Bearshorty's musings

I should really catch up before another week runs away from me.

Mon, March 13 - Sun, March 19
( Spring Break: taxes, snow, sleep training, etc )

Mon, March 20-Sat, March 25
Since I slacked off on grading last week, I was paying for it this week. I have until Wednesday to catch up. Most days are pretty ordinary. Bear is home every night this week, so more cooking but also nice since he takes over the time between dinner and bed and I can take a break. I made spinach lasagna today, which came out really well- love the new oven.

Last week, Tanya has discovered my box of CDs, and since then I organized them in a tower. But she loves putting a CD into the CD player in the living room, turning it on herself and dancing to it. Mostly she goes for pretty covers and wants the same CD over and over. For a while it was Lady Gaga, then she wanted some K's Choice, Rasputina and James Marsters because those three were homemade in colorful CD cases. And Jason Mraz. And just recently she took my "Dr Horrible" CD from the shelf (which has a few random songs on it too since it was a CD backup from my downloads) and she's been turning that on a lot. (She thinks that her stuffed toys Dr. Dog and Froggy are singing on it, since when I told her it was called Dr. Horrible, she associated it with her toy Dr. Dog).

Getting some sleep helped. My head was feeling better this morning, although I still have a sluggish feeling like I have a cold or something, without actually having a cold. Another night should cover it, I hope. It was a bit hard to start teaching this morning, I just wanted to keep my head down and not feel like I was going to keel over any second but by the second class, around 12:30pm I started feeling more normal again, just tired. Definitely more sleep needed. I will never touch green tea or any caffeine again, if I can help it.

I did finish the fourth story from Uwen Akpan’s collection this morning. I took a break from the book for a while but I’m almost done with it. The fourth story, “Luxurious Hearses”, is the longest in the book and it is set in Nigeria, plagued by religious conflict. The Muslims in the Muslim-dominated north rioted and burned Christians in a northern town. Christians are more prevalent in the south of Nigeria. The story is told, for the most part, from a 3rd person perspective of a sixteen year old boy Jubril. He kind of represents the deep divide in his county. He was born in the south to a Christian father and a Muslim mother, but grew up in the north in his mother’s land. He thinks of himself as Muslim and is pretty fundamentalist. He even got his right hand cut off for stealing and thinks it was a proper punishment. He gets caught in the religious riots because several of his friends attack him over debt but he survives with help of a good Muslim. Jubril hope is to make it south to his father’s village. The story takes place on this modern bus where a bunch of various characters, mostly southern and Christians, are hoping to get home as refugees. It takes a while for the story to develop and you just want the bus to frelling move already. I don’t know if the writer did it on purpose but that actually puts the reader in the same situation as the characters, wanting to move and have everyone settle down already. The story portrays the religious and cultural divides of the country and just how horrible and good people can be. And how frelled up arguments over religion can be, be it Christian, Muslim or pagan. The story does not have a happy ending, there is a horrific ending, actually. But by the end of the story, the narrative won me over. I felt really grateful too, by the end, not to live in a land where religious riots happen.

In my class today, I gave them an example of a “B” paper and then we discussed what makes a good thesis. I think the lesson went really well, at least in the first class. In the second class, it is still like pulling teeth. I also had two people come to my office hours today, which was good. I think they are finally putting enough effort into the papers.

Papa and I were going to start Season 4 of “Battlestar Galactica” but the DVD was too scratched. I ordered a replacement copy from Netflix but it sucks to wait a few days when I have the next disk sitting on my desk and staring at me already.

SYTYCD finally started its dancing part of the season. The competition will start tomorrow but today we had a showcase of Top 20. This is a new addition this season and it worked great. We got to meet the final 20 more and see them dance in their own style choreographed by SYTYCD choreographers. We had Wade Robson’s group dance, NapTab hip-hop, Tyce’s contemporary, Sonja’s jazz, and new guy’s tap (there are three tappers in Top 20 this year), Mandy’s contemporary and some guy’s ballroom. I enjoyed Wade’s number, of course, but also the hip-hop and the latin the most. Contemporary is mostly meh, although I enjoy watching some dancers. I really enjoy this show, it has great choreography and I’m really glad we can now get to actual dancers. Most of the dancers are so young! I don't really like the new stage, I liked the stairs.

This is a really cool map of how small our world is.