Find and download Keith Urban's version of "Romeo's Tune." It's on his Greatest Hits CD.
Then find Steve Forbert's original version of "Romeo's Tune." It's from the Jackrabbit Slim CD, but you can also find it on several compilations.
Listen to both. Enjoy. Compare and contrast if you must. You might note how the song sounds when presented from a distinctly country perspective (Urban's version) or you might decide you prefer a more classic pop-country blend (Forbert's version).
Repeat until a smile comes over your face. Keep the smile there with further listenings of one of the greatest songs of the late 1970s.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Here's Where I Am
I've been reading prewriting activities for my two literature classes this week. I always have them do a formal prewriting just to get a sense of whether they're even on the right track. It saves time for them if they don't spend a lot of effort writing themselves into a corner.
Most of them are fine. They have a good starting point, and they seem to know what they might be saying in their rough draft (which is due next week). However, I have some students who seem to be at a complete loss for where to turn when it comes to writing about a literary work. One of them in my American literature class, for example, plans to demonstrate that Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night deals with morphine addiction. This isn't something that needs to be argued, is it? Doesn't everyone who reads or watches a performance of this play realize that Mary Tyrone is a morphine addict? How do I (gently) tell this student that he is trying to show something that is not really open to interpretation (unless he's planning to do some elaborate deconstructionist argument--which seems highly unlikely, by the way)?
Most of these students in that same American literature class have not taken a course in how to write an essay about literature. We do offer such a class at my college, and students who have taken it (particularly English majors) tend to write better essays in later classes as a result. Perhaps we should grit our teeth and make it a prerequisite course for literature classes. I have to cover the scope of American literature since 1865 in this class; I don't have time to devote to teaching how to write about a poem or the various elements of fiction or what to examine when reading a play too. That's not even on the course outline for me to do. I'm supposed to be introducing students to the richness of the American literary landscape since the Civil War.
Perhaps part of the problem is that they're just not reading. I'm getting blank quizzes each day, a sure sign that other issues are more important than reading for my class. I'm not so egotistical to think that my class is the center of the universe, but we were meant to discuss William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying on Tuesday. I had been gone the previous week, giving them what I thought was ample time to read the book (only about 100 pages in our anthology). Yet I got lots of blank quizzes back anyway. It's very frustrating. How can you teach a work few people have read (or, perhaps, not yet finished--I'm feeling generous)? How can we have a class discussion if I'm the only one familiar with the text? If I have to lecture, they're going to become bored quickly. If I try to involve them in a discussion, they can't perform.
The lack of reading has led to some interesting answers on the quizzes when people try to guess, though. Today's quiz covered two short stories: Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and Kay Boyle's "The White Horses of Vienna." One of the questions I asked was why the older doctor's wife in Boyle's story (published in 1935) was concerned upon the arrival of her husband's replacement. The answer was he was Jewish and this was in Austria between the two world wars, a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe. I would have accepted "he's Jewish" as an answer to the question. One of them, trying to be clever, wrote that the replacement doctor was "Vietnamese." Sigh. Did you note that the title of the story is "The White Horses of VIENNA"? Just how many Vietnamese people were in Austria between the wars?
This semester's American literature class is just not as strong as ones I've had in the past. There are only three or four students who are doing particularly well, and only one who is truly a star. I can't quite decide if it's because we're teaching it "out of sequence" (offering what is normally a spring semester class in the fall semester) or if there's something else going on. Either way, I'm feeling frustrated and I'm starting to feel glad that we're more than halfway done.
Most of them are fine. They have a good starting point, and they seem to know what they might be saying in their rough draft (which is due next week). However, I have some students who seem to be at a complete loss for where to turn when it comes to writing about a literary work. One of them in my American literature class, for example, plans to demonstrate that Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night deals with morphine addiction. This isn't something that needs to be argued, is it? Doesn't everyone who reads or watches a performance of this play realize that Mary Tyrone is a morphine addict? How do I (gently) tell this student that he is trying to show something that is not really open to interpretation (unless he's planning to do some elaborate deconstructionist argument--which seems highly unlikely, by the way)?
