Another Saturday night

I know it's been ages since I last posted and, frankly, I'm almost too tired to post tonight. I can't believe it's nearly mid-December already. Next week is the last week of the semester, then finals, then I may finally get a chance to unpack a few more boxes and figure out where the hell to put my turtlenecks so I can find them in the morning. The first snow of the season came about 3 weeks ago and it basically hasn't stopped. OK, maybe I exaggerate - it has paused for a few days here and there, but it has snowed pretty much every day since last Saturday. I shovelled half of the driveway last weekend, but we're just faking 4-wheeling it now to get up the slope to park. It's very pretty, and the snow today was actual snowflake snow, and the temp got above freezing for a few hours (mostly we've been in single and low doubles for the past couple of weeks). I'm just tired right now, and sick. The cold that got everyone else in the family right after Thanksgiving hit me but good today. I knew something was on its way, but I was fooling myself into thinking I'd avoided the worst of it. I was wrong.

Anyway, except for feeling like we accidentally moved to Minnesota (a colleague tells me this is only the 2nd time in her 9 years here that it has snowed before Christmas), it's been a pretty good first semester. My classes seem to be going well, although the scores on the 3rd exam were universally abysmal (ave. 62). Only 2 A's out of 50 takers. The other lecture section (taught by aforementioned colleague) had a 74 ave. on their exam, but there are also more majors and seniors in that section (translation: they damned well better be getting better grades than the class with more non-majors and freshmen). I'm still having fun, but also am relieved to be showing some videos next week - good stuff on pollination syndromes and seed dispersal that's much better to see than to have me act out in the front of the room. We finished the 4 days of pig dissection in gen bio, which basically served to reinforce my opinion that I much prefer dissecting plants to animals, and now we're on the home stretch.

As far as the university goes, I remain impressed with the students. They are, on the whole, a bunch of what you'd call good kids. Of course there are the moaners, but those who are not doing well seem to be taking responsibility for their poor performance, rather than blaming it on external forces. The good ones are actually quite good and keep me on my toes (ok, I hate having to always say "I don't know" to one kid, but he just manages to always ask those kinds of questions). I'm now an official member of a fraternity, as an advisor - Alpha Phi Omega. Definitely an idealistic bunch, but these are the ones who are actually out there *doing* the good deeds.

I haven't made what you'd call "friends" with anyone yet; I've just been too busy with work and then being at home to be able to interact with anyone outside of work. Hopefully this will change, but it's one of those things that hit me unexpectedly. It's hard for me to find friends anyway, and it feels a bit like when I went to middle school and found that most of the kids had known each other since they were in kindergarten together. It took me 3 years to find good friends (which is one of the reasons I haven't let go of them!). I guess I can give this a little more time.

Otherwise, the spousal unit is finally licensed to practice his profession here (that took until mid-October) and the new daycare facility is supposed to open a week from Monday. We've been without daycare since the end of October, which has provided quite a challenge. Fortunately, my mom is now retired and was able to be here until the first of December. Since then we've been madly shuffling our respective schedules (translation: no office hours for me last week) and the in-laws have been helping out when we can't be in two places at once. To understate things a bit, it's been stressful. I'll be glad to get the tyke into daycare, because she needs to be around other kids, especially kids close to her age (yikes - she'll be 2 in 10 days!). It's been wonderful to be with her, but we're all feeling a little cabin fever right now and I don't know how many more times I can read some of her favorite books (or watch the Raffi video that she adores).

I hear a hot bath whispering my name, so that's plenty for now. Greeneyes, maybe one of these days I'll learn how to do the cut so you can link to the rest of the post. Not today.