User Profile Friends Calendar

Below are 25 recent journal entries, after skipping 25

	2007.11.22  19.54 Turkey Time OMG! It's just about ready, and I cannot wait. *drools* I'm too hungry to be very eloquent right now and list out all the things that I'm thankful for (isn't being thankful that my DH is an awesome cook enough?) but I wish everyone who is enjoying turkey day good eating, everyone who works retail tonight and tomorrow a day free of asshattery, and to everyone else, a most splendiferous Thursday (or Friday depending on what part of the world you happen to be in). *smooches*

	2007.11.21  13.33 Owl Post!!! It's that time of year again when the post office is overwhelmed by a massive increase in mail, and I, wasteful little person that I am, want to contribute to the deluge. Due to having my head up my ass being a bit overwhelmed by RL deadlines, I know I missed several posts by some on my f-list who were inviting people to sign up for holiday card exchanges. If you're one of them and I missed out and you see this message, please point me in the direction of your post so I can sign up! PLEASE!!! I have to say that one of the highlights of the last holiday season was getting cards and art and drabbles and all sorts of fun stuff in the mail. I myself am hard at work on a few sketches for this year's cards, and I'd love to send them out, so please sign up with your name and address below. Let me know what you're celebrating (whether it be Hanukkah, Xmas, Festivus, Snape's birthday, etc.) so I can personalize it a little, All comments will be screened.

	2007.11.20  22.41 Long Awaited Job Update As many of you may or may not know, my current job is a visiting assistant professor position, which is a temporary one year teaching intensive appointment. Last year, when my DH and I went on the job search, we were both offered tenure-track jobs at different universities and negotiated with the institutions for spousal positions. We accepted a tenure track position for my DH and a temporary one year position for me at our current institution in part because there was a good chance they would be doing another job search this year. Even more interesting, there was the possibility that my temporary position could be converted to a tenure-track position through a majority vote of the department faculty. The good news is, there is indeed an open position that needs to be filled this year. In a sense, this means that I've been under constant review here - something of a rather long job interview of sorts. I've given two talks and have had my teaching observed on several occasions and had an "interview" with the search committee and several other faculty. Last night, I received an e-mail indicating that by a majority, the faculty had voted to convert my position and are sending their recommendation up to the Provost to sign off on. Nothing is a sure thing, of course. This is always where things can get unexpectedly weird an political, but I am feeling somewhat optimistic and keeping my fingers crossed. It would be a real coup for the both of us to have two tenure track positions in the same department and to not have to up and move again. Wish us luck!

	2007.11.18  21.50 Thoughts, observations and frustrations * I have no idea what is responsible for the strange smell emanating from our bathroom. This is disturbing me greatly. * I have just learned that my as-yet-to-be-born nephew is going to be named Brody. This amuses me to no end. * I am not finished writing that paper that is due tomorrow and I am way behind on my lesson prepping for the week. This makes me so very unhappy.

	2007.11.17  07.42 I am Extremely Adorable Oh yeah. This is so very me. Note the emphasis on EXTREMELY adorable. No wonder I was such a big hit in Japan - it's written in the stars. :D Lets101 - Free Online Dating

	2007.11.16  19.37 Snapecast Express Snarky's got his ticket - have you got yours? Reserve Your Seat Now If you'd like to join us for the final regularly scheduled run of the Snapecast Express, send an to severus@snapecast.com. Be sure to include your name, your name, and seat and car preference. Merlin Class and the the Slytherin car are already filling up fast, but there's still plenty of space in the Prefects Car and the Party Wagon!

	2007.11.16  08.27 Addiction OMG! Yeah! Wormwood has updated Episode 17! I caught up on all the past episodes yesterday, and I'm completely on tenterhooks. I spent several hours yesterday just moping around because there was nothing else I really wanted to listen to but Ep 17 hadn't come out yet. I think their plans are to produce 24 for the first season, so we've still got a few to go, and then there will be two more seasons. But I don't know if they're planning to release these two seasons back to back or if we'll have to wait for two years. Ack! And yeah for no commercials! Have any of you guys listened yet?

	2007.11.15  19.57 Glock's Fanart Love Meme I sometimes really love my art. I really do. It makes me so happy to just sit around and draw sometimes. So of course, I just had to join in glockgal's Fanart Love Meme. I'm on page 3 here. And in that vein, I've just finished sketching a new canon piece. (Yeah!) We'll see how long it takes me to color it, but here's hoping I can pull it off!