Most of these students in that same American literature class have not taken a course in how to write an essay about literature. We do offer such a class at my college, and students who have taken it (particularly English majors) tend to write better essays in later classes as a result. Perhaps we should grit our teeth and make it a prerequisite course for literature classes. I have to cover the scope of American literature since 1865 in this class; I don't have time to devote to teaching how to write about a poem or the various elements of fiction or what to examine when reading a play too. That's not even on the course outline for me to do. I'm supposed to be introducing students to the richness of the American literary landscape since the Civil War.
Perhaps part of the problem is that they're just not reading. I'm getting blank quizzes each day, a sure sign that other issues are more important than reading for my class. I'm not so egotistical to think that my class is the center of the universe, but we were meant to discuss William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying on Tuesday. I had been gone the previous week, giving them what I thought was ample time to read the book (only about 100 pages in our anthology). Yet I got lots of blank quizzes back anyway. It's very frustrating. How can you teach a work few people have read (or, perhaps, not yet finished--I'm feeling generous)? How can we have a class discussion if I'm the only one familiar with the text? If I have to lecture, they're going to become bored quickly. If I try to involve them in a discussion, they can't perform.
The lack of reading has led to some interesting answers on the quizzes when people try to guess, though. Today's quiz covered two short stories: Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and Kay Boyle's "The White Horses of Vienna." One of the questions I asked was why the older doctor's wife in Boyle's story (published in 1935) was concerned upon the arrival of her husband's replacement. The answer was he was Jewish and this was in Austria between the two world wars, a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe. I would have accepted "he's Jewish" as an answer to the question. One of them, trying to be clever, wrote that the replacement doctor was "Vietnamese." Sigh. Did you note that the title of the story is "The White Horses of VIENNA"? Just how many Vietnamese people were in Austria between the wars?
This semester's American literature class is just not as strong as ones I've had in the past. There are only three or four students who are doing particularly well, and only one who is truly a star. I can't quite decide if it's because we're teaching it "out of sequence" (offering what is normally a spring semester class in the fall semester) or if there's something else going on. Either way, I'm feeling frustrated and I'm starting to feel glad that we're more than halfway done.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Just for the Record
I'm Joe the Teacher, not Joe the Plumber. I actually know which candidate for president I'm voting for, and I've known for quite some time now. I'm not trying to act as if my mind isn't already made up, and I'm not pretending to be impartial when asked about it. If I were to question one of the candidates about his economic policies, I'd at least be honest enough to say that I'm either supporting or not supporting him.
By the way, who are the people who are still undecided at this point? What would it take to help them make up their minds? Will such people really contribute to the process if they have to wait until the final week of an election to determine which is the better candidate?
By the way, who are the people who are still undecided at this point? What would it take to help them make up their minds? Will such people really contribute to the process if they have to wait until the final week of an election to determine which is the better candidate?
Random Thoughts from the Road
Some observations I made while driving back home from my week in northern California and during my first day back in my apartment:
- There are a lot more Obama bumper stickers in the middle part of the state than you might think. On my way up on Sunday and then on my way back on Thursday, I saw only one McCain sticker on a car. I saw dozens of Obama stickers, though. I do understand that California is going to back Obama, but still, you wouldn't expect the more conservative middle corridor of the state to be filled with bumper sticks touting him.
- However, conversely (perhaps), there are lots more Yes on 8 signs in the middle of the state than I encounter here in Los Angeles. It makes me very anxious about what's going to happen in a couple of weeks when people go to the polls.
- A milk truck that has a leak can leave a very long, wide path of white stuff on the highway if the driver is unaware that he's spilling his cargo all over the road.
