've still marked a few quotations to save later. The other evening I was treated to a humorous 2-page cat story, too. I won't spoil the story for you with all the gory details; suffice it to say that it's probably a good thing, with Sam and Lucy around, I don't have any lace collars which I occasionally need to soak in milk to clean and soften them...

So I was wearing an old broomstick skirt today that I hadn't worn in a long time and Sammers was in heaven. If I'm wearing a long skirt and stand still in one place a bit he loves to come and either walk back and forth beneath it (à la Pongo and the tablecloths - this reference only meaningful to Aunt Charlette & Beth) or simply stand under it between my legs. He REALLY likes it if I crouch enough that the skirt touches the ground around him so he can be completely hidden. Standing like that for very long, while excellent for your thighs, is not super practical tho.

Funny realization last night btw: Robin Sachs, aka Ethan Rayne to you Buffy enthusiasts, has a prominent if brief role in the first episode of Brideshead. Which led to my looking him up on imdb, only to find he used to be married to Siân Phillips (wacky!) whom I love. Playing on imdb led me to find that they are planning a remake of Brideshead, too, which idea I do not love at all, despite the proposed cast list's including Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon so far... I don't know; it just seems disrespectful to me.

Hmph.