Happy holidays to everyone. I wish I could be seeing everyone in person who reads this (or at least all the people I know read regularly). So have a great holiday!

I just finished making sugar cookie batter and starting the egg nog (one for Dwayne & I - yum... - and one for the girls). The cookies should be chilled and ready to roll by the time the girls get back from last minute christmas shopping (and who says the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!)

We're considering seeing LOTR in the next couple of days, but there's also a big rainstorm rolling in and the car doesn't like rain, so we'll play it by ear. I also want to see Gus van Sant's Elephant and Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, so I'm hoping both of them will continue to play until the new year. We've also got 17 videos from the library to work through, and I've got more books than I can count that I want to read (including one for each book club). The mother-daughter book club is starting a fantasy cycle, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of interesting books to read. Looking forward to it.

It will be nice to do nothing - no pressure - well, at least for a week!

Gonna go for a run since the temp's in the teens. Yeah! Unfortunately, after Christmas it gets nasty cold round here, but I'll take advantage of it till then.

Happy Holidays!

Have finished papers, marking (including flunking a student who really could've passed, he just didn't get it together and hand in the final assignment) and am now starting to relax.

Had lunch today with Dwayne and a friend from school, got some shopping done, got a huge pile of videos to last us for the week. Now just need to go shopping for food and beverages (another commodity that gets ignored during the end of term rush). It will be nice to have nothing serious to do for a while... well, okay, there's lots to do for next term, but I'm gonna try not to think about it for a while yet....

Big push today to try to finish the first paper. I am halfway there - yeah! - but because we've switched to semesters, and because I'm PhD, instructors have assumed that we have more time (and more brains I guess) to say more, so both papers are a good 50% bigger than they would've been last year. And while I never have a problem saying things, it's saying something useful and intelligent that's the problem!

On a positive note, the meeting on Monday went fairly well on both counts. We had our department get together last night, and it was a casual situation in which I took the opportunity (only once, 'cause I didn't want to only talk shop, and we didn't) to ask how the presentation was received by the committee after I left. It seems to have generated some discussion, which is good, though whether anything will actually change is another story. I also had my directed study approved conditionally if I agreed to add 5 additional books to the bibliography. I agreed, but man! am I gonna have lots of reading to do next term!

Still keeping my fingers crossed that my computer keeps working while I finish off these final papers. Keep your fingers crossed for me too!

I have realized I hate the end-of-term-need-to-write-papers-on-short-schedule. I'm glad next term will be my last one for taking classes and the end of term push to finish writing will be over (at least I hope) in my career.

I am trying to put together a directed study (thanks to everyone who provided suggestions for texts to use), but I am also the GSC rep and am bringing an issue before the committee at the next meeting, which will probably be the same one where they will decide whether or not to approve the directed study - an iffy situation at the best of times.

Wish me good luck!

Computer is finally working again (I hope) - it seems to be working better, but being the cynic that I am when it comes to technology, I'm thinking that I'll keep my fingers crossed and be backing up to disc every five minutes for the next little while.

So since nothing much is happening with me, here's news about everybody else...

Dwayne survived his monster certification exam, though he won't know the results for months. He doesn't think he did very well, but I have faith that he did much better than he thinks he did. It was a rather dull thanksgiving weekend with both of us studying our tails off and my computer not working, but it is over, and now that it's gotten really cold here (we're getting a nasty wind from the northwest...hmmm....wondering where THAT might be coming from!), we're all trying to stay indoors as much as possible.

Black ice on the roads yesterday meant that it took very long to get anywhere, but at least on the bus, you don't have to worry about the driving...just the standing around in the cold waiting...

Wrestling season has started again, but Sandy hasn't gone to many practices 'cause she's also stage manager for the high school production this weekend, so she's been spending lots of time on that. Steph's been managing basketball and homework (her math mark on the last report card was a big improvement) and Angie has gotten used to having mom as her piano teacher (though I'm not sure I have! there's been a few times where I've really had to strain to remember correct terminology etc.).

And me? Trying to figure out how I"ll write papers.... not much more.

I feel like an arm has been cut off. I still don't know what's wrong with my computer. I tried wiping it clean hoping it was a soft problem, but it isn't, so I will need to spend money on having someone crack it open. *expletive*

The good news is that I could get it to run for about 15 minutes at a time, so I at least got all the critical files off it, and have only lost minor, incidental data.

The bad news is, I have a project and two substantial papers to write in the next two weeks. And that's gonna be hard to manage without a computer. Yes, I know it's possible, but it's definitely not what I'm used to, and the adjustment will detract from my efficiency. It already has, just in compiling notes from what I've been reading.