- You can smell a cattle ranch/farm at least five miles before you reach it. There are a couple of these ranches/farms on the way north, and I began to sense something in the air quite early. Then, suddenly, there are cows everywhere. It reminded me of that wonderful line Jami Gertz has in the truly awful movie Twister: "I gotta go, Julia. We got cows."
- Rest stops are gathering spots for most of the flies of California. Unfortunately, one of them followed me back to the car and made the journey to Los Angeles. She/he is probably very confused right now and is wondering where the rest of her/his family is. I think I'm finally fly-free at this point. Keep your fingers crossed.
- The I-5 should be more than just two lanes in each direction. There are so many trucks on the freeway now that when they try to pass each other, it just slows down the entire state. The last time I drove on it, the 5 was relatively vehicle-free. Not so this week.
- Older men should get their eyebrows clipped when they get a haircut. I stopped at the In-n-Out Burger in Kettleman City for a late lunch on Sunday--big mistake, by the way, given the crowds--and I saw a man with the bushiest eyebrows ever. If you've seen that Grinch movie with Jim Carrey, you might have a sense of what this guy's eyebrows looked like. It's as if they had a life and a mind of their own. You know the old saying about how sometimes one's eyebrows look like fuzzy caterpillars? Well, those caterpillars have nothing on this guy's browline.
- Listening to 1970s disco music helps to keep me awake. I was singing along and even dancing (a bit). The other drivers must have thought I was nuts. Well, as long as they stayed out of my way.
- Does there have to be a fire every time I go on an accreditation site visit? Last year at this time I was in San Diego visiting a college when the fires in that county broke out. This time I was barely out of Los Angeles when the fires north of the city started. And to top it off, there was another fire on Angel Island near San Francisco. Is it just a bad time of year for fires? You wouldn't think October would be prime fire season, but I guess the dryness of the summer and the lingering heat are to blame.
- I knew I was back home last night when I had to give another driver the finger for cutting me off. Twice. Where else but in Los Angeles would someone cut you off twice on the same street? She seemed to be in a hurry until she got in front of me, of course. When I got into the other lane to avoid her, though, she decided that, really, in front of me was the place she needed to be. Then she proceeded to put on her right turn signal at every major intersection, only to decide against turning and continue on. If she could have heard some of my comments...
- I really knew I was back home when, during an elevator ride this morning, I was trapped listening to a discussion between two talent agents. Oy. The nonsense that passes for conversation these days. Something about how one of them has managed to get his client "seen" by a lot of people and yet he wasn't getting jobs and there are all these auditions for parts that he was just perfect for. For some reason, I kept fantasizing about the early scenes from the movie Speed.
- After getting home, I had squashed bug all over the windshield, so I went this morning to have the car detailed. It looks and smells like a brand new car again. I may have to have this done regularly. Usually, I let the car get filthy between oil changes.
- I love when the laundry is done for the week. I only had four loads to wash this morning because I've been gone (no towels or bedsheets to wash), and when everything was folded and put away, I felt like I had truly accomplished something.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
It's Official
See that lock? The center is a faint white color, meaning that the maintenance crew have taken over the apartment next door. I got home last night at around 8 p.m. and saw that the lock had been changed. I did a little dance in the hallway before going into my apartment.
The apartment next door will be painted, at least, and perhaps even remodeled. There might be some noise, but it will be nothing compared to the racket that used to emanate from there.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Distance, Not Fences, Makes Good Neighbors
It isn't official yet, but I think my next door neighbor has moved out. This is cause for celebration around here. I've lived in my current apartment for a little more than 12 years. About half of that time, the same person has lived next door with various configurations of family and friends over the years. I'll be incredibly happy if she and the rest never return.
I know I may be setting myself up to have an even worse person or people move in by saying this, but you have no idea what I've had to endure for the past few years. I like to think that there are three distinct stages to her time here in the apartment complex. All of these phases were bad.
