Bearshorty's musings

I'm in the midst of Paper 1 grading from which I hope to emerge on Thursday, so all my spare time goes to that. I have 43 papers total plus maybe 1 student who still hasn't turned his in. At 30 min per paper and brain being exhausted by really bad papers, it takes me a while to grade and comment. I have 8 papers to finish by class time tomorrow and 21 to grade by Thursday. The average grade is a C so far, which is common for the Paper 1 of the Spring semester. They do get better as I keep reminding myself. Part of the reason I really like teaching Expository Writing is because the students really do learn and we can see progress unfold.

I did get a nice day off yesterday. Tanya, Bear and I went to Long Island to visit Bear's parents for the day. They've been clamoring for Tanya to visit since they haven't seen her since Christmas and they are a bit old and in pain to travel. With all this winter weather it is a bit tricky but yesterday wasn't Arctic cold and the snow only started in the evening when we came back.

Best part of driving for at least an hour - Tanya got to nap! And she just had one nap to do in between. And for her it was like being in a brand new place since she probably forgot the house in 7 weeks.

It was a lovely low-key visit with nice food and desert. Grandma Regina got to feed Tanya some oatmeal and Grandpa Bill got to play with her and take pictures. Best way to spend Valentine's Day.

When we got home and Tanya actually slept from 7:30 to her 11 o'clock feed with no problem, I caught up on 'Grimm'. (Unlike on Friday when she did not let me watch 'Glee' by waking up at 9 and refusing to settle. Argh.)

I am really enjoying 'Grimm' this season, and of course there is a