He's a great musician, too.

Hat tip to the folks over at Rateyourstudents.blogspot.com.

It's a living.

I walked into a classroom yesterday for the first time since last June. I felt awful that I had to get back to the work that brings in the tuition dollars. (In my field, tuition dollars usually outpace indirect costs by several orders of magnitude.)

After a break, the return to teaching is excruciating. In the days leading up to the first class of the quarter, I imagine other jobs for which I might be better suited (barrista? paint mixer at Home Depot?) and entertain crazy schemes by which I might reduce my teaching load to zero. I put off my course prep until the last minute. I'm late to that first class, having dragged my feet all the way down the hallway -- dead professor walking! Sometimes I imagine that my pain is so unbearable that taking the break from teaching was not worth the agony of returning to the classroom and I swear I will never not teach again.

So I gave my first lecture. It was fine; the agony is over. They seem like a good class, so far.

In which I find a silver lining.

The Angry Family took a short vacation this past weekend. We found a local hotel with a hot tub and purchased the right to sit in that hot tub for several days. It was great relaxing fun, mostly. However, had you walked through the hotel lobby at 2 a.m. Saturday morning, you would have seen a very sleepy woman reading a very large book with very small print: the complete and unabridged fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. I was that woman.

If I have to be an insomniac, I don't mind having the extra time to read something I wouldn't be able to read otherwise. However, I need to learn when to give up the fight and get up and do it. (A friend in graduate school had terrible insomnia; she never slept at all, as far as I could tell. She spent her nights in the gym and competed as a professional bodybuilder when she wasn't writing amazing papers that she published in places like Science and Nature.)

Happy New Year!

The Cartoon Network is airing a Loony Tunes marathon, complete with exploding cigars, falling anvils, the Acme Co. and canned monster. We're having a lovely day, and I hope y'all do too.

Ho, ho, ho.

Suppose a member of your family sent (via USPS) a gift that you didn't like. Specifically, the gift was both inappropriate and offensive to you and your family. This person knew the gift would be offensive and sent it nonetheless.

Given that direct confrontation will not serve any constructive purpose, is it okay to pretend the gift never arrived?

(Merry Christmas, Happy Chanuka, and Happy Kwanzaa everyone!)