The Writing Mojo is good; the Grading Mojo, not so much

I have now worked on my article in some form or another every day since Friday! Yippie! Today I even had Ideas, which I'm hoping will eventually fill in some of my gaps and help me figure out the order I need to discuss things in.

Today I Had Ideas for about an hour this morning, and I did yoga! I may just cave and order a dvd for home, as I'm not capable of getting up and driving in for an early class or for stopping everything and driving in for the noon class. I might get on it eventually, but at least when I get up and am in the mood for yoga (shocking rarity for me!) I could start it up right away before procrastinating out of it. Today I used what I remember of my old teacher's practice and some free clips on youtube. I'm still pondering whether to order a dvd or sign up for something that would let me live stream different clips and thus not get bored.

Of course, now I am supposed to be grading, and am not.

To grade:

-25 in class assignments
- 25 class assignments for the other class
- 50 stripey class papers that I had them turn in online and now will have to grade on the computer (bleah!)
- 25 comp response papers
- tomorrow I will get the first set of comp drafts (25)
- Thursday I will get the first Fruit Studies assignment

I had a lovely weekend though, in the State of Denial. It was very pretty there and I went outside and window shopping and got groceries and such.

Today I went and read through a bunch of my old posts to see if I had any advice or useful tips to get myself unstuck on this article (they were not much help) and I can see that I was posting up until about this point in the semester last time, so reality is about to smack me one, I bet. Then the only posting you'll get from me is the occasional rant about punctuation. But writing my article is so much more fun! Maybe I could do the Magical Month of Academic Publishing again, this time in March? Hmm. Will keep my options open.

This semester is going much better though, so far. Partly because I am re-teaching stuff and I did a lot more prep to get the classes set up before the semester started; also partly because I am more acclimated to the area. Also I only have 3 classes instead of 4 and that will help with the grading a lot. But another reason is that I made a promise to myself (a new year's resolution, sortof) to read for pleasure. And I have been constantly turning away from my work to snatch a few more pages of reading on this massive brick of a novel I chose. (I'm not going to say what it is and win the game of Humiliation by admitting to you all that I had never read it before this.) I like it. I like reading again. It is the reason I got into this whole thing in the first place, after all, the reason I went to grad school and stuck with a PhD. Sometimes it's good to remember that, no matter what happens, job-wise.

I may keep reading after this book is done, too! (we'll see how big I talk once the comp essays are in, right?) I was thinking of turning to the Russians, of which I am woefully ignorant. I think I read Crime and Punishment and A Day in the Life of Ivan Illyvich and maybe a few stories way back in high school, but other than that, Russian literature is a blank canvas with only some semi-familiar names dotted along it. (I don't feel any particular shame about admitting my deficiencies in the Russian classics, as I was an English major. But at the same time, I feel like it would be a good goal to work through these in my lifetime, as an accomplishment that would befit an English major.) Would it be too ambitious to go for War and Peace or should I start with something more manageable, like short stories by Checkov or Gogol?

(I should note this is also my way of dealing with two other problems with this postdoc: no nightlife in the area and my habit of online shopping in the evenings when I'm bored. Even if I read just one or two evenings a week, that will probably help out my finances. Bonus if I check out classic canonical lit from the library instead of buy it!)

Yeah, I really should go grade now. Sigh.