A Crazy Cat's Life

I just got some sad news today. It seems another kitty from the catblogosphere has passed on. Bonnie was special to me in the sense that she was a "friend" of Ayla's. It's kind of hard to explain to the uneducated masses that some people love to write not only about their pets but from their pet's point of view. That's what Jen does over at the Bonnie & Victor site. That's what I did over on the Ayla the Grump site. Through them, we make virtual friends and we learn to love their pets almost as much as they do. It broke my heart to hear that Bonnie passed away and so suddenly. Bear and I were talking about Ayla a few days ago and how I've been having so many problems starting up another kitty blog. He thinks that the Ayla site gave me a truly creative way to vent (unlike this site which is just venting). I think he's right but even though we have nine cats, none of them have the unique, snarky personality that Ayla had. I tried doin...

I first should start with the good news. My mom had the surgery and she's doing fine. The doctor is confident that all the melanoma was removed. Right now, my parents are back at home and are resting. They will see the doctor again at the end of the month to see how the reconstruction of the eyelid went. Other bit of good news. I got a second interview for the tenure-track position I applied for. This means I'm down to the Round of Three. Not too bad considering there were over thirty applications in the beginning. What is left is the toughest part: convincing them I am better than the other two candidates. Hopefully that interview will go well. I have my fingers crossed. As for the never ending part...what part of you failed and you earned that F do you not understand? I've got two students who are "shocked and outraged" by their Fs. One was very nice girl but she does not have any functioning brain cells in her head. She did not pass a single assignm...

I finished up every tiny last bit of grading this afternoon. It was such a relief to get through the last writing assignment and tally up the final grades. This has been an awful semester in more ways than one. You've heard about all the non-school crap I've had to deal with, and some of the academic poop as well. But you know life really sucks when you have to grade over 150 papers that read like this. The opening paragraph to a paper on the Holocaust: The Concentration Camps were where the Jews had to go after they got kicked out from there own homes from the Nazis. Things for the Jews got really bad. Oh it gets better... The good things were that Buna was a very good camp. People there were able to care for one another with out getting into trouble. The Buna camp was a bit better than the rest of the camps. The good thing about the camps was that people were given new cloths to wear and also were given two tents to live in...The whole point for the concentration camps...

...of GRADING HELL. Oh yes folks, it's that wonderful time of the semester: the last week of school. And guess what I am doing? Trying to bury myself out from the huge stack o' shit papers. I am looking at my calender of hell and discover that I have...hmmm...let's see...fourteen more assignments to grade. Oh joy. Thankfully only four of them include term papers. The rest are just rewrites or short writing assignments. Currently I am giving my brain a rest before it revolts and leaves on me. Nobody truly understands the horrors a teacher goes through this time of year. Case in point: I was told from a very early age that if you do not understand a word, go look it up in the dictionary. Now I realize that my vocabulary leaves something to be desired but I am always trying to improve myself. My students do not understand that concept. If you do not understand what the word "procreation" means in my question about how it is important to Xenophon's ana...