Random bullets #1

Random bullets o'Crap #1 (Punchy ADM Remix)

• Guess what? I'm sitting at my desk waiting for the web grade submission server to let me post. Because grades are due tomorrow at 8 a.m. I don't know if the server is down for regular maintenance (they bring it down at 10:30 most days) or if lots of other faculty people are madly trying to submit their grades.
  
  
• I might have got this done a bit earlier, but had a previous blogger coffee engagement that turned into coffee,grading, and a really nice Thai dinner. I gave fellow blogger, who is getting ready to head off for Mediterranean climes, a ride home, and it turns out she lives literally around the corner (two buildings over) from my friend The Mathemetician (btw, if you're reading this and still have my Pink Martini CD and that volume of Early Medieval Europe, can I please have them back? And The Librarian is up to see V for Vendetta, although she saw it with The Physicist last weekend.) Fellow blogger is pixie-ish in a wonderful way. Too self-effacing for someone as clearly smart as she is, and has the most amazing eyes -- they turn vivid green in the sun.
  
  
• Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to reading some Gerd Althoff -- in English!! and working hard in the library at Flagship U until the evening, when I will be going to play pub trivia for probably the last time before Kzoo. I hope it's crowded and that we win, because I could use the cash!
  
  
• I know it's probably sacrilege, but I prefer Linda Thompson's voice to Sandy Denny's.
  
  
• I've been trying to get onto the web grading thingy for 25 minutes now
  
  
• New Kid has good stuff to say about writer's block
  
  
• Don't Give Up : V for Vendetta :: ? : ?
  
  
• Is it better to go to bed now and get up really early to input my grades?? Or will that make me fall asleep in the library?
  
  
• I have made a deal with myself. No TV unless I am exercising or sorting through 10 years worth of filing and shredding everything I can in preparation for the move
  
  
• Oh. Maybe I should e-mail the realtor who's supposed to be helping me find a place to live?
  
  
• Did I mention that last week I got my first traffic ticket (speeding) in 26 years of driving? $132. Ouch
  
  
• One of my students actually plagiarised part of his final exam from the intro to the Guy Burgess translation of Roland. I assigned the damned book. Did the student think I hadn't read the intro?? Fortunately, the student in no way answered the question, so I didn't have to track down the plagiarism in much detail. It's not like the administration does anything about plagiarists anyway.
  
  
• Eric Clapton or Jerry Garcia? Gotta go with EC. But it's a tough choice. In a polytheistic society, it's not a problem. Hmmm. That's probably good for Offler the Crocodile god.
  
  
• Can you tell I'm getting punchy waiting for the server? I am now reminded of why I almost always get my grades turned in at least 24 hours before they're due.
  
  
• Two of my students somehow managed to include references to a certain aging Anglo martial-arts-guy-turned-actor-turned-adman-for-exercise-equipment in their final exams.
  
  
• Far too many of my students got the part where we don't talk about the f-word. Way far too many thought that serfs were vassals. Or that the more accurate term for the f-word is manorialism. But only one person wrote about 'surfs.'
  
  
• In other news, Gregory, Bishop of Tours and author of Historia Francorum, won the Battle of Tours. News to Charles Martel. Although I suppose if Santiago Matamoros can show up with a mystical banner and win, so could a gossipy and long-dead Gallo-Roman. Still, I don't think that's really Gregory's style. Sniping about strong-willed (yeah, and maybe a little murderous) Frankish queens? That's more like it. Oh hell -- Gregory wasn't a warrior bishop, was he?? I don't remember him being a warrior bishop. I really want to put my grades in and go to bed.
  
  
• I've been trying to post grades for over an hour now. It isn't busy. They've just brought it down the night before frigging grades are due. Oh well, with any luck, they'll screw it up the way they did last time, when I did submit my grades two days early, and they lost a bunch of them in the backup so that I had to submit paper grades after the deadline anyway. Bugger this for a lark. I'm off to bed.