Phase I: She lived her with her family: father, mother, and brother. We could easily call them the Drunk and Fighting Years. The father, a rather smelly alcoholic, was prone to yelling. A lot. Mostly at his daughter. I think it might have had something to do with the choices of men she was dating at the time. I don't know for certain, but I always suspected that the boyfriends were not quite what Dad was expecting. A couple of times, he and the daughter decided to have the arguments in the hallway so that we could all enjoy them. My favorite occured not too long after they moved in. It was about 1 a.m., and the yelling just kept getting louder and louder. Even Mom got involved. The three of them stormed into the hallway, perhaps to have more room, and proceeded to yell and slap and pull and god-knows-what-else until the security patrol officers showed up and asked them to take it inside. Of course, that didn't help me a lot, considering that I shared a wall with them. And this was not a one-time-only event, either. This happened quite frequently.
And just to give you some sense of how drunk the father could get... One night I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it, he was standing there. Well, "standing" would be a generous way to describe it. "Swaying" would be more like it. There was another guy behind him, but I didn't recognize this guy. The Dad asked me if I would loan him 200 dollars; he promised to pay me back the next morning. I told him that I didn't keep that much money on me, and he seemed genuinely upset. I suppose he was accustomed to knocking on strangers' doors and getting large sums of money in the middle of the night. I got the impression that the guy behind him was waiting for payment of some kind, but I couldn't help them out. He took Dad and headed toward the elevator. I never knew what happened after that.
During this first phase, I also came to realize that the family must all be hard of hearing. During the Christmas season one year, I could barely hear my television over the loud din of carols from next door. "Mom" was making dinner and had cranked up the stereo. Just for the record, I hate Christmas music, and loud Christmas music is just going to get on my nerves even quicker. I cranked up the TV so loud that she couldn't hear her music any longer, and I guess she got the idea. Keep this notion of loud noise from next door in your mind. We'll revisit it again later on.
Phase II: She and her brother shared the apartment. Apparently, the parents moved out; there was no moving van or anything like that. I just never saw them any more. The brother decided to take over the responsibility for being the family drunk. Well, someone has to do it. Almost every weekend, he and his buddies would get plastered. They'd come back here, naturally, rather than go to someone else's place to crash. The only problem was Younger Brother didn't have a key, so he had to knock on the door until someone answered. That's fine if someone is home. On several occasions, no one was there. Older Sister had gone out for the evening herself. So Younger Brother just kept knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking. Try sleeping with that constant noise next door. I almost felt sorry for him when one of his friends asked him once, "Dude, you don't have a key to your own apartment? How lame is that?" I got over it, though, when his anger led him to pound on the door even harder.
Younger Brother is now in law school, you'll be happy to know. I found that out when Older Sister was talking very loudly in the bathroom last week. Those tile can really make a phone conversation echo. I could be lying in bed and hear every word of what she said. Apparently, she needed to know if he wanted any of the stuff that he left behind in the apartment when he moved to go to law school. Stuff like his surfboard and snowboard and all of his LSAT prep course stuff. There wasn't room at Dad's place, I gathered. Did I mention how easily I could overhear these conversations? Can you imagine how loud you'd have to be talking for that to happen?
Phase III: She lived with a roommate. This was the shortest of the phases, mercifully. It only lasted about a year. It was characterized by two traits: an incessant slamming of the front door and a predisposition on the part of the roommate to play her music very loudly. The door slamming really got to me. It had happened during the first phase of her living here, but I had yelled at her and her mother one day, and they got better. Yes, I couldn't stand it that bad. I always knew what time they came home because of the door. They weren't really slamming it, of course, not with any sense of anger or other emotion. They were just letting it slam shut behind them. The problem was most pronounced on the weekend. Once I counted 18 door slams in one day before I got up and went for a drive to clear my head. (Okay, I went out looking for a weapon, but the drive did help to clear my head.) I asked as politely as I could, but it never seemed to have that much of an impact. The door slams continued.
