Category Archives: personal

What’s that ball of fire in the sky?

My first "summer" course ended this past Thursday, and after grading a bunch of portfolios I got to go right back to teaching the exact same course again a second time. I love teaching dearly, but I signed up for these classes back before Dad died, and I’m beginning to worry that I need a break soon to help me recharge and take care of a number of things I’ve been neglecting these past few months. I only have a dozen students in this class,…

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Scare

In addition to having a few bird feeders in front of our front deck here at the house, we also tend to keep a bowl full of food — various seeds and leftovers we humans don’t want to eat — on our porch itself. Birds, squirrels, raccoons, and even the odd cat come by and keep us company, and in addition to making things more active around here, it helps us to feel better. Only rarely do we have stray dogs in the neighbourhood, especially…

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Blowing Your Top

I can’t say that I’ve been all that pleased with all the airplay that Bill O’Reilly’s meltdown on Inside Edition has gotten these past few weeks. Granted, I don’t care for O’Reilly much at all, and I won’t deny feeling a touch of the old schadenfreude when I saw the video the first few times. The video got really old in a hurry for me, though, and the more I see other people harp on it over and over — Keith Olbermann is the most…

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It’s all going away

Southwyck mall to close June 30 (toledoblade.com) It’s amazing how every little detail of something like Dad’s death seemed to add just that much more pain to the ordeal. When I was young, Dad always took me out to a bunch of places on Saturday morning and afternoon, as soon as my morning cartoons ended. He called it "Adventures," and in retrospect he was probably doing Mom a favour by getting me out of the house for a while, but I probably did more bonding…

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Solitude

I started teaching again this past Monday. I’m in the same classroom I was in last semester, starting class at the same time. It’s a different class (Composition I versus Composition II last term), it goes for two and a half hours instead of one and a half, and I see the same students all week. (However, I do have Wednesdays off.) I was hoping that the week off between classes would give me time to recharge, but I think all it realy managed to…

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