A Crazy Cat's Life

I was about to sit down and write this great post about how horrible New Jersey drivers are. I still want to do it but it is difficult with the gut-wrenching pain going through my right knee. You see, I have grade four chondromalacia patella. What does that mean? I have no cartilage left in my knee, which is not a good thing. Usually more common in older people, I have some lovely knees for someone my age. The kind when walking sound like Rice Krispies after you pour milk in them: snap, crackle, pop . The doc is not sure the cause but thinks it may just be simple genetics. Either way, the one bastard has been causing some big issues with me. I had x-rays and an MRI done which confirmed the diagnosis. A smidge over a month ago, I had a cortisone shot in it hoping that it would do the trick. Well, last week I could barely walk more than 100 feet without being in excruciating pain. Even sitting still for extended periods of time hurt like a bitch. So, I went to see the knee d...

A friend of mine sent me this quote in regards to the Tea Party's fanaticism and conspiracy theories. "At times these fanatics have achieved a temporary success among those who lack the will or the vision to face unpleasant tasks or unsolved problems" - JFK Conspiracy Theories Speech November 18, 1961 I recommend reading the whole speech if you have the opportunity. It's quite fitting even today.

Just working on my preps for the fall and I was going through the Spanish Inquisition. There are only two things going through my mind while doing that: Monty Python's infamous sketch and Mel Brooks singing "The Inquisition, what a show..." Here's a great illustration of the Python boys doing their thing:

Even though I'm technically on vacation, I'm still getting myself ready for the next semester. For the fall, I was originally going to scrap my whole heavy assignment workload for my students and just give them four exams to base their grades on. There were two reasons for this. One, I was tired of all the whining from the students about the "insane amount of work" I gave them. Mind you this was just five small writing assignments on top of weekly quizzes. They are history classes. Only English classes give more papers. Two, and this was the main reason, I don't want to grade all of them. This has nothing to do with laziness on my part. If I could, I would give ten papers a semester. However, the quality of my students' writing has seriously declined over the years and sometimes these papers are very painful to read (see some of my earlier posts). On top of that, I have a heavy grad school load in the fall. As it has been made clear to me that I...

Today was the last day of the summer session which means I am finally on vacation. A long, well deserved vacation. People seem to think that educators have it easy in that we get all this time off to casually lay around in the sun and do fun things. I guess if you're lucky enough to have that cushy well-paid tenure line then it's possible, but I even see those guys working their asses off with multiple courses over the summer. Me? I haven't had a "real" vacation since January. Yes, I had spring break off but that was spent digging myself from out of the huge mound of papers to be graded so it wasn't technically a vacation. I guess the week off in-between semesters could be a vacation but that was spent recuperating from the spring and prepping for the summer. Now though, I have three weeks off. I still have work to do in getting ready for the fall but I promised myself some fun. What I plan on doing my summer vacation: Catch up on some serious sleep. ...

As I sit here grading final exams, here are a few random thoughts going through my head: How is it that, even though I've given the same exact final for years on end, students still amaze me by doing worse on it as each year goes by? And these are take home exams now. Geeze. No, I'm not surprise that you are having problems uploading the assignment to Blackboard from your phone. Why are you writing your paper on your phone? No, I don't want to know. Spell check. Is that such a difficult thing to grasp? Please don't call Alexander the Great your "homey." Christianity did not exist in Classical Greece. Heck, it didn't even start before the Roman Empire. Sorry to cause that disillusion. While I agree that "nothing important happened in the Middle Ages" please don't write that in your essay. Same thing goes for calling Henry VIII a "man-whore." The Enlightenment comes after the Scientific Revolution and not before. And no, Kepl...

I consider myself a technophile but there are days when I get frustrated beyond all words. For my students, I have taken the guilty pleasure of creating a website full of XTML and CSS coding to humor the nerdier side of myself. However, there are times when I make a mistake in coding and can't figure out what the fuck I have done except render the webpage as useless as an old 386 PC. I spent the better part of the afternoon figuring out what I did and to the life of me I cannot. Logic would have it that I am in possession of a backup. Oh nay nay. Silly me just thought I would be making some minor changes and adding pretty pictures. What does this mean? I've got a temporary page with all the basics there but once my summer vacation begins it means doing some original coding from scratch again. sigh I cannot win.

