I'm feeling less Van Gogh-ish this morning, but I swear I'm going to breathe steam every two hours today like the doctor ordered.

I wouldn't bother with the euros if I were you, Calli. The exchange rate here is horrendous. Hit an ATM in the airport.

I'm not going to change that much money, but I want to have a little bit of money in my pocket when I land.

And to do a trial packing run, to make sure I can fit everything in my smaller suitcase.

I would take my carry-on, but my carry-on is micro-small. I don't think I can get away with it for two weeks. Though I'm tempted.

Some Nice News to start off a gloomy day.

Have a smonsterrific birthday, smonster!

Todd, thank you so much for that link! I have written my appreciation to Theresa Berg and will forward that CBS news piece to both the DC shelters and WARL. Hers is an idea (and a common-sensical use of time and talent) whose time has come.

Happiest of days smonster! And may this be your very best year so far.

I'm skipping... Thank you all for your support and good vibes.

There's something I'm kinda freaked out about - when I checked the mail today (alright, it was the first time I opened the mail box since Saturday) in addition to the expected stack of mail, there was also a handful of cheese flavored popcorn loose in the box. I'm 95% sure it was some ridiculous kid (of whatever age) but there's that 5% that's creeped the f*** out.

Andi, that's...odd.

The part with the family went...fine. Maybe a little better than expected. I wish I could say it was great, but I'm over sweating those relationships.

I realize I haven't checked in in ages. Lately I feel like I never know the right thing to say- I enter text and then hit 'message center' out of fear of saying the wrong thing. So know that I love you all but I seem to be in 'Lurk' mode for Bitches.

I'm getting annoyed. My students have a midterm coming up. All the students taking this course with any instructor take the same midterm. Generally, the procedure is that each class is assigned to a room, with all the classes that have the same instructor assigned to the same room. The instructor picks up the exams from the math office that day, brings them all to the testing room, gives them to the students, and collects them at the end of the exam time.

The exam room schedule was posted yesterday, and not only are my students not all assigned to the same room like they usually are, they're spread out among six different rooms in six different buildings. I asked how this is supposed to work, since I clearly can't give exams in six different places at once, and I was told that there would be proctors assigned to each room, and I would "float" among the rooms to answer any questions that the students had. This would work fine if my students were in a few different rooms in the same building, like some instructors have. But I've got six different buildings, which are pretty far apart from each other, so if I wanted to get to all of them during the exam time, I'd have no more than a minute or two in each room. Which is clearly not going to work. Every time I've tried to talk to someone to get a solution, or at least an answer to "If the rooms do stay like this, where am I supposed to be during the exam?" I either get told to talk to someone else (who I've already talked to) or told that the rooms are final and complaints won't get them changed.