random ramblings

I'd like to start out by thanking all five of you that bought a copy of The Godshead on Kindle.  Thanks to person number five, I'll be getting a ten dollar paycheck in two months.

Tuesday was the pixie's second birthday.  We took her to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and she had a blast.  She was an incredibly good girl, all day (though she ate mostly frosting, not cake--thought it was ice cream), especially considering how much her mouth hurts with cutting the last four molars.  She got an owl pillow (a pink, fuzzy plushy thing) from us, and a baby and a purse with a plushy Scotty dog from Grandma and Grandpa. 

The imp has been a boy.  Sweet and loving and annoying and obnoxious by turns.  Occasionally, he manages to be all at once.  Since the pixie has been having trouble with her ears (with cutting those last teeth making her gums and surrounding areas tender and swollen), I haven't been able to have him outside much.  I'd ask  Odysseus to help, but he's still in a goodly amount of pain from the hip he strained when he fell at work. 

And now, the weather's absolutely crappy.  Yesterday, we had a cloud practically sitting on us--no rain, but a constant mist that kept everything drippy and wet.  It's not looking any better this morning.

He needs activity, and I can't provide the opportunity.

I wish we had a finished basement room.  I'd love to be able to boot the imp downstairs to run and screech and bounce off walls.

I also wish that the kittens weren't such goobers, so that we could let them stay in the main parts of the house overnight.  Last night, after the third time Cricket (the black and white probably half Siamese kitten) tried to climb the pixie's door facing, I put her back into the back room where the pup has her crate.  Shadow (the black, slightly less crazy, little less Siamese-blooded kitten) decided to follow.  About an hour after that, I was sitting and typing up an outline for another book idea, and caught a little bit of motion out of the corner of my eye.  I glanced up...and there was a mouse washing its face in the middle of the living room floor. 

Had either of the kittens been out, that mouse would have been toast.

The pup's probably going to be about as miserable as the imp, today.  The weather's going to be way too bad for her to spend any time outside. 

I have the blogs that were due yesterday (and any make-ups that a couple of my students did), and one more revised paper to grade.  Then I'm done until mid-January. 

Thank God. 

I am so tired of grading crap.  I'd be tempted to scrap the blogging out of my classes, but the time that saves is more than taken back by grading papers that are far worse than the ones I've been getting.  The constant practice writing (and writing for people whose opinions they care about--peers, not teachers) really boosts their skills.

If anyone wants further discourse on it, you can check The Godshead Tavern blog.  I've been writing about writing over there so that I don't bore you guys over here.  But today, I wrote about teaching, and how the grading impacts everything else.