Bearshorty's musings

Not having a reliable laptop at home is affecting school too since I couldn’t really work on my lecture at home. I did manage to log on my Sony only to save some Renaissance notes last night. Or at least I thought I did. When I got my office this morning to put my lecture and small Powerpoint together, I discovered that I didn’t really save in on the flash drive. Which led to scrambling to get a textbook and decide what I was going to do in class. With talking about bibliography and printing out a guide for them and with the discussion of the chapter we read at home and with some primary source reading in class, I did manage to put together a three hour class on a very short notice. But it worked well, I thought.

I also put together the Joan of Arc readings for two weeks from today (I love that Local College has an Easter Monday off – I get a long weekend and no giant Monday class).

In the global class, we had a discussion on Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.” It went really well. The students were very engaged in it. Definitely a good book to teach.

And now with ongoing wedding saga – So last week, I went to Macy’s to order a wedding ring for Bear, which he picked earlier. Today the ring arrived and it was the wrong one! The salesperson held the ring in her hand when she checked the number of it with me (I wrote it carefully in my notes) and she had it in her hand when she typed it up and she still messed up the last two numbers. Yes, the ring is custom made so technically I can’t do return but that was not my fault at all. So I called Macy’s and they are supposed to send me a return label in 2-3 business days over email. Why would it take that long? We’ll see.

On a brighter note, “Hound of Baskerville” book is a lot of fun. I barely remember the plot so a lot of it feels brand new.

I read a lot today, mostly for school, but I feel pretty good about it:

Rest of Faludi article
Thelwell – excerpt from “Opium Wars”
Achebe – he continues to be interesting and if I had time I would finish this book in a few days, but alas, I don’t have time
Chapter of Karras – “Sexuality in Medieval Europe” book – how I love her.

The Department Chair at Local College asked to observe me teaching. She will come on Monday for a lecture I know very little about – Mughal Empire. But there will be a video clip and readings. I’m not really going to do anything differently from how I usually teach and it doesn’t make me nervous. But I want to do my best.

Discussion of Faludi today: 1993-1994 is ‘back then’ to these kids who were born in 1993, 30 pages is such a long reading. It was hard of them to imagine the military that is not actually involved in a war.