grad school apps, *again*

Spent the morning trying to figure out where to apply for grad school so that I could have my GRE scores sent before the September deadline; it takes 5 working days. I finally decided on Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, U of Pennsylvania, U of Wisconsin-Madison, and Johns Hopkins. Who knows what my chances will be at those schools, but I decided I'd better not apply anywhere I really didn't want to go: e.g., abroad, the South, the Midwest, big cities like New York or Chicago, etc. If I don't get in I can find something else to do, I suppose.

At 1:30 I went to the student union to staff the BSR informational table at the graduate student orientation. Fortunately there was food left over from the orientation, so I had four half-pitas stuffed with tabouleh while I listened to Jessica tell me about her nightmarish week. At 3:15 Temina showed up and we put away all the extra copies of the magazine, and I headed over to Dwinelle to finish the computer installations that I've been putting off. At 7 David picked me up at Stephens with another load of stuff I was taking home from the office, and we went to the inexpensive Pho House on University for some green papaya salad and sour soup. It was somewhat funny in contrast with last night, when we went to Chez Panisse for an extremely nice dinner which cost a fortune.

final days

Just finished teaching my last real class; tomorrow's the final! We just finished reading the short comedy in Latin that we have been working on for the last several weeks; afterward we listened to a few songs from David's CD of Elvis songs sung in Latin and translated a drinking song from the Carmina Burana. I'm surprised how quickly the class has gone by. So tonight I will finish writing up the final, and by tomorrow night I will have turned in the final grades! Very exciting to be almost done. In a few months I will also get to hear what they really thought of me, too. Today the last thing we did was teacher evaluations...

The next thing on my list is to consolidate my on-campus stuff. I have things at my office here in Dwinelle, in the Classics lounge, in my inbox and shelves in the Public Health department, at my blotter in the History of Science Library, and at my study carrel in Doe. It will be a lot of walking around with things in boxes. And a lot of books to be returned to the library.

Once I'm done teaching I also will have to do some work for Professor Hook that got put off while I was grading etc. It just never ends. Right now I am going to try to finish setting up the two eMacs that kept crashing last Friday.

visit from Jill

Had brunch at Joanie's with Mom & Dad, Wally & Julie, then headed over to see the new store. We left in such good humor that we failed to notice we were leaving the lavender hydrangea behind! The new store seemed just right to me; it reminded me of the old store at Alma. Hopefully that will be a good omen.

Drove Jill up to Berkeley after we attacked some ants in the kitchen together. We stopped at Ross and Barnes & Noble (I got some tops and a notebook) in El Cerrito, then had toasted bagels and olive oil-packed tuna with rather flat sparkling apple cider at David's en route to my place. At the moment Jill is taking a nap. Apparently Ken visiting really tired her out. Pretty soon we will be headed out to salsa!

editor's insomnia

Stayed up till nearly 4 AM last night editing the third issue of the grad student science magazine. I had just settled into bed and gotten comfortable when I realized that there was one more change I had forgotten to make. I really hate that. Something unfinished like that can give me insomnia for hours if I just lie there, no matter how tired I am. So I got up, turned on the computer again, emailed the editor-in-chief that last thing, stumbled back to bed...and the next thing I knew it was 9 AM and it was time to get up again.

Even though I got up on time, I didn't actually get to campus until around noon because I just couldn't stand the state of my room and needed to clean it up before heading out (and I kept missing the bus, which only runs every half an hour or so). By that time I was in a hurry to get to my office and work on my class notes, but was getting very hungry (no breakfast), so I stopped by a shop on my way that sold crepes and ordered one with strawberry jam. I hadn't been there since the fall of my first year here, over three years ago! And after I started in on my crepe, I remembered why. It was too sweet and too thick, and it made my fingers sticky. Ick. I recall liking the crepes in Paris, though...perhaps this was just the wrong crepe shop to go to.

Class went more or less ok today, I think. The first third of class was the quiz. I think the next time I teach this perhaps fewer quizzes would be a good idea. I'm really sick of all the grading, and I'm sure the students are tired of being tested...but they are doing a good job of keeping up anyway.

So today I finally got around to messing around with the template for my page so that I could add a commenting feature. That way all the stalkers Mike says will be visiting my site will have some way to leave their mark. I couldn't find a US site that handled commenting, so it's using a site in the UK (which will be a little slow), but it at least seems to be working. In some ways it's more fun to play with the web design aspects of weblogging than it is to write in the weblog. It's much easier, and you get the instant gratification of seeing your webpage change. And speaking of instant gratification, I was surprised to find that the pyRads website didn't immediately post the ad I wrote for the store. It seems to be stuck waiting for some kind of approval. Maybe by tomorrow.

Tonight David and I will be having dinner with with his friends at their place, but not until 8. David did bring me some extra lunch before class (fried breaded eggplant, yum) but now I'm starving!

teaching things

Yesterday afternoon after teaching I helped one of the professors in the Classics Department set up his new home iMac computer. It looked pretty nice (like it does in the commercials), but the button to turn it on was so well hidden on the back of it that I couldn't find it at all. He had to help *me* find it. After we got it turned on, however, I was able to help him customize his computer programs so that they were easier to use. He is still using some very old software on his new computer because it would take too much effort to learn a new program.

So by the time I was done explaining things to him it was time for dinner. David and I got bagels and smoked salmon and mackerel from Andronico's for dinner. Then I spent the evening doing laundry, sorting my library books into "to be read" and "to be returned" piles, and generally starting to put my things into boxes, while cleaning up the mess that I made while I was frantically busy writing and grading the second midterm earlier this week. Last night I left most of my teaching stuff on campus to give myself a break. It gets really heavy lugging all those Latin books around.

Teaching went better today. I was worried about a couple of students who weren't doing very well, but one seems to have dropped out, and the other is going to switch to taking the class on a non-letter-graded basis so it won't affect her GPA if she ends up not doing better on the final. She finally came to talk to me today and said that she was working full-time, which explains a lot, I think.

My goals for tomorrow are to work on all the Harvard paperwork (especially the immunizations requirements), and to work on finding a replacement for myself in the Public Health assistant job, before writing the two quizzes and the lecture notes for next week's classes. I also need to start on my graduate school applications for the fall. Tonight I'm going to work on the homework keys for next week.