* My mom covid-tested today; it came up negative. She also sounds better than she did on Saturday when I called so hopefully this was just a light cold. I don't have any symptoms but I tried to avoid being in close physical proximity to my niece. (Before we found out she was sick, she had been throwing a bit of a fit over getting her hair combed - she won't get her hair cut and it's tangly like mine is, but at least I try to keep mine brushed. My sister in law wasn't having a lot of luck helping her get it smooth so my mother offered, and my mother has more experience with longer hair (for example: you grab a hank close to the scalp with one hand while you work the brush through the ends with the other, it doesn't pull so much). So I think that's how she got exposed.
* I am almost done with the gift-hat. I have ten more rounds but they are the top decreases so they will go faster. This is a nice design; the lace pattern is worked into the top decreases so it carries all the way up. I want to finish this well in advance so I can wash it and block it a little.
* I also got some more done on the vest I've been knitting while invigilating; I gave an exam today. I have the back totally done and started the left front. IF I get to go home at Christmas (I am really hoping the rail strike is averted**) I might take it with me and finish it up; there's a big new JoAnn's in my mom's town and I might be able to find good buttons for it there.
* I did finish a pair of socks over break, I'll take a photo maybe tomorrow.
(** I got my holiday bonus today, along with my monthly paycheck. IF the rail strike is averted, yes, I am sending the amount of the bonus to the regional food bank as a thanks for my getting to have a proper Christmas with my mom)
* I wrote my last two hourly exams today - I have one student who has to take one early (it's scheduled for next week) but he has to go to his home country for a visa renewal and the only day he could get an appointment was the day after the exam, and he needs travel time. I don't mind doing it but I hope he can get up to speed on the last bit of material I will be covering after he takes the exam (I posted the notes online and gave the chapter assignment). I do have to write my finals - for a couple classes they should be virtually done; for the third class I want to rewrite the one I usually use (I don't hand them back so there aren't copies circulating) to reflect some of the things the students missed on the last in-class exam, which is material I went over today and gave an extra assignment over - want to give them a second chance to get it right. (I've struggled with this class. I don't know if people are just burnt out or if they're missing some vital background information or what, but.....some of the homework and some of the test questions it does feel a bit like people either aren't paying attention (and aren't answering the question I asked, but some other, different question, that I didn't ask) or just give up on it.)
One of the real knock-on effects of the pandemic that's not talked about is the extra help and remediation professors (well, at least those of us who care/who worry about the possibility of tenure being revoked if we don't do a good enough job) are having to do. And it's tiring and discouraging because there's only so much remediation you can do when it's basic material the students seem to lack. And of course if it's simple burn-out/giving up, there's no remediation that will help that.
* I put up the wreath (the Christmas one) on the front door, and put out the Christmas doormat yesterday. I still have a few bits of decorating to do yet but I'm picking slowly at it - I'm tired these days when I get home, and I have piano practice to do (and today I had to do some laundry as well). I'm hoping in a couple more weeks I will be doing similar again with my mother.....
* I did order myself a couple small early Christmas presents - a couple skeins of WYS sockyarn (including one of their "Gingerbread" colorway - a Christmas themed one). Bought it from Quixotic Fibers, who report already having packed and shipped it. (They are really good and I wanted to throw a little business their way. I would LIKE to go down there to shop and have told myself IF the rail strike happens and I can't get to my mom's, I will allow myself a trip there as a consolation prize, but I would much rather pack up my new yarn to knit socks of at my mom's). I also ordered a couple more books in the Rincewind arm of the Discworld series - I'm about half way through The Light Fantastic and am really enjoying it and I want to read the rest. And I ordered myself a stuffed animal (yes, I already have too many, but this one, as I said on twitter, "he looks very polite." Picture will come when he arrives)
* And on the subject of books - I am thinking of some tweet someone reposted from some crypto-bro or other, basically asking "why should people even need to read books" and once in a while I do encounter that attitude and yes, I get having dyslexia or eye problems that make reading words on paper (or on a screen) unpleasant, but audiobooks are a thing (and are a boon for folks with various disabilities, or even busy people - I keep thinking I should use them to listen to while I knit, because tv generally doesn't hold my attention the way just-spoken-word does). But I wonder, if the "I don't wish to experience stories" thing maybe suggests a bit of a lack of humility in some cases: an attitude of "no one can teach me anything, I already know it all" and that tends to lead to people making mistakes that could be averted if they learned from the past. (I once joked to someone that rather than making my own mistakes to learn from, I preferred to see if other people had made them first, and what I could learn from THEM). But yes, there are many different reasons to read - even different reasons to read fiction. (Like: for me the Discworld novels are very much entertainment and escape, they are funny and clever and have interesting characters and are very different from "real life," but other novels are perhaps more a way to understand other people by reading about people who think or live differently from me.) But anyway: the cryptobros seem to be making quite a few mistakes lately and hopefully they learn from them, though I suspect there are also people who are suffering from their mistakes, people who were perhaps more innocent/gullible than they were.
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