Recently I have decided to take up some new crafts as a way of keeping my hands busy. I had one of my office mates teach me how to knit and crochet over this past week. Just simple stitches as my coordination leaves something to be desired but just enough to keep my hands busy while watching TV or waiting at the doctor's office. There is one thing, though, that I forgot to take into consideration: kitten. The Stig--our illustrious new member of the household--has decided to attack the yarn while mommy is trying to crochet. Now most of you are probably going "duh." To be honest, I never had kitty problems before when doing any form of needlework. One of my favorite hobbies of all time is counted cross-stitch. Never had kitty issues with that one even though I've had many of housemates of the feline variety over the years. But Stiggie? He's a little terror. He attacks not only the yarn but my hands, and the crochet hook, and then he goes after the piece I...

I know this may be "old" news, but kudos to the California supreme court for stating that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional . It's about frickin' time. I had been so happy when San Francisco first started performing gay marriages and then was furious when religious organizations like the Mormon Church forced the state to take away natural rights to gay couples with their Proposition 8. Many people in the GLBT community were hoping that it would be overturned but even I know the end is not near. This will ultimately head up to the Ninth Circuit Court and then eventually the Supreme Court. In that regard with a legal precedence being set, there is a good chance that gay marriage will finally become legal on a federal level. It cannot come soon enough if you ask me. I have quite a few gay friends who have been in relationships with their partners for many more years than even I have been married. While I know New Jersey is more progressive by allowing civil union...

I've been doing a lot of research on PhD programs so I can apply at the end of the year. I thought I had it all figured out: find a program strong in terrorism which is what I would like to study and apply there. Honestly, where the program was did not matter as long as I was able to secure full funding. Bear has the sort of job where he could live practically anywhere in the country and we could always rent our house out if we could not sell it. Sounds easy, right? Ha. After a few weeks of research I noticed that criminal justice does not seem to embrace anything other than homeland security at the moment. That would be fine if that's what I wanted, but it isn't. I'm more interested in international terrorism, especially religious terrorism. So I send a few inquires out to some scholars in the field asking "what should I do?" The universal response: don't do criminal justice but instead international relations with a focus on international securit...

I have a creepy student this summer session. He sits in the class, barely says two words a week, and broods for most of the day. Then this weekend, I get this bizarre e-mail from him claiming that I'm basically a racist bitch. Well, in not so many words but that is the summary. It seems that he is under this strange misconception that I have a prejudice against his particular ethnicity and that I am grading him unfairly due to this. This was a serious OMF WTF?!!! type of moment. Where did this come from? He claimed that he was doing--in his own demented mind--top notch work that deserved an A. So, just making sure I wasn't being too tough, I went over his papers a second time and said "nope, these deserve the C+ that he got." Today I had a few words with Creepy Student. I did not say anything other than "would you like to talk?" and let him ramble away. This is where it got really weird. He said that my profile picture on Facebook intimated that I...

During my first summer session, I had one class full of exceptionally bright and motivated students. I got a chance to see what it was like to teach students who were there because they wanted to be, not because their mommy and daddy told them it was either this or a job. Not surprising, the class average at the end of the session was one of the highest I've seen in years. It was an incredible pleasure to teach this fine young students. This summer session I am making up for it. Their first assignment was very simple. Take a quiz on Blackboard (the online learning environment) on plagiarism. It is a very common sense sort of quiz and I even provided them with a whole slew of information on the subject so there was no way they could fail it. The whole purpose of the quiz was to get them comfortable with taking an online assessment. An easy A, right? Well, over the past three days I have received a slew of e-mails from students that include the following: I was not made awar...

Back in the day when I was first studying psychology, I was reading about Elizabeth Kübler-Ross' five-stages of grief. It was a classic work that has undergone much scrutiny from the academic community over the years. At first the work was applied to those suffering from grief due to death but over the years it has come to represent reactions from any type of devastating news or personal loss. Each person reacts different to loss and not everyone goes through all of the stages nor in the same order. She listed them as such: Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance I personally find Kübler-Ross' stages to be accurate in my case though I only go through three of them in the following order: Depression Anger Acceptance Why am I mentioning all of this? Besides the educational lesson, I am definitely going through my stages of grief over not getting the job. I know you're saying "but that isn't a personal loss! You still have your current job." Aye, t...

I know the year is not even halfway over, but I have come to the firm conclusion that this will go down as one of the worst years of my life. Why? If I had been keeping up with my blog since the beginning of the year you would understand. A lot of it did not have to do with me directly, but more along the lines of my family members. What do I mean? One almost ended up in jail for being $45,000 behind in child support. Another is potentially getting a divorce because he found out his wife was cheating on him with her boss. As I am extremely empathetic, I felt all of their pain. What was worse was that I could do nothing to help them. That alone was bad enough. On a more personal note, I promised myself that in 2010 I would take better care of myself. I have lost 25 pounds so far this year and my doctor gave me a fantastic bill of health with my physical (outside of the "you still need to lose a lot of weight" bit). It is the stress part that I can't seem to get ...

