Good, Bad and Ugly

THE GOOD:
... is that I have a section of the new GenEd course that I'm going to teach (and am very psyched about) as well as a section of the survey course for fall (whoopee! Got my first choice!). A third course would be good because then I would be able to keep my benefits but we'll see what happens. I might get the poetry survey, since the chair and I figured out it would work nicely into my schedule and it may need to be covered. Two new preps and one second-go-round (which means I'll be revising the course outline), but that's a nice load.

THE BAD:
... is that because of the ugly below, I am all out of sorts today and only just beginning to get my head back into the space it needs to be for the dissertation defense in three short days! I know I can get back into it, but it's a bit disturbing how little concentration I've been able to harness over the last several days.

THE UGLY:
... is the 26cm of snow we got overnight on Thursday (that's almost a foot for you non-metric people). I had an exam at 8am that morning. I left the house at 6am for what is usually a 25 minute drive and yet I was over an hour late for the exam AND had to abandon the car on the side of the road.

This picture was actually taken a few kms from my house but several hours later. When I was leaving the house, the snow was much, much deeper. I dug myself out twice on the way, but the third time, I just couldn't get out and had to abandon the car for the bus. Little did I know that road closures meant the bus stop I was waiting at wasn't going to be serviced. I'm grateful to the good samaritan neighbour who told me the buses weren't getting through and drove me the kilometer to a place where I could catch one!

I managed to get someone else to start the exam, but it still started an hour late, so some students had to leave at the scheduled end time, which meant I spent the rest of Thursday arranging an alternate writing day/time for those students. The last of them finished the exam this morning. So for the last three days, it's just felt like one loooong exam. Very tiring.

Weird part is, it's been gorgeous since then and there's only the tiniest of snowbanks left. Very little proof of the madness that was Thursday morning.