	2007.11.15  17.02 Screwing Around in Class Ever wonder if your teacher screws around on the Internet while you're busy doing groupwork? Well, that's exactly what this teacher is doing. :P

	2007.11.14  07.52 His Dark Materials In this post-HP era, I have been casting about for different pieces of fiction to read and am now two thirds of the way through Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I find I'm enjoying it very much. I devoured The Golden Compass on the flight over to Europe and just finished The Subtle Knife about 10 minutes ago. I'm eager to dive into The Amber Spyglass to finish everything off, but there is much work to be done today, so it will have to wait until tonight. In any case, how many of the rest of you have read this series and how did you find it?

	2007.11.14  04.38 Wormwood As I was prepping my iPod for the long plane ride ahead of me, I tried seeking out a few new podcasts and stumbled across this gem. Wormwood is described as a serialized mystery and clearly gets a great deal of inspiration from that awesome early 90s television show Twin Peaks. Although the audio quality could use a bit more work, particularly when it comes to balancing out the sound levels of different actors (some of whom do a fair bit of shouting), the story-line is engaging and I am totally hooked. I've listen to 10 of the 16 episodes aired so far, and I'm not looking forward to reaching then as it means I'll have to wait for their weekly updates.

	2007.11.13  01.06 Jet-lagged and Ready to Turn into a Pumpkin I am finally home! Yesterday, or what might be the day before yesterday in some parts of the world, I hugged chaeche goodbye as she sashayed off through security to catch her noon flight back to Amsterdam. After a long night of drinking, eating and Snape-ing with her and selinaenriquez, all I wanted to do was check in for my own flight (not scheduled to depart until 15:35) and curl up with my warm little laptop and a fast Internet connection. (I missed my f-list, even the cheeky ones!) Unfortunately, when I got to the gate, I discovered that our flight was delayed until 5pm on account of mechanical trouble. This would leave me only one and a half hours to go through customs and recheck my luggage to catch my flight out of Chicago to San Antonio. It was going to be tight. The plane did indeed board by 5pm, but by then it had begun to snow (this is Scandinavia after all), and this meant further delays as we waited for the plane to be de-iced. I think we must have been dead last in the de-icing line because we weren't cleared for take-off until 7pm. Fortunately, I didn't mind sitting on the runway for two hours on account of being so tired that I slept the whole time. (I find the best way to prepare for a transatlantic flight is to get as little sleep as possible the night before so you can sleep the whole flight). Of course, this meant there wasn't a hope in heck I was making my connecting flight. Once we landed, I was informed I had been rebooked on a 10am flight the next morning, was handed a food and hotel voucher and was ushered off to the airport Hilton for the night. And so I spent the night in a strange, but comfortable hotel room instead in my own bed with my sweetheart by my side. I got into San Antonio at 1:30, was picked up by my DH and after dropping off some stuff at home, was in the office and gearing up for class by 3:00pm. (Though they were incredibly heavy and took up much needed space in my luggage, it's really was a good thing I brought course materials with me on my trip so I could at least plan my lesson!) Right now, I've finished my teaching for the day and am proctoring the make-up exam for the student I blogged about earlier. At 7:00pm, my DH will be picking me up and we're going out to dinner to finally celebrate his birthday. I hope I don't fall asleep in his birthday cake!

	2007.11.08  05.10 Greetings from the Coolest Airport in the World ...that I've had the chance to pass through anyway. After two transfers, I've finally landed in Copenhagen and am awaiting my luggage. Then it's off to the conference, followed by the evening banquet at 19.30. I hope I can make it through without falling asleep during any of the presentations. I've also got to figure out the money thing. It's so hard going between Sweden and Denmark like this because they have different currency (for those not in the know, they are not on the Euro). Thus I have to figure out how much of each I'm going to need between now and Sunday. Ugh! such a pain! I'm also not sure if I'll have any Internet access between now and Friday and so thus might blow my NaBloPoMo streak. If worse comes to worst, maybe I can locate a cafe with free or cheap Internet.

	2007.11.07  10.09 Here We Go Again I'm off to Sweden once again, this time to present the results of the research I conducted there at the annual meeting of the Swedish Association of Applied Linguistics. It's just too bad that I couldn't get more time off from teaching to travel - I'm going to be SOOOOOOOO jetlagged! Here's hoping I can sleep most of the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. The really cool thing, and what I'm really excited about is the chance to hang with fellow HP-fen in Europe over the weekend. chaeche is flying up to Copenhagen from Amsterdam, and we're going to be meeting up with selinaenriquez and thepinkrabbit to do some serious Snape-ing. Yeah!!!!

