Sunny gave me a memento! A shiny acorn! Sunny is now my favorite.

She gave you a kiss!

Happy birthday, Amy!

Bleargh. This week sucks. One of my work friends invited me to a crafting night, and I was all excited about that, because I really haven't been doing too well at making new friends here. I even went and bought some new yarn to start a new project, because I've got like four half-finished projects around hte house, but none of them really seemed like what I felt like working on. So I bought stuff to make a sock monkey hat. But I've been aching all day, and by mid-afternoon, I could tell that there was just no way that I'd be able to make it -- I was just hurting too much to be able to focus on crochet and carry on a conversation like even a semi-normal human being, and I'd end the night hurting even more, and I've got to teach tomorrow morning and I've got a long day Friday, and it just wasn't going to work out. So I told them that I wouldn't be able to make it.

And now I was sitting here feeling upset about that, and thinking that I ought to find something to do to make myself feel better, and thought, "Hey, maybe on Saturday I'll go to the place that has vegan cronuts and get one of those." But then I remembered -- my students have a midterm Friday night. Which means that I'll be working until at least 10 or 11 grading, and I know from experience that I won't be in any shape to do anything other than flop on my couch and whine on Saturday.

I hate my body.

Ugh Hillary, is there any way you can get someone to proctor for the exam on Friday night? Seems like rest would be a better use of you and your resources.

It's not proctoring the exam that's the issue -- my students and another instructor's students take it in the same room, and he's OK with being the one who walks around and answers questions, with me going over to answer questions if one of my students has something that he can't answer to their satisfaction. But after the exam, we do group grading, with each of us grading one problem from all of the exams from all the sections. That's what takes forever, and sitting that long is tough on my body. And I'm covering a class for a coworker Friday morning, so either I stay on campus all day (which might be a good idea, since I do have stuff I need to get done there) or I drive home and rest after that class and then drive back to campus for the exam.

The midterm Friday is calculus. My geometry students also have a midterm tomorrow, but that one's a lot easier -- just 25 students, and it's a small classroom so not much walking, and I trust them a lot more than I trust the calculus students (plus it's pretty tough to cheat on a geometry exam to begin with), so I can sit down a lot more.

I got my painkillers refilled, so I have those ready for the weekend, when I know I'm going to need them. The class that I'm covering tomorrow morning is only about 10 students, so that shouldn't be too difficult. (I've got two classes of 65 students each right now, and I am not great at managing that many.) Then spend most of the day grading geometry midterms from today, then give the calculus midterm, then grade that.

I bought nachos stuff, because I know I'm going to want some kind of junk food by the time I'm finished with that grading.

does that calculus grading have to be done right after? It couldn't wait the weekend?

It's group grading -- there are about ten of us who give our students the same exam, and to ensure it's graded fairly, each of us is assigned a particular problem to grade, and we grade that problem for all the students. The logistics of it work out best if everyone's in the same room at the same time, and the general consensus is that we should get it over with and grade right after the exam.