december preview...

I feel like I've blogged about the holiday weekend, but I guess I haven't... only Twittered. Not much to say. Thursday we cooked way too much food for just the 4 of us, considering the 2 small people don't eat anything that isn't made primarily of bread + cheese. Friday the wife went shopping and I hung around at home with the kids. Saturday we cleaned the house and found an Outback gift card, so we went out to dinner and I had tilapia that made me sick. Sunday it was grey and snowy so I mostly napped.

Four days off? WASTED!

So here I am on the train with a big bag full of grading that I really do not feel up to. But if I don't get it done this week, it's going to overlap with the end-of-the-term grading that's going to start rolling in soon. Looking at the calendar is a little bit scary. There are really only 3 weeks of classes left, which means... 6 meetings of each of my three courses... the last of which is typically the final exam, so really FIVE more teaching periods for each class. Which I guess feels about right in terms of what there is left to teach in most of them. It's always a strange feeling, though.

There are a bunch of parties on the calendar too. Two for work (an alumni party and the faculty holiday party) and two for home (the Boy's birthday and a possible holiday "open house" for friends and such). I will leave the situation of 4 parties in three weeks to stand on its own without further comment.

Xmas shopping is well under way at our house. The big stuff for the kids is mostly done... karaoke machine, Nintendo DS, a boatload of Wii games. I have a handful of books and small stuff for the wife on the way via the Amazon. I'll probably pick up some nice jewelry from a catalog she was oohing-and-aaahing over the other day. We're trying to cut back a little this year, so that will probably be the end of it.

The Xmas holiday is looking pretty hectic. We're planning to celebrate Christmas morning at home with the kids, then pile into the van the next day and drive to Chicago to the wife's parents. The plan is to make it all in one day, but... we're talking 12-14 hours of driving, so... I dunno. I'm not even sure a pile of brand-new video games can make that drive workable. The plan is to stay the week, then drive home on New Year's day. Then the next day, my Mom will drive up from Baltimore to NY, and we'll have THAT half of Christmas. It looks sort of barely plausible on paper, but... I'm a little worried about how it will play out in reality.

Just for fun, I looked ahead to January to see if anything else is on my calendar. Turns out that January 15th is the deadline for submissions for the National Science Teacher's Association conference in Philadelphia... in 2010!!!. It is totally not cool that the first thing on my calendar in 2009 is something I have to plan for in 2010. I mean shit... isn't the world supposed to end in 2012 ANYWAY? Let's not rush things.

[EDITED TO ADD..]

I should know not to tempt fate. Not ten minutes after sitting down at my desk and posting this, I got an email from my consulting gig asking me to attend a meeting in San Antonio from the 15th thru the 17th of January. Oh well, at least it's free. And warm!