...I agreed to teach both summer sessions? I was already fried from the seven class + all the rest of the crap Semester from Hell. But no, I decided to teach a full load over the summer which means 15+ hours a week of just teaching for 12 weeks. Considering the whole reason why I've been sick so much and thought I had a heart attack last semester was due to insane amount of stress in my life. I need to learn to say no. At least this summer is divided into two sessions. This session I will admit that my not-so-fun class isn't terribly bad while the class I love to teach is doing horribly. This will be over in a week and then after a short break, we start up with the next session. In that one, I am fully prepped a gazillion times over and I can teach it all in my sleep. The only things left for me to do are grading and showing up to teach. Hopefully that session will give me a little downtime. On a bright note, I got the letter from the Board of Trustees stating that my ...

I have come to the conclusion that Microsoft is a modern day version of the anti-Christ. Why do I say that? It's because Windows 7 sucks. I thought Vista was bad but I've only had Windows 7 running on my computer for about four weeks now and I've had more Blue Screen of Deaths than I've had in years. Heck, I don't think I ever had one in the many years I had XP. What the fuck is Microsoft doing? Are they purposely designing crappy products to drive us all insane? Bah.

Summer is supposed to be a relaxing time, is it not? I finished off the Semester from Hell with just a scant remnant of my sanity left. It was a trying time, full of both personal and professional aggravations that would cause most people to run screaming to their mommies. However, I endured. Even at the very end, I got through Grading Hell with a smile on my face. Why? It was summer. A time when I can lay back, relax, read a gazillion good books, etc. But alas, that was not meant to be. Do you ever get the feeling that you are just over-committed? Suffer from the problem that you can't say no? Or worse yet, challenge yourself to do more and more even though you're already on the verge of a breakdown? If not, welcome to my life. Unfortunately for us financially challenged, teaching summer school is not an option. Rather, it is a mandatory obligation so that I can pay my bills in August. As my college is over an hour away, teaching only one class a session is rath...

Yes, I'm still alive. Give me a day or two and I'm hoping to be back up and blogging.

...you get all of the following e-mails in one day: Is the require book on the syllabus really required? Ah yes snowflake. If it says "required" there's a damn good chance that you'll have to buy it, especially since you are in an online class. How else are you supposed to learn the material? Through osmosis? (E-mail subject: Wrighting Assignment) i was wondering if there was a legnth for the asignments. how short and how long should they be. Before we get to that, have you heard of something called a "spell check"? It's an integral part of getting a good grade in my class. Also, capitalization and proper punctuation are Good Things. As for the length of the assignment, why don't you read the bottom of the assignment. You see? Right there where it says "minimum of 3-4 pages"? Duh. Oh wait. That would assume you actually read the assignment. My bad. I was just wondering what is the exact time limit we have on discussions. I can...

...that a student hasn't tried this one. Oh how I miss The Far Side.

Bear and I got a new car. Ironically, we weren't planning on buying one, at least not today. The plan was to look at various models to rule out some. This is what we ended up getting... The 2011 Lexus LFA supercar Engine: V10 Acceleration: 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds Price: $375,000 Oh wait. I'm awake. Ha! I wish that was my car but unfortunately I can't afford something like that on a state-paid professor's salary. Here is the actual model of car I bought: The 2010 Toyota Prius Engine: 16-valve VVT-i 4-cylinder Acceleration: 0-60 mph in 9.8 seconds Fuel Efficiency: 50 mpg combined city/highway I pretty much wanted the Prius from the start because I drive so much (average over 16,000 miles a year). While it was a little pricey (around $25,000 not including all the extra stuff like taxes), in the next five years it will more than make up the difference in gas costs. However, one of the things that concerned Bear, as he is a big guy, was whether or not he would fi...

Don't worry. No political rant this time. :) I went into the office today to start getting ready for the new semester. It was my only free day this week so I wanted to get as much done as possible. After a few snags (e.g., lost syllabi), I had a very productive day. There were a couple of things that did surprise me, albeit it pleasantly. The first had to do with a number of wandering students. That is a typical sight because a number of students tend to wait until the very last minute (literally) to register for classes. However these weren't that lot. Instead, as I discovered, they were "mapping" out where their classes were. They were actually taking the time to see where their classes were so they could find them on the first day without being late! OMFG! What a concept (attach sarcasm here)! One of the things that frustrates me to no end during the first week of classes is the stream of late students going "sorry, couldn't find the classroom....