	2007.11.06  18.40 A Different Kind of Student I'd like to be able to write something HP related since it feels like it's been a while, but I've been having student issues today, so that's at the forefront in my mind. A little while back, I blogged about a student whose behavior in class has been disappointing me. Today her class was scheduled to take an exam. I received an e-mail from her around 11am stating that she wasn't going to be able to make it in for the exam because she's having a very busy week at work (I believe she works in retail). I was kind of floored. I've been prepping them for this test for the past four weeks. Over the past two weeks, I've created online quizzes modeled on test questions to give them a little practice (and help studying for the test). This weekend, I invested a good 6-8 hours writing, revising and rewriting the exam for this class. The exam itself has been on the syllabus all semester, so it's not like it's a surprise. I am also willing to make accommodations for people who, for personal reasons, need to take the test early since they can't be there for the day of the test. But I never expected to have to deal with someone flaking out like this and asking if they could make it up at some other time. Based on her previous behavior in class, I'm highly skeptical that she's THAT busy at work and think it more likely that she hasn't studied and is trying to buy herself more time. (If it walks like a duck...) Her current average, while respectable, is such that a zero on this test would guarantee that she fail. However, I don't feel comfortable completely crushing her and letting her fail (as much as my inner Snape would like to see what it would be like). And so, I've decided to give her the chance to make up the test on the condition that she do it at a time convenient to me (looks like she's going to have to take off work) with a significant grade reduction 25% and no opportunity for extra credit. We'll see how she does, but based on her past performance, I think it highly likely that with the grade reduction, she might find herself swimming in dangerous waters anyway. What really upsets me even further is how this decision is in such contrast to the other students in the class, many of whom go to extreme lengths to make it to class. Right before the exam started, I ran into one of my other students in the hall, crying. She'd just gotten back from a funeral (her third in as many weeks) for a close friend of hers who had died of breast cancer. I offered to let her take the exam later, but she insisted she wanted to go ahead and take it now.

	2007.11.05  11.34 Marathon Post Big news! Katie Holmes finished the New York City Marathon in a little under five and a half hours. This pisses me off. I'm so much faster than her.

	2007.11.04  22.14 One Big Sausage Party My DH and I drove out to a nearby town to go to their annual Wurstfest. It was as to be expected, and I had the most amazing susage soup - yum! Still, driving a good 30 miles for lunch is a bit much. At least I got some grading done in the car. I actually failed a student or two on the assignment. Yes indeed, it was a very good day!

	2007.11.03  21.58 Disappointing Student During last week's linguistics class, a few of my students had to leave early or arrive late because their schools were hosting Halloween-type festivities (a good half of my students are public school teachers). It's a pity they had to miss class, but these things do come up, and as long as they keep me apprised of when they have to miss class so I can make sure they get the homework and the like, it's workable. However, one of my other students also crept out of class about an hour early and she's not a teacher. (Nor did she inform me in advance that she had to leave.) I guess I shouldn't be surprised. She's something of a disappointment to me - I hate it when I see her balking at performing group-work, groaning about having to do any homework, and just generally being unresponsive. It's really unclear to me how she expects to succeed in a Master's program without doing any work at all, and I can't figure out why she even wants to be an ESL teacher. She doesn't seem to have an interest in anything that we do. I'm in the process of writing up the second midterm for my linguistics course and am harboring the secret hope that she bombs it.

	2007.11.02  17.43 Writing "Issues" Writing is on my mind a lot at the moment. First off, I've got a research article that's due on November 15th. Unfortunately, I haven't begun writing yet, and between now and then, I'm going to be in Sweden for a few days. I'm just the gosh-darned queen of procrastination, aren't I... *begins to sweat* In other writing news, I feel very sad for everyone involved in the current lawsuit being filed against the author and publishers of a soon-to-be-released HP companion book. The screaming success of the HP series must be such a cross to bear for Rowling sometimes (and I mean this with complete sincerity). It must be a hard balancing act to protect your own rights/dreams/plans/material while allowing for or even supporting the creativity of so many other budding writers, artists and the like. I hope everyone on the other end of the lawsuit is receiving adequate legal counsel because I'd hate to see anyone ruined by this. And selfishly, I hope very much the fallout from this doesn't lead to the end of the golden-age of fandom-fun. And finally, there's the impending (or maybe it's already a done deal and not merely impending anymore) writer's strike. Truth be told, what makes or breaks a movie for me, or what draws me back to a television show is the writing. It's all about the narrative to me. And this is why I don't watch "reality" tv, which I find to be coma-inducingly boring. (Because there's a huge difference between characterization and plot and people simply acting like assholes for money.) I have huge respect for good writers and am frustrated when it seems like their contributions are taken for granted and undervalued. At the moment, I'm feeling rather inadequately informed to actually comment on the merits of the impending strike, but, as in all things, I hope the details are worked out acceptably for all involved. That being said, the more closely I find myself working with pre-service and in-service public school teachers, the more familiar I become with policy and regulations and "standards" guiding every facet of teaching, and the more aware I am of the pay teachers receive in light of some of the downright ridiculous things being asked demanded of them, the less sympathy I have for anyone in any facet of the sports and entertainment industry!!!

