Finished the Zing stole-thing (not quite wide enough to be a shawl; too wide to be a scarf) last night.

Now, I'm totally consumed with sorting biomass bags. This is for the prairie restoration project a colleague and I started this fall. We collected the samples back in October or so, and they've been sitting waiting since. I did a few now and then, when I had time, but when you teach 13 or 14 credit hours (including labs for which you only get 1/2 credit for each hour you put in in class) a semester, it's really hard to find time to do research. (Unless you choose not to have a life.) So I decided that this week, I'd really like to finish them off, so I have a sense of having Done Something with my fall.

I have 40 plots - with three bags each. I'm in the middle of Plot 22 right now. I hope to finish Plot 25 before my 11:00 exam today. Tomorrow and Friday I have no exams (but have evening commitments both nights). I'm hoping to blow through the remaining 15 plots (45 bags, for those keeping count) split between the two days - either 8 plots (minimally) or 10 (if I can keep up a good pace and if I'm lucky to get some low-diversity bags) tomorrow, and the rest on Friday. (This likely means I sacrifice cleaning my house well before going away for the break, but oh well. Maybe at least I can clean up anything that might attract mice.)

I can do between two and three bags per half-hour, so I really need to get back to it...Can't work this afternoon, I have a faculty meeting (how evil is that? Call a meeting during exam week?) and then I have exams to grade because this is the class of students who will be champing at the bit and which probably contains individuals who would have no scruples against calling me at home, at 11:00 at night, to ask "DO YOU HAVE MY EXAM GRADED YET?"


yesterday, a student took a machine-graded exam in ink pen, necessitating that I hand-grade it. I think one should be allowed to dock points for that, especially since I said about eighteen separate times that they needed to bring a Scan-tron sheet and a number 2 pencil. He had the sheet but not the pencil. (I suspect it may have been a last-ditch, "I'm failing so this is the one thing I can do to screw the teacher up a little" attempt).