Foo. Blarg.

Ok, the lit papers are done and ready to go back to students. The piles of response papers are not, and I'm about to get drafts for comp --- do I even try to grade 75-something grafts over basically a day? I was thinking I'd just read over the first page of each (or find a time machine, or something) but now I feel tired and like even that is too much work. And even if I do nothing I have one section of response paper 5 and all three sections of response paper 6 to go through, so I could grade like a maniac just on those and still not get everything off my plate. To say nothing of the damn lit midterm rewrites.

And now that I'm handing back the lit papers I need to plan out their next paper prompts and the final. Oh, sigh.

My office mate randomly scheduled another day of library research instruction this week and didn't mention it, so when I went in to campus and the room was all cold and dark and empty I thought for a second she had just up and scrammed. Left the grading on a chair and flew back to California or something. It was not the case, but it sounds plausible at this point of the semester. We noticed that a whole lot of people --- primarily adjuncts --- take a lot of sick days here. We think it may be people giving themselves an extra grading day rather than actually being sick --- although a surprising number of the adjuncts are over 65 so maybe it really is illness --- anyway canceling class due to a "flu bug" sounds good to me right now. No point in doing it for a peer review day though; those are easy days to begin with. But maybe next week...?

Oh wait. I didn't cancel classes for the whole week of thanksgiving and already made a big deal of it. That would be harsh if I made people move their travel arrangements and yelled at them and then canceled class with being sick. Well, I refuse to think past Thanksgiving ---- mainly because my prep will have completely run out and I don't actually know how I will fill the syllabus ---- so therefore the idea of canceling class for "sickness" is purely theoretical at this point. And tempting. Mmm, theoretical class cancellations! Yum.

The cats say hi. I actually even took a picture of them yesterday because they were being cute, but I don't know where my phone is or the cord and don't have the energy to upload anything at the moment. But they seem to be doing ok. Yesterday started off very strong --- I got up and cleaned the catbox right away and made a big fancy omelet (as I had no milk for the cereal) and sat down for grading and boom! suddenly it was noon. I blame the cats and their mysterious powers of fuzziness. Maybe they suck the energy out of me or something, because I also went to bed early and still felt tired this morning. They are on the sofa right now, looking at me. I know it is because I gave them the wet food and they have decided they want dry food instead, but it is easy to imagine them using eye-beams like lasers to leech out all my energy. I am succumbing! I am weakening, falling under the spell of warm fuzzy bellies! They are taking over my willpower! They are .... zzzzzz (you may control me, but nothing's gonna get me off this couch and over to the food bowl now) zzzzzzzzzzz ...