Shopping!

I'm going shopping in a bit with Paula. We're going to hit the Westfield Shopping Center on Michigan. It's going to be crowded and pushy and hectic, but I'm prepared for all of those things. Christmas shopping at its purest! Here we come! 

(there will be an update when I get home. most likely the update will focus on the bruises I got from little grandmas throwing elbows in Nordstrom to get to the Clinique counter, and my swollen toes, sore from failed attempts to dodge the fervored steps of tantrum-throwing children who want want WANT that Lego Elmo doll.)

It's a lovely time to be in my office

The ESL class across the hall is having their end-of-the-semester party. A lot of the students are Latino, and one of the men is playing a guitar and singing in Spanish. They're over there eating food that everyone brought, and taking pictures, and laughing, and the whole thing is just so nice. I wish I could record it for everyone; it's really soothing and making the process of grading these late papers quite a bit more pleasant.

Traffic is the pits. Students are even pittier.

I had an early meeting this morning to get the results of the student grade appeal hearing on the 21st, so I drove in to get there in time. But because of Chicago motorists' tendency to drive like limp fish at the first whiff of weather, it took me nearly three hours to get to campus. So we had to cancel the very meeting I was driving in early for to make. What's even better is that I left the house and forgot my phone still on the dock, charging, so I had to pull off the highway at Belmont and call the secretary from a Citgo payphone to let her know I wasn't going to make it. If only we'd scheduled the meeting for 1/2 hour later, I could have taken the train as usual, made it on time, and I'd now know if I'd triumphed over the little beetle of a student student who complained about being below average, when he was, in fact, below average. 

So, in case you haven't noticed, it's that time in the semester when I cringe with the very idea, the very existence of students. Those one hundred and twenty little imps have spent the past fifteen weeks sapping every ounce of enthusiasm from me, and I'm just a shriveled raisin of a woman, pessimistically sipping red wine and watching television with her terrifically and silently sympathetic husband and dog (a dog who seems skinny today. skinny like he's lost his extra 4.8 lbs., perhaps). There are two weeks left before final grades are due and I'm free from poorly written essays for a month. And that two weeks can't be over soon enough. If you think I sound a bit grim and unpleasant...you're right. I do. Because I am. 

I'll find out at the end of the week about the little beetle of a student, and after this week's classes are over and all I have left to do is wait for the final papers to come in and quickly (oh-so-quickly) grade them. Not so bad, really. And it's already almost Tuesday.

But on to brighter things. I'm off to dust off my snow boots for an early trog through the frozen alley to the car tomorrow. It's not so bad. I've got a new Hercule Poirot mystery to listen to in the car. That is, if I remember to bring my phone...