Dealt with a bunch of administrative things today: travel arrangements for a visiting speaker, honor society stuff, plans for an upcoming conference here. So I had the satisfaction of crossing things off my list, but not much in the way of intellectual stimulation.
I start teaching a novel this week that I've never taught before, and had never even read before the winter break. (That's why I put it on the syllabus, to force myself to actually read it, after years of only reading about it.) I now have to start re-reading it and marking passages for my lectures, which I should have done over the weekend, but I was busy grading. I'm looking forward to teaching the book, and just hope that some of my students have done the reading. We're heading into the struggling part of the term, when they realise that my warning at the semester's beginning that "This class requires a LOT of reading" really was serious. Victorian novels are long, there's no way around that. Especially for working students, it can be really hard to put in the hours. But how else can I teach the material? I already teach far fewer novels per semester than most similar courses at More Prestigious Universities cover.
Walking back from the library to my building today, I saw a student from last semester who set aside her cell phone conversation to shout at me "Dr LastName! I miss your class so much, it really sucks!" Awww.
Our older dog W, who is a dignified and often grouchy 11 years old, usually spends her time at the dog park chasing balls, playing with me, and admonishing our younger dog if she is roughousing with other dogs too much. W believes she ought to be the referee and boss of everyone else, but doesn't usually pay much attention to other dogs unless they approach her. But there's a young shepherd puppy named EZ who she's really taken a shine to -- she was play bowing, jumping on him, tumbling, and even let him roll her onto her back. Imagine a 70 year old woman flirting with a teenager. Something like that.
Here she is recuperating on her pink bed, feeling like a tired princess:
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