Less burdened
Well, it wasn't exactly by the mid-day deadline, but it was definitely before lunch that I finished the last of the labs. So that's that. The only thing still to mark for that unit is the exam, which I am assured will take at least 3 weeks to get to me. So I will be able to take it home and mark it over Christmas. Or something like that. And it will give me time to chase up any remaining marks that haven't gone in. In the meantime I have set up the LMS for the Energy Studies unit I'm coordinating, and tidied up and uploaded the tutorial assignments for the Physics unit, and made all but the actual problem solving assignments visible (because they I still have to write.)
I'm not entirely free of work, but I am feeling a bit less stressed. The assignments after all aren't for a little while into the study period and the students will be asking about other things well before that. I do intend to get them written as much as possible this week though.
Though I might spend some time catching up on the OUA course that I signed up for, made one post on, and then got too busy to do anything about. I briefly considered this evening doing some reading on it, but when I got home, and found that my first inclination for food (comfort french toast) was not available since I was nearly out of bread, and certainly out of the kind I use for french toast (it doesn't work so well with the enders) well, then I went for plan B, which was 'use up the pumpkin that I roasted for the dip and for the pumpkin cheesecake by making soup' I had a little less pumpkin than the recipe really called for, but I used some suggestions for variations and put in an extra carrot and some roma tomatoes. I think I actually prefer this variant. Next time I may even add some paprika.
And today I got the news that the paper that I was involved in writing earlier this year for a solar conference has been officially been published in a proceedings with an ISBN so I guess my long dry spell of not having anything published has broken. If I do find out that I can cope with marking this many students over the summer then I might even work on getting one of the other papers I want to get submitted.
So I'm feeling a lot calmer today. I even got some exercise in since the renovations for the gym got pushed back again and are now (nominally) on the 8th, so we got another week of badminton in. And we had quite a few people turn up. So that's all good. 2 full courts! And I was playing not too bad. So that was fun. But since that finished at 5:30, and I wanted to finish off the LMS assignments bit, and then it was coffee machine cleaning time so it was nearly 8pm by the time I got home and actually had some dinner. I was very tempted at that point to have something sweet, but I don't have anything in the house except a packet of mint slice biscuits that I have reserved for another reason. I may have had a little savoury snack.
I think I will finish this off and go to bed and try to go to sleep, because it's now the time of year that the pool is open and mean to be tested in the mornings. Apparently it has been open for a while, but while people expect me to be the one to do the daily testing, nobody up to this point thought to mention to me that was open. We need some way of signalling that the pool is actually open for the summer. That isn't easy to vandalise. I'm not sure if I'll go for a swim, but it may help me get up in the morning a bit better. Which means of course that I need to get some sleep in now.
Some people are doing some sort of December meme thing, which I am unsure of the source of. I don't think I will be participating in any formal way, but if people would like to hear my views on anything in particular, feel free to ask. Otherwise I'm likely just to burble on like this.
I did see something very pretty today. The official stuff seems to be at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_takes_magnetic_fingerprint_of_our_Galaxy but I saw some false colour images that looked amazing on twitter. http://public.planck.fr/resultats/249-planck-revele-l-invisible seemed to be the link there.
And I did get my habits done. My music is played, my filing is down to a nearly empty filing tray, and I got 5 books into my librarything and back on the shelf. And the dishes are done. It's amazing how just doing little things every day seems to be helping. And I watered my plants this morning and checked my tomato plant but after the two fat caterpillars that I evicted the other day I can't see any evidence of others.
Hopefully tonight I don't dream about all the snakes. Last night there were snakes everywhere. In the houses, under beds, and definitely on a plane.
Originally posted at http://ariaflame.dreamwidth.org/104157.html where you may comment if you wish. There are currently
comments on the original post.
I'm not entirely free of work, but I am feeling a bit less stressed. The assignments after all aren't for a little while into the study period and the students will be asking about other things well before that. I do intend to get them written as much as possible this week though.
Though I might spend some time catching up on the OUA course that I signed up for, made one post on, and then got too busy to do anything about. I briefly considered this evening doing some reading on it, but when I got home, and found that my first inclination for food (comfort french toast) was not available since I was nearly out of bread, and certainly out of the kind I use for french toast (it doesn't work so well with the enders) well, then I went for plan B, which was 'use up the pumpkin that I roasted for the dip and for the pumpkin cheesecake by making soup' I had a little less pumpkin than the recipe really called for, but I used some suggestions for variations and put in an extra carrot and some roma tomatoes. I think I actually prefer this variant. Next time I may even add some paprika.
And today I got the news that the paper that I was involved in writing earlier this year for a solar conference has been officially been published in a proceedings with an ISBN so I guess my long dry spell of not having anything published has broken. If I do find out that I can cope with marking this many students over the summer then I might even work on getting one of the other papers I want to get submitted.
So I'm feeling a lot calmer today. I even got some exercise in since the renovations for the gym got pushed back again and are now (nominally) on the 8th, so we got another week of badminton in. And we had quite a few people turn up. So that's all good. 2 full courts! And I was playing not too bad. So that was fun. But since that finished at 5:30, and I wanted to finish off the LMS assignments bit, and then it was coffee machine cleaning time so it was nearly 8pm by the time I got home and actually had some dinner. I was very tempted at that point to have something sweet, but I don't have anything in the house except a packet of mint slice biscuits that I have reserved for another reason. I may have had a little savoury snack.
I think I will finish this off and go to bed and try to go to sleep, because it's now the time of year that the pool is open and mean to be tested in the mornings. Apparently it has been open for a while, but while people expect me to be the one to do the daily testing, nobody up to this point thought to mention to me that was open. We need some way of signalling that the pool is actually open for the summer. That isn't easy to vandalise. I'm not sure if I'll go for a swim, but it may help me get up in the morning a bit better. Which means of course that I need to get some sleep in now.
Some people are doing some sort of December meme thing, which I am unsure of the source of. I don't think I will be participating in any formal way, but if people would like to hear my views on anything in particular, feel free to ask. Otherwise I'm likely just to burble on like this.
I did see something very pretty today. The official stuff seems to be at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_takes_magnetic_fingerprint_of_our_Galaxy but I saw some false colour images that looked amazing on twitter. http://public.planck.fr/resultats/249-planck-revele-l-invisible seemed to be the link there.
And I did get my habits done. My music is played, my filing is down to a nearly empty filing tray, and I got 5 books into my librarything and back on the shelf. And the dishes are done. It's amazing how just doing little things every day seems to be helping. And I watered my plants this morning and checked my tomato plant but after the two fat caterpillars that I evicted the other day I can't see any evidence of others.
Hopefully tonight I don't dream about all the snakes. Last night there were snakes everywhere. In the houses, under beds, and definitely on a plane.
Originally posted at http://ariaflame.dreamwidth.org/104157.html where you may comment if you wish. There are currently
comments on the original post.