Friday evening, finally

* Didn't get much knitting done this week. I did finish a couple little "surprises" for someone but because they might read the blog I can't share until I've sent them off. 

* I did get to "that" part of  "Anne of Green Gables" where a couple big things happen and I find myself going "really? you had to do that to characters that we grew to love?" though I suppose it makes things more real, and those are things that happen in the real world. But I guess I'm almost through with the book. I should dig through the boxes I have find find my next novel to read.

(I should consider trying to get another bookcase or two at Target tomorrow so I can take some of those books out of the boxes I have them stored in and have them out where I can see them. I know I have a couple recent semi-fantasy novels - Cloud Cuckoo Land, and Under The Whispering Door. And I know I have a couple Terry Pratchett books that maybe I'm ready to embark on. (I want to find my copy of "The Color of Magic," which I know is the first one. I also think I have "Good Omens," which a friend told me I'd probably enjoy - I've not watched the series made of it but maybe if I read the book and it's still on Amazon, I could watch later)

* Brought more boxes home (just yarn this time) but I can see the point where I'll be done and have the unit emptied. I think all my "???" boxes of books will wind up donated. I don't know where; the library's used-book sale just took place and I bet they don't want to store books for another whole year. Or maybe I take the best of them and see if the bookstore downtown wants to take them in trade. I don't know if Goodwill takes books...

* I totaled the exam grades. A couple people did better (one did a lot better) than on the first exam; no one did markedly worse - and this is more challenging material, so maybe the review did help. 

* Beginning to slowly see how I can do the systematic botany class; maybe I won't be such a dismal failure at it after all. First couple weeks will be basic intro "how tos" - using a dichotomous key, pressing plants and making herbarium sheets. I'll have to do a little basic plant evolution and then talk about terminology (There is a LOT of terminology, and you have to be precise about it, and a lot of our undergrads are not very precise thinkers, so I'll have to figure out a good way to do it). Then I'll introduce flowers and fruits, and do structure (that lab, I could get some flowers from a florist - if it's still early enough nothing is out - and I could get as many different fruits as I can find and have them dissect them to find the parts and to see how the carpels go to form fruits in most cases (strawberries are an oddity; it's actually the floral receptacle you eat; the fruits are the "seeds," which are actually achenes). Then I will go family by family, choosing either particularly representative families, ones that have a lot of species in this region, or that are economically important. There's no way to cover all the families of flowering plants, so you have to ignore some. 

I feel better about it. One of my skills I know is learning stuff fast, and figuring out what the important material is, and I'm seeing that with the book I'm currently working through. And I do, on some level, know most of this already; some of the stuff I learned back in like 1988 in Wagner's class is coming back. 

Not sure what "projects/labs" other than exams to have. I might consider assigning a family to each student and having them write and present a report on it (I would do it randomly, rather than letting them pick - I would write the names on slips of paper and have them draw them. I'd check first to be sure they're not too obscure of families). I might have lab reports for some weeks (with drawings and stuff). I'm still undecided on a plant collection - the former guy used to do that at first; in recent years he went to having them take digital photos (with their student ID or similar in the picture to cut down on the risk of people just grabbing internet photos) but I admit I like the idea of a 'real' plant collection; I might just do a scaled-down version of one, with fewer plants required. 

* Taking tomorrow off from work, though. I need to go "big" grocery shopping, and as I said I want to consider getting an extra bookcase, and maybe I just need to walk around in the JoAnn Fabrics for a bit, I don't know. And I want to go to the natural-foods store for some things. And maybe to the big antiques mall in Sherman? Which I've not been inside in over 2 years? 

The complicating factor is it's Texas/OU weekend, so traffic will be worse on the interstate. I'm thinking maybe if I leave at 8:30 (I got gas today and have enough cash for what I might want to spend cash on) I can avoid the worst of it, and I will  probably be coming back while the game is still on - and if I hit the grocery once the game has started, I bet it will be less busy.