Both Older Sister and the Roommate liked loud music. It's just that you could call the security patrol, and the Older Sister would turn it down. Her parties were, apparently, legendary here. Everyone in the building, it seemed, called to complain one night. (This led one of her guests--estimated in the high double digits--to exclaim, "But it's Saturday.") The security patrol must have stopped by five times before the party finally disbanded. (Lest you think it's only next door that's a problem, let me share that the people upstairs--whom I've nicknamed The Clydesdales--are well known for their New Year's party, the one where every hour starting at about 9 p.m. generates a cheer for the New Year. Well, it is midnight somewhere, isn't it?) The Roommate, however, was a classic. She would do laundry every Tuesday night. You ask how I know this? That's when she would turn the stereo up the loudest, and then she would spend the next two hours in the laundry room downstairs. Knocking on the door wouldn't help because she wasn't there. Even the security patrol would get frustrated on those nights. I did "rat" her out one time; I told them where she was, and one of the officers "retrieved" her and made her turn the music down.
The Roommate seems to have moved about a month ago. Suddenly, the music stopped playing so loudly. And then two weeks ago, things got very quiet next door. It took me a couple of days to realize that I wasn't hearing slamming doors any more. I thought that she had moved already. Turns out she was probably just looking for a new place. Unfortunately, she returned. I thought my peace and quiet were over again, but then Dad also returned and started taking things out in bags. Apparently, again, no moving van. Just bags. Bags and bags and bags. However, once I sort of realized that she was moving out, I didn't care how many door slams it took so long as she was gone.
Tuesday night (the last night of September) was the end. All of the stuff was gone; I know this because there's a crack under the door large enough to see what's on the floor inside. (Yes, I got down on the floor in the hallway to look. You would have done the same if you thought you were about to get back some of your own solitude at home. So don't judge me.) It's been like a different place since then. I came home even on the hot days last week, and I managed to relax a little bit. I don't have to keep turning up the volume on the TV in order to hear it above the din next door. And no one slammed a door all day long.
This is all still unofficial, as I stated earlier. Whenever someone moves out, the maintenance crew changes the locks on the front door. While there are people cleaning and painting the apartment, the lock has a white core. That's the "master lock" for the maintenance people. When that arrives, then I'll know she's gone for good. It's still a standard gold core for now, though.
I realize that it's probably more than a little bit mean of me to take such joy in someone leaving, but frankly, neighbors should be more considerate of each other. We share a wall and a common hallway space. We have to live next door to each other, and we're not separated like people in homes are. I don't play my music or TV loud. I don't slam the door when I walk in and out. I don't leave garbage in the hallway overnight because I'm too lazy to walk to the other end of the hallway to drop it down the chute. (Oh, yes, many, many times. How'd you like to meet that first thing in the morning when you're on the way to work?) And most of the other people in this building are the same. It's those few who tend to ruin it for everyone, isn't it?
I know I may be setting myself up to have an even worse person or people move in by saying this, but you have no idea what I've had to endure for the past few years. I like to think that there are three distinct stages to her time here in the apartment complex. All of these phases were bad.
Phase I: She lived her with her family: father, mother, and brother. We could easily call them the Drunk and Fighting Years. The father, a rather smelly alcoholic, was prone to yelling. A lot. Mostly at his daughter. I think it might have had something to do with the choices of men she was dating at the time. I don't know for certain, but I always suspected that the boyfriends were not quite what Dad was expecting. A couple of times, he and the daughter decided to have the arguments in the hallway so that we could all enjoy them. My favorite occured not too long after they moved in. It was about 1 a.m., and the yelling just kept getting louder and louder. Even Mom got involved. The three of them stormed into the hallway, perhaps to have more room, and proceeded to yell and slap and pull and god-knows-what-else until the security patrol officers showed up and asked them to take it inside. Of course, that didn't help me a lot, considering that I shared a wall with them. And this was not a one-time-only event, either. This happened quite frequently.
