I'm so sorry sj. I hope these tests will give you answers.

So besides the phone calls I mentioned earlier I :

went to therapy
cried, talked about using up my PTO and vacation time and asked advice. Decided to do it

Went to the store and talked to the assistant manager who is awesome and he just told me to use it up for this week and next week and if I wanted to work the last 2 weeks of October I could

So I did everything I could on that end and the official paperwork to leave can be done at the last minute

Talked to the convenience store across the street and I can get boxes Tuesdays and Fridays

Replaced the glass shield on my phone

I still have ton of things to do. At work we get like...reward points (kind of like credit card points) and I have enough for almost $500 in store gift cards OR $300 in Visa gift cards. I'm thinking the visa gift cards is the way to go with this but part of me just wants to get the store gift cards. Although I'd use them for something highly frivolous and Visa gift cards are more practical.

anyone know Pittsburgh? I hav a friend/coworker that will be there for a few weeks and is looking for good restaurants ( she is interested in all kinds of food ) and interesting tombs and graveyards - profile is good if you have any ideas

and in more important thoughts - sending you love and steadying thoughts askye.

Will store gift cards let you do Christmas and other gift giving for you family? you might need the visa gift cards, but sometimes being able to give presents helps you too

Beth, the latest issue of Bon Appetit has a feature on Pittsburgh dining.

I am sick of dealing with students who are freaking out over losing one point on one homework assignment. There are about 40 assignments throughout the semester. I drop the three lowest grades for each student. Each assignment is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 points. All of the assignments together are worth 10% of the final grade. One point on one assignment will make NO difference in the final grade.

I'm starting to feel like I might just give them the points, because the irritating system for manually adding points to online homework might actually take less time than dealing with the whining.

Tell them you'll give them the point if they calculate how much difference it'll actually make (and show their work, of course)

heh

The way that some of the questions on this assignment are set up is totally wrong and confusing, and I can understand students getting frustrated when they do a problem in what they think is the right way, and the computer tells them they're wrong, but I am just so done with arguing over points.

Or if they can make a valid case for why they did it that way and came to the conclusion they did, give them the point. Then you're the cool, reasonable teacher who understands that the assignment was a pain and are validating their effort.

I get what you're saying about it not making a difference in the big picture, but I very much fear that I would be one of the students arguing with you - I can't deal with being told I'm wrong if to the best of my ability and available information I'm right.