Barely coming up for air

Today is crunch day: I have to finish all the papers so they can be handed back to the kiddies for the last classes tomorrow, as well as write two final exams. Blecch.

I have a weird sense of foreboding: this is the first spring semester in a number of years that has ended without any............drama. The past couple of years have always featured end of the semester disasters of one type or another involving underachieving yet high maintenance students, parents, and administrators of various stripes. This time last year I was like Mister Clean in Apocalypse Now: "Never leave the boat, man, NEVER LEAVE THE BOAT!" (Was it Pvt Tyrone "Mister Clean" Miller [a very young Laurence Fishburn] who uttered that line? Hive mind, activate!) At the very minimum, it's definitely been like the penultimate scene in We were soldiers once..., when, out of ammo and dawn breaking, Mel Gibson orders them to fix bayonets. (Yeah, right.)

But this year, nothing.

Now, most people would look at that as a sign of "hey, ease on out, man!" But not me. I can smell danger.

Or maybe that's just the three day-old mac-mac stain on my sweatshirt that the 2 year old left with her spoon oh so affectionately on Sunday. She's like Van Gogh, that one: if macaroni and melted cheese were a recognized artistic medium, she'd have her own room in the Musee d'Orsay.

Still, though, I'm trying to train Chai-Rista, when she comes across me on campus, to say, "Plissken? I thought you were dead!" But to no avail.

Blogging provides way too much of an incentive for procrastination: I'm going to excercise some discipline and call it a day.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm making some plans for decorating the site in advance of the upcoming religious holiday on May 18th, and am taking suggestions. SEKRIT MESSAGE to the anonymous Tasty Bits (TM) Mail Sack interloper who suggested one of our trademark LLamas adorned with Princess Leia's side-bagel hairdo is that you are such a twisted and disturbed person, you need to be both rewarded and encouraged.

So look for our Star Wars LLama Geek logos coming soon!

The procrastination continues: My only response to THIS is huh?

Yips! from Robbo: My only response is to note that whatever it is, Father Justice doesn't want me to see it. Hmph.

UPDATE: A very serious stretch of power grading accomplished. For some reason, a panoply of A minuses and C pluses, with not a lot inbetween or around. Sometimes you get these funny bimodal distribution of grades, basically between the "they got its" and the "haven't a clue"istas. Sigh.

Could be worse: I could be teaching at Roger Williams College in Rhode Island, where the dean apparently subscribes to the Vernon Wormer/Mister Rooney approach to academic leadership.

Speaking of campus politics (and since I'm allegedly a con law scholar) Sobek has a great discussion of the Solomon Amendment/DADT policy/campus military recruitment case the Supremes have taken for next fall's term.