- Thanksgiving Camping -

We did our usual camping trip for Thanksgiving. The weather was gorgeous until the final night, when it rained for five ours. The next day was beautiful again, but we're still cleaning up from all the mud we accrued.

Judi J., First Grader, had a blast for a change. There were lots of kids and she is now old enough to be relatively independent. We had a playscape very close to our campsite, and as you can imagine that was a popular gathering spot for the kids. We learned that she is still not up to hiking four miles. It's unclear whether that is because she gets tired or bored—or a little of both. All I know is that she perked up whenever we got into areas of rock climbing and back at the camp when there were kids at the playscape. So my guess is that her resistance to hiking was primarily boredom.

As always, the rock climbing was great fun. The park has a number of marked trails, but also a lot of free areas to wander. There are lots of rocks to climb safely in these areas, and finding a path through them is a challenge. Judi J., First Grader, especially liked being the leader, since she had the big responsibility of picking the trail.

Now it's back to reality, where as usual I have way, way too much to do this week.

- Running -

All this stress of paper writing, paper grading, dissertation defenses, etc. has done wonders for my running. I've been running 20-25 miles a week and have my normal pace at about 8:30/mile and a race pace of 7:30 per minute carried over 4.5 miles. Yay!

- Shell Shock -

I returned graded papers to my class yesterday. As usual, they opened their papers and glanced at my comments. Then the weirdest thing happened. They all just sat there, as the life seemed to drain from the room. No apparent irritation, no complaints; just shell shock. Then, I had to almost lead them from the room by their hand.

I didn't think I was that hard on the papers.

- Prodded by Scrivener -

I hope to get back to regular posting next week, when I've completed three dissertation defenses, five letters of recommendation, grading a stack of papers that are already weeks overdue, and have gotten a handle on this paper that's due at the end of the month. That would put me at the normal level of being behind. Oh, and did I mention that schools I've applied to have requested materials, including things like a teaching philosophy that I have to write up. I'm sure that page proofs will arrive in the next week, not because I'm expecting them, but because it always happens that when you literally have no time to pee, proofs necessarily show up on your doorstep with a deadline of yesterday!

- Hiatus -

Still here, just on hiatus until I can get caught back up.