Monthly Archives: December 2010

Not Making Progress

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Weight
I am not making progress on Tim Ferris’ 20 pounds in 30 days thing. Of course, what he says to do in one chapter isn’t what he says to do in the other. And he says you can do some stuff he says you can’t do in other places.

I’m frustrated and I am unhappy. There are not cravings, but I am not making progress. Two pounds, an equal amount of fat and muscle, has been lost. Six inches have been lost (not sure how that happened with two pounds, but it’s good). It’s been 12 days.

Syllabus
I cannot get into my old syllabi to see how long certain lessons took because my student website is down. It’s also listed as a malware site which means that right now I can’t use it for my students either. That sucks.

Google
I hate Google. I don’t have anything on my site that is malware. I took off everything they said was a problem LAST time they said it was a problem. But it’s still listed as a malware site, despite the fact that they themselves say that the site hasn’t had any issues with propogating malware in the last three months, which is BEFORE they checked the site.

Sour Grapes

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One of the schools I used to adjunct for just put up two full-time positions, with four descriptions. Two of them match me perfectly. But after their bizarre changes in management, I am not sure I would want to return there. Also, though I qualify, I think this is one of those times they would probably not want someone they know.

And, really, I have a job that, while it doesn’t pay great, doesn’t leave me wondering when the ax will fall from managment, even with a one-year “we can fire you any time we have an exigency at all” contract. Unlike the other school which decides willy nilly to change their faculty and lets most of them go. They went from having eight faculty to having two and hiring the provost’s best friend. They let the other six go.

Now they are finding they can’t staff a full English department with those numbers of faculty, even when their 35% tuition hikes have run off a significant portion (1/3) of their students.

They pay well for adjuncts, though. Too bad they don’t have something they need me to teach. Tuesday-Thursday afternoon would give me something to do.

Christmas Wish List 2010

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Fence

I want two new CDs:

One with mushy songs:
“God didn’t make little green apples and it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime”
“I’m the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA”
“I Just Called to Say I Love You”
“I’d Have to Be Crazy” by Willie Nelson
She Doesn’t Know She’s Beautiful by Sammy Kershaw
Ocean Front Property by George Strait
Kiss an Angel Good Morning by Charlie Pride
Love Will Keep Together by Captain and Tenille
Only One You by TG Shepard

One with funny or marching songs:
Who Let the Dogs Out
Purple People Eater
Mexican Joe by Jim Reeves
Billy Bayou by Jim Reeves
Battle of New Orleans by Johnny Horton
North to Alaska by Johnny Horton
I’m in Love with a Big Blue Frog by Peter, Paul, & Mary

The Kindle’s medieval pages added to my kindle, if it can be done without killing it. See Got Medieval.

DVD for Seasons 4 and 5 of Bones.

DVD for Season 6 of Xena: Warrior Princess (for work, but…)

Metaphors We Live By a book by Lakoff and Johnson. It looks like it might be fun to read.

Another panel of stained glass for the bay window. Something unusual with blues, about the size of the other one, which is 21 wide and 42 long. Maybe this or this or maybe this. Of those three, looking back, I like the last one the best.

I really like this one, but it is temporarily out of stock and so is this one.

I like this one, too. It’s a little short, but very colorful.

I also like this one, but it goes the wrong way for the side window of the bay. I guess someone could get me two and I could hang both.

This is one of my favorites, but it doesn’t “match” the other. Of course, it could go in the middle of the bay window and then it wouldn’t matter if it matched.

I also like the first two on this page. I especially like the art nouveau, but it does not match my color scheme at all… Maybe for hanging in my bathroom window to obscure it? Nah, not the colors there either, though I still like it.

This one is in my colors and I like it very much, even though it is an abstract and not a picture.

These are for work, so I’m not sure they count for Christmas, but…

Beowulf: The Movie Board Game and someone to play it with me.

Beowulf: The Legend and someone to play it with me. Note: This is not the same as the game above, even though they were both created by the same person.

Rumford’s Beowulf
Johns’ The Saga of Beowulf
Kiernan’s Beowulf
Crownover’s Wealtheow: Her Telling of Beowulf
These books are all for work, so I’m not sure they count as Christmas…

The Star: A Recommended Read

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The Star from American Digest begins with a quote from T. S. Eliot and then proceeds:

Theirs was the Age of Myth; a world where night was not dimmed by the web of lights that now obscures the stars. Their nights were lit by flaring torches, dim oil lamps, guttering candles; by the phases of the moon and the broad shimmering river of the Milky Way. As the sun declined and night ascended, life withdrew into shuttered and barred homes. Only the very rich or the very poor were abroad in the dark.

The night sky, now so thin and distant, so seldom really seen, was to them as thick and close as a handful of coal studded with diamonds. They could turn it in their mind’s eye even as it turned above them. They reclined on their hill sides, their roofs, or in rooms built for viewing and marking the moon and the stars. They watched it all revolve above them and sang the centuries down. They remembered.

It continues and gets better.

I Hate Google

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Once again Google has decided that my teaching site is malware. So once again Google keeps my students from seeing the website. Stupid Google.

And Safari and Firefox buy into Google’s stupidity, so that I cannot work on my own website without getting malware notices that do not allow me to update my site.

I have switched to Opera as my default browser because of this. Stupid Safari and Firefox.