I am a bleeding heart liberal. I have been for a number of years. While I will admit that during the late 1980s and early 1990s, I considered myself a liberal Republican (liberal social views, conservative financial views) there were some rather difficult personal issues I had to deal with in the late 1990s that completely changed my point of view on things. Now, I'm about as left-wing as you can get without being a member of the Socialist Party. One thing that has been really annoying me lately is the amount of crap that has been thrown around in the political arena the past couple of weeks. While I am a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party, I am open-minded to people of differing political beliefs. Voltaire once said "While I many not agree with what you say, I will defend to death your right to say it." I'm a firm holder of that belief. However, that belief is starting to fracture over a lot of crap I've been hearing recently. I don't mind if y...

Even Hitler is getting involved:

I am not a huge TV watcher. To me, the best form of entertainment is found either in a book or in a video game of some sort. However, as a night person, I like to wind down my day by watching the local news and then one of the various late shows. Personally, I can't stand Jay Leno. I don't know if it was his west coast style humor or the fact that he always made rather nasty fat jokes about people. Either way, I never found him funny. To be honest, for a long time I watched Letterman at the 11:35pm slot. That is, until Conan O'Brien got the Tonight Show. I've always loved CoCo on the Late Show but I was rarely up that late to watch it. I sort of enjoyed having bad insomnia so I could catch at least the opening monologue and would even stay up late just to catch an episode of Triumph the Insult Dog. Him on the Tonight Show was the equivalent of a mental orgasm for me, even though the 11:35 version of him was a lot more tame than the Late Show one. Now with all...

My all-time favorite present was the Sony Reader that I got this past Christmas. I've only had it for a few weeks but I LOVE the thing so much! Ironically, I used to be one of those people who swore they would only read books and never anything on a screen. This new generation of eBooks are great as they are compact, light, and don't hurt my eyes when I read. Also, we have over 1,000 books in this house and honestly we have no more room. So what's the problem? Why the fuck can I not buy eBook from let's say Barnes and Noble or Amazon and use them on my Sony Reader? WTF is up with that? If, per chance, this was an Apple product--as they are infamous for creating their own file types--I can sort of understand the issue, but even iPods can play .mp3s. Why can't these companies agree to use one standardized format? It's not like there isn't a standardized format. How difficult can it be? It would make my life so much easier. In a related bit, I found a ...

A long, long time ago, back when I was an undergrad, I was living in an apartment complex about a mile or so from campus. A lot of students lived there but a number of the units had been converted to condos so a lot of faculty lived there as well. In the middle of winter, I was awoken one night to someone banging on my neighbor's door screaming "Jim! Jim, goddamit, wake up! My building is on fire!" It was the word "fire" that woke me up. Somehow I had slept through a number of fire trucks screaming past my windows. I hastily dressed and went outside to make sure it wasn't my building on fire. Thankfully it wasn't as it was the one on the far side of the complex. Mesmorized by the flames, I stood there in freezing temperatures watching as the fire spread from one apartment to another. Then it spread to the attached townhomes where a number of faculty lived. We had over 10 towns worth of fire trucks in the parking lot as they failed to contain t...

I only made one New Year's resolution: to take better care of myself. That might seem too general to most people but I hate saying "I must exercise 30 minutes a day" type of junk. Rather, I prefer things that are much more achievable. Even if I only do one thing that is good for me, it is something. One of the big foci for me this year is my health. I had a scare back in December that reminded me that I'm not a youngin' any more. I saw a ton of doctors and had a hell of a lot of tests done. Guess what? I am surprisingly healthy considering my weight. No diabetes, no high cholesterol, no nothing. The pain in my chest? Pinched nerve. Shortness of breath? Deconditioning. While I wish I hadn't gone through it in the first place, I look at it like a good swift kick in the ass. I think the Fates do this to all of us at one point or another. My last good one was a real life-threatening event I had a bunch of years ago that helped put me in a more proa...

So far I have enjoyed two restful weeks of vacation where I did absolutely nothing. That's the way a vacation should really be. However, with my remaining time left in my winter break I finally have to put my nose to the grindstone to get ready for next semester. One of the biggest issues I have is implementing a grading rubric for my assignments and online discussions. This is mainly to avoid a lot of the crap I got last semester with students claiming I offered no help (yet they did not even bother to talk to me, ask me any questions, nor come by during my office hours), and to prevent another "she's prejudiced against my ethic group" bullshit. This way no one will be able to question why they got a certain grade. I'm even going to provide copies of the rubrics in advance so they'll know what they need to include in their papers. Hopefully it will work. While there are a number of resources available online, coming up with one to fit my exact assignmen...