And just to give you some sense of how drunk the father could get... One night I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it, he was standing there. Well, "standing" would be a generous way to describe it. "Swaying" would be more like it. There was another guy behind him, but I didn't recognize this guy. The Dad asked me if I would loan him 200 dollars; he promised to pay me back the next morning. I told him that I didn't keep that much money on me, and he seemed genuinely upset. I suppose he was accustomed to knocking on strangers' doors and getting large sums of money in the middle of the night. I got the impression that the guy behind him was waiting for payment of some kind, but I couldn't help them out. He took Dad and headed toward the elevator. I never knew what happened after that.
During this first phase, I also came to realize that the family must all be hard of hearing. During the Christmas season one year, I could barely hear my television over the loud din of carols from next door. "Mom" was making dinner and had cranked up the stereo. Just for the record, I hate Christmas music, and loud Christmas music is just going to get on my nerves even quicker. I cranked up the TV so loud that she couldn't hear her music any longer, and I guess she got the idea. Keep this notion of loud noise from next door in your mind. We'll revisit it again later on.
Phase II: She and her brother shared the apartment. Apparently, the parents moved out; there was no moving van or anything like that. I just never saw them any more. The brother decided to take over the responsibility for being the family drunk. Well, someone has to do it. Almost every weekend, he and his buddies would get plastered. They'd come back here, naturally, rather than go to someone else's place to crash. The only problem was Younger Brother didn't have a key, so he had to knock on the door until someone answered. That's fine if someone is home. On several occasions, no one was there. Older Sister had gone out for the evening herself. So Younger Brother just kept knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking. Try sleeping with that constant noise next door. I almost felt sorry for him when one of his friends asked him once, "Dude, you don't have a key to your own apartment? How lame is that?" I got over it, though, when his anger led him to pound on the door even harder.
Younger Brother is now in law school, you'll be happy to know. I found that out when Older Sister was talking very loudly in the bathroom last week. Those tile can really make a phone conversation echo. I could be lying in bed and hear every word of what she said. Apparently, she needed to know if he wanted any of the stuff that he left behind in the apartment when he moved to go to law school. Stuff like his surfboard and snowboard and all of his LSAT prep course stuff. There wasn't room at Dad's place, I gathered. Did I mention how easily I could overhear these conversations? Can you imagine how loud you'd have to be talking for that to happen?
Phase III: She lived with a roommate. This was the shortest of the phases, mercifully. It only lasted about a year. It was characterized by two traits: an incessant slamming of the front door and a predisposition on the part of the roommate to play her music very loudly. The door slamming really got to me. It had happened during the first phase of her living here, but I had yelled at her and her mother one day, and they got better. Yes, I couldn't stand it that bad. I always knew what time they came home because of the door. They weren't really slamming it, of course, not with any sense of anger or other emotion. They were just letting it slam shut behind them. The problem was most pronounced on the weekend. Once I counted 18 door slams in one day before I got up and went for a drive to clear my head. (Okay, I went out looking for a weapon, but the drive did help to clear my head.) I asked as politely as I could, but it never seemed to have that much of an impact. The door slams continued.
Both Older Sister and the Roommate liked loud music. It's just that you could call the security patrol, and the Older Sister would turn it down. Her parties were, apparently, legendary here. Everyone in the building, it seemed, called to complain one night. (This led one of her guests--estimated in the high double digits--to exclaim, "But it's Saturday.") The security patrol must have stopped by five times before the party finally disbanded. (Lest you think it's only next door that's a problem, let me share that the people upstairs--whom I've nicknamed The Clydesdales--are well known for their New Year's party, the one where every hour starting at about 9 p.m. generates a cheer for the New Year. Well, it is midnight somewhere, isn't it?) The Roommate, however, was a classic. She would do laundry every Tuesday night. You ask how I know this? That's when she would turn the stereo up the loudest, and then she would spend the next two hours in the laundry room downstairs. Knocking on the door wouldn't help because she wasn't there. Even the security patrol would get frustrated on those nights. I did "rat" her out one time; I told them where she was, and one of the officers "retrieved" her and made her turn the music down.