	2007.11.01  23.39 Drumroll Please... And the results of the First Annual pennswoods's LJ Costume Contest are in. Competition was fierce, particularly among a few of the last minute entrants. ( Special recognition goes to... ) ( And the winners are... ) Please contact me to make arrangements for your "prizes": 1st place - An original piece of fanart (in color pencil and ink) depicting any characters or scenes (fanon or canon) from the Potterverse. 2nd place - An original piece of fanart (color pencil and ink) depicting any canon scene from the HP books. 3rd place - A Trevor Drabble on any topic that you like.

	2007.11.01  13.04 Costume Pimpage and Halloween Rundown For those of you who dressed up yesterday, there's still time to enter my Halloween costume contest. And yes there are prizes. :D To inspire the rest of you, here are a few of me in my costume. Lily, potions maven that she is, would naturally spend lots of quality time with her cauldron. If you click on the picture to get to its full size, you'll see my own brown hair peeking out of the wig behind my ear. Heh. Also, I'm wearing tiny little potions bottle earrings made by freakyartychick which complimented the costume ever so nicely. Lily, looking cute or something. I was kind of stuck for Lily poses since there wasn't a James or Snape around for me to be sassy with. My Halloween wasn't quite as action-packed as I had hoped it would be. Not a single trick-or-treater came to our door, no one attempted to steal our pumpkin, and not a shred of toilet paper was to be seen dangling from the trees and bushes. The apartment complex was hosting some sort of "Autumn Festival" for the kids, so I guess that was why there weren't any trick-or-treaters. My DH and I now have all these gummy eye-balls we need to get rid of somehow. However, despite the lack of trick-or-treat action, my DH and I still had lots of fun. I got to prance around in my robes and wig, he got to laugh at my antics, and we both enjoyed chocolate fondue. Seriously, I think this is going to become our annual Halloween ritual. Fondue makes everything more festive. Then, on the way into work this morning, we stopped by the big Halloween store, which was selling everything for half off and picked up some supplies for next year, including a mini fogging machine. I can't wait to use it! I also picked up a few smaller costume-type items including a long black wig. I'm thinking maybe it's time I tried my hand at cosplaying Bellatrix at the next HP event.

	2007.10.31  20.37 The Only Pumpkin He Ever Feared Viola! My Potter Pumpkin Masterpiece. Okay, so maybe it's not quite as canon or as awesome as my last two pumpkins, but it was definitely inspired by current events. Okay msavi, your turn! ETA: For those of you who can't quite make this out, this is supposed to be Dumbledore (or perhaps Albus Pumpkindore). And yes, he is wearing the tam from my doctoral robes.

	2007.10.31  13.20 Halloween Costume Contest in My Journal Tonight Because I need a little something to entertain me while I man the door handing out candy tonight, I cooked up a little challenge for you all. After 7pm EST, stop by my journal and show me your costumes (real, not photoshopped). You can put it in an icon, link to it, or paste it in your comment. And while you're here, check out everyone else's costumes too. At the end of the evening, I'll pick my favorite three, which I'll post in my journal tomorrow. And yes, there will be prizes, the fandom sort, of course. 1st place - An original piece of fanart (in color pencil and ink) depicting any characters or scenes (fanon or canon) from the Potterverse. 2nd place - An original piece of fanart (color pencil and ink) depicting any canon scene from the HP books. 3rd place - A Trevor Drabble on any topic that you like.

	2007.10.30  23.28 Busy, busy, busy I almost forgot to post. I'm so busy Snape-ing (the next episode of snapecast is going to hit the airwaves soon) and plotting my Potter Pumpkin-masterpiece, I almost forgot to post! Yikes! I sure hope we get a whole bunch of trick-or-treaters tomorrow!

	2007.10.29  18.48 Halloween Costume Plans Alright! 'fess up! Who's dressing up for Halloween around here? I'm going to be rushing home from work on Wednesday so I can throw on my costume and hand out candy to the (hopefully) hoards of kiddies that come clamoring for treats. I'll be donning my Gryffindor robes and long red wig to be Lily this time around - not quite as festive as my Luna costume last year nor as iconic as my Harry costume the year before. I do look fetching with long red hair though. So, what are ya'll dressing up as?