Not much changed

Did the usual small re-entry tasks, made easier by the fact that I don't really NEED to do anything workrelated for another week:

- Picked up my accumulated mail. Paid a couple of urgent bills (I have a couple more to pay but they're not due 'til week after next, and I have to find my other book of stamps). Found the check from Fidelity (this is my half of the "required minimum distribution" for last year from the IRA my brother and I inherited from our dad).

- Ran to the bank to deposit the check, got $100 of it of cash just because.

- Lulu and Hazel's had called (early in break, but when I called Saturday before they closed for the day, the woman said she figured I was on break when I didn't come in) so I went and picked up the finished quilt. (This was a big one - 80 by 80). I used the $100 cash I got (plus a little more) and just paid cash for it, since I had the cash in my wallet. Gave her my condolences on her father's death; she seems to be doing okay and it sounds like the shop is going to continue on. (That was thing #1 that I was slightly concerned about).

I had just done the machine-sewing part of the binding on the LAST one I picked up (back before my dad died, even - it was in July). I want to get this one bound soon because once it's time to take the snowman quilt off my bed, even if it's still chilly, this will be a good big quilt.

(I have the Paddington Christmas one on my bed right now but because it's Epiphany, I should take it off in favor of the skiing snowman one I have that I use for wintertime)

- Thing #2 was over at my office - we were told the end of last semester "we'll be upgrading your computers and giving you all Windows 10, but don't worry, we'll transfer your files over" and I was concerned that I wouldn't remember the new login procedure (it will change) or that maybe something went wrong and files got lost. But they haven't got to me yet. That's good and bad. Good in that I can start the semester without too many bad surprises (I should print copies of all my syllabi just in case, and make up the lab packet for one class) but not so good in that they will probably want to do it once classes start, and there will really be no time during the regular week that it will be convenient for me to be without computer access for a half-day or so. Maybe some Friday afternoon, though they tend not to want to do Fridays...

So I'm adding all the test dates and the like to my new calendar (a gift from a Twitter friend - it is Welsh churches, a calendar from an association of bell-ringers, and while that style of bell-ringing is I THINK different to what I do (I do handbells; I think this is the so-called "ringing the changes," using the big bell-tower bells), it is still relevant to my interests.)

I do need to score the October sample of soil inverts this week, and decide whether to do a February or a March sampling (will depend on whether we have cold or not this winter). And I need to (sigh) start writing up my post-tenure review. I MIGHT include a line in there along the lines of "having taken on additional teaching duties* and extra service** in the past year, I have not done as much with research..." as a justification. I still expect to get slammed for lack of scholarly productivity because that's how these things work; we're never going to hear "you're good enough, just keep on keepin' on" even though that's really what I NEED to hear right now.

(* Have taught Environmental Policy and Law, which is about as far out of my wheelhouse as you can go without it being literal academic malpractice for me to teach it, will be teaching advanced biostatistics this spring, which is a bit more in my wheelhouse but which is requiring some heavy review)

(** the blasted assessment thing, which I neither asked for nor welcome, and also some more committee work because the Holy Hand-Grenade number of committees is apparently 3 and I wasn't on enough committees last go-round, despite being a technical editor of a journal and serving on some outside scholarship committees)

- Not sure what to do, or rather, if I need to do anything other than "ignore" - a student in one of my classes who failed to hand in a number of things (and, so, consequently, failed the class), e-mailed two of the missing papers to me. On Friday. While I was on a train coming back here.

(Grades for last semester were due in on December 17; I turned  mine in on the 12th.)

I am not quite sure what they expect. There was no e-mail explaining: it was literally the two papers each as an attachment. I'm hoping they don't think I'll grade them and they'll magically retroactively pass. They did not request an Incomplete, and they weren't eligible for one anyway. But this kind of thing always makes me uncomfortable, ever since I had that one student who got an administrator to call me up and tell me to grade the student's week-late paper because the student in question was "special." So I'm waiting on a second shoe to drop and I don't like it.

Oh, I know, in the absence of some really enormous mitigating factor, my chair would 100% back me up on "you don't even have to look at them, let alone adjust the student's grade" but I'm hoping this is not a preface to an "I sent them to you during the semester and you never graded them, so here they are again!" because I never received them during the semester....I tell students if they e-mail me stuff (which is NOT the preferred method!) they must wait for an e-mail back of confirmation, because sometimes e-mails do get lost - or people type in my address wrong, or something.

(Maybe this year I figure out how to do the "submit assignments through BlackBoard" and just do that, but then that means I either have to print them MYSELF or I'm tied to my office for grading. I like being able to take the written papers home and read them in more peace and quiet than the average conditions in my office building)

But yeah. That's one of the things I get tired of, is people who don't follow my directions on something and then act upset that things didn't work out their way. I know I'm in the right and all, and MOST of the time a higher-up will tell the complaining student to suck it up and do it the right way next time....but there's also the emotional/energy drain of having to deal with the complaints and unhappiness, and also the rare chance that they will find a sympathetic ear (or an ear unsympathetic to me) and I'll be stuck doing the late grading and grade change, instead of the student earning a D or an F because they didn't do the work when it was assigned....

* A couple packages came while I was gone. A couple were expected: the photographic calendar one of my uncles does every year (sunsets over Lake Michigan) and the replacement barn coat (the one my mom had originally got was too small in the shoulders and had to be exchanged for a larger size). Two each of Doki Doki and Gachopon crates. I'm thinking I'll open the December Doki Doki crate (which came after I had left for Christmas) today but save the rest and parcel them out over the next week or more.

And a present from a blogreader, which I'll also open today to see what it is.

I also got a lot of Christmas cards, since I leave so early for break, most of mine come while I'm gone. I'll probably open those too.

* I still am thinking about what I considered (and never did) last year: see if I can get some "valentine's themed" lights (or even just pink, or red, fairy lights) and put them up in the place of the little white ones I've had up for a couple years. I should put some permanent brackets up to hold lights and maybe just get a few different strands I could swap out with the season.

(They had heart-shaped lights at JoAnn's last year but as is typical for them, they overpriced them and wanted you to wait for a "big sale" to buy them, I guess. But that kind of business practice annoys me, and even with the discount, the lights were really more than I wanted to pay. I might try one of the online purveyors of that kind of stuff instead....)

It's a small thing, but a nice thing: they are on a timer so they click on about the time I get home for the day and stay on for a couple hours in the evening. Yes, yes, I know: but LED lights draw very little power and given that a lot of energy-consuming things that people do are things I don't do, I feel like I should get to have my fairy lights. Also, it makes coming home after an evening meeting a bit nicer....

I'd probably need about 30 feet worth of lights (two doorframes, up, down, and across the top, with maybe a little extra to swag at the top, and enough to reach the outlet with the timer).

I know they make rose-shaped ones and others, but I want sturdy lights, and I don't want battery-operated ones; I feel like batteries are more wasteful (and they crap out fast).

And with some online purveyors....well, you don't know if the stuff is quality or not. I don't even know where to look for them. (Amazon's record for those kinds of things so so spotty, in terms of quality....) I suppose the answer is most of those sort of things are just made to be cheap and disposable? Though the Target LED white lights I have, they've been up and used much of the year for the past 3 years now and they're still going strong...