A proper dinner

In retrospect, the rough-draft evaluation wasn't that bad. As it turned out, only 8 of the 19 students turned them in. (Well, a 9th did, but apparently her file was corrupted; my co-teacher said it crashed his computer multiple times when he tried opening it). And one of the 8 was an extra-diligent person who had handed hers in LAST week and which I had already read and commented on.

So they're done.

I decided this evening to make myself a proper dinner. This is one way that I try to remind myself that my well-being matters, too. (And really, it's not usually that great an effort: tonight's dinner took about 10 minutes to prepare. Because the steak was thin and I like my steak on the rare side)

So, I cooked up a rib eye steak I had bought as a test of the "alternate" grocery store in town's meat. (The main grocery store here, I will not buy meat from for various reasons). I kind of knew what to expect when I saw how little marbling was in the steak (none of the ones on offer had any, really). It came out pretty tough but I guess it still had protein. And iron. I think part of my distress may be I'm not getting enough iron. But the OTC supplements disagree with me, and I guess even though I eat a fair amount of spinach, it's still not enough. (If I had more time in the mornings, I'd make Cream of Wheat, which is pretty well fortified. But I don't.)

I also made a salad, and for variety opened the can of pickled beets (that I bought by accident, thanks so much Kroger for mixing the cans on the shelf, so I can't use the "pickled" beets for non-pickled type dishes) and cut up a few and added them, which made the salad a little more appealing. (I get very tired of salads.)

And I heated up a can of corn, which, depending on how nutritionally purist you are, is either a vegetable or a starch. (The most recent issue of Eating Well, IIRC, had a very indignant letter from someone asking them how they DARED count corn as a vegetable when it is obviously NOT. You know, I don't find those kinds of letters as amusing as I once did.)

So I had a reasonably-balanced dinner. (Later on, if I feel like I want it, I'll make a cup of either lemon-ginger herb tea or decaffienated green tea and open up the package of Newman's ginger-sandwich cookies I bought the last time I was at Kroger.)

I've also decided that tomorrow afternoon, barring any kind of OH NOES HORRIBLE UNEXPECTED THING I NEED TO DO, I'm going to go down to Sherman after I get out of class at 3. To buy my binder and page protectors and such. (The binder, with all its specific requirements - size and pockets and all - makes me think of the old Trapper Keeper craze of about 1981 or so, where if you didn't have a "real" Trapper Keeper, or you didn't have one with the "right" design on it, you were subject to the scorn of your classmates. Well, I was subject to their scorn anyway, Trapper Keeper or no. But I do remember I had a red one. (I can't remember if that was by choice - I really wasn't into having ponies or kitties on things back then - or if it was all that was left.))

And I'm going to go to the halfway-decent Chinese buffet again for dinner. Because I want a dinner out. And I'm also probably going to stop at either Hobby Lobby or the bookstore or the JoAnn's and buy myself some little treat (even if it's just a few more skeins of floss).

Partly because it's been a hard week, but partly because I'm now to the point where any time I think of working on my promotion portfolio, I kind of want to throw up. I'm starting to get apprehensive about it again, and starting to tell myself, "But you don't have outstanding teaching evaluations. And you never got an external grant" and all the hundred things that I DIDN'T do.

So I'm telling myself: If you don't get it it doesn't really matter but I'm having a hard time convincing myself of that. (I wish I did not have such a need for external validation.)