Competition

Rob and I share the basement bathroom with the cats, whose litter box is in the unused shower stall.  I was in there for a while one day, and, as I opened the door to leave, I saw that one of the cats had been sitting against the other side of the door.  He stood up, gave me a prolonged, chastising yowl, and then stomped purposefully toward the shower stall.

In other news,

1. Rob’s dad had his appendix removed on Sunday, so we have one more thing in common.  (Though he’s got three bitsy scars and I have one that is a few inches long.)  He’s not working this week, which is very unusual for him.  He’s chagrined that he won’t be able to get on the treadmill for a couple of weeks, and that he’ll have to start out slowly.  Normally, he walks briskly for about an hour and a half every morning.
   
2. We found out last week that Rob gets federal holidays off!  How exciting!  So he didn’t have to work on Monday (go, Columbus), and next up is Wednesday, November 11th (go… veterans?  I think).
3. I’m getting my online course up and running again.  Somehow, all of my online stuff from last spring was lost during a move from one building to another.  Not sure exactly how, but I don’t mind putting all the assignments back up, linking as needed, and finding my own pictures and videos to enhance the class.  (Last spring, my co-teacher did a lot of the course set-up.  This year, I’m on my own.)  The only part that I’m not enjoying is thinking about the grading criteria.  Each teacher picks 5 set criteria from an extensive list, and then each of the assignments are tied to one of the 5.  No problem, you might think, and I wish you were right, but in fact the grading criteria are so detailed and long-winded that they are begging to be ignored – I mean, there’s no way that every aspect mentioned will be relevant to any course.  To make matters worse (to me, though the previous point is probably the most important), they include lots of fancy-pantsy words, which are often used incorrectly.  It irks me that the standards to which we’re supposed to be holding the students are full of errors.
   
4. Rob and I got the first season of the original (British) “The Offic e” from the library.  These episodes are the first I saw, back in the day, before watching the American version.  I had forgotten how incredibly painful they can be.
   

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