The Roommate seems to have moved about a month ago. Suddenly, the music stopped playing so loudly. And then two weeks ago, things got very quiet next door. It took me a couple of days to realize that I wasn't hearing slamming doors any more. I thought that she had moved already. Turns out she was probably just looking for a new place. Unfortunately, she returned. I thought my peace and quiet were over again, but then Dad also returned and started taking things out in bags. Apparently, again, no moving van. Just bags. Bags and bags and bags. However, once I sort of realized that she was moving out, I didn't care how many door slams it took so long as she was gone.
Tuesday night (the last night of September) was the end. All of the stuff was gone; I know this because there's a crack under the door large enough to see what's on the floor inside. (Yes, I got down on the floor in the hallway to look. You would have done the same if you thought you were about to get back some of your own solitude at home. So don't judge me.) It's been like a different place since then. I came home even on the hot days last week, and I managed to relax a little bit. I don't have to keep turning up the volume on the TV in order to hear it above the din next door. And no one slammed a door all day long.
This is all still unofficial, as I stated earlier. Whenever someone moves out, the maintenance crew changes the locks on the front door. While there are people cleaning and painting the apartment, the lock has a white core. That's the "master lock" for the maintenance people. When that arrives, then I'll know she's gone for good. It's still a standard gold core for now, though.
I realize that it's probably more than a little bit mean of me to take such joy in someone leaving, but frankly, neighbors should be more considerate of each other. We share a wall and a common hallway space. We have to live next door to each other, and we're not separated like people in homes are. I don't play my music or TV loud. I don't slam the door when I walk in and out. I don't leave garbage in the hallway overnight because I'm too lazy to walk to the other end of the hallway to drop it down the chute. (Oh, yes, many, many times. How'd you like to meet that first thing in the morning when you're on the way to work?) And most of the other people in this building are the same. It's those few who tend to ruin it for everyone, isn't it?
And How Was Your Weekend?
It's late and I'm tired. I've had a few things to do this weekend. The picture is visual shorthand for what I'm about to share. It's not quite the equivalent of a thousand words, but it'll do.
On the right are papers. There's a stack from each of my five classes, and then there are two more sets of essay exams. That's seven sets of papers in all, 144 total. I've been working on them, but I haven't made much of a dent yet. This is the first out-of-class assignment from each class, and I need to get through them before the next set arrives.
The left side has three of the weekend's other tasks. Of course, I have to do reading to prepare for next week's classes. Four of the books are textbooks for my classes. It's going to take a bit of time to read the stories and poems and chapters. I'm about halfway through what I need to finish, but Long Day's Journey into Night (for Tuesday's American literature class) is going to be time-consuming. The rest will be a breeze by comparison. I suppose I could just pop in one of the DVDs I own of the play, but that feels like cheating.
On the very top of that stack are two potential books for the developmental writing classes I'm teaching in the spring. That's right. Textbook orders are due; they have to be turned in by Wednesday. We had almost a week and a half to choose this time. I have to pick a new reader for the developmental classes because all of the ones that I've used before are out of print. Not many publishers have textbooks for that level, so the process gets tougher each time. A couple of really good textbooks, ones that students respond to very well, are no longer available, so I am on a quest for a new book. At least, that's the only class for which I'll have to find a new book, thankfully.
At the bottom of the stack but the first task I need to complete tomorrow is a set of materials for an upcoming accreditation site visit. Yes, I'm on another team evaluating another community college. Another winter in a summer town, as the song goes. This one's in Northern California, near Sacramento, apparently, and I leave next Sunday. Monday morning is the deadline for two reports. First thing tomorrow I have to get those completed, so I can e-mail them when I get to the office early Monday morning.
Behind all of this is the briefcase I use for work. I thought you might want a sense of scale and/or proportion.
So I hope you've had a more relaxing weekend. I'm almost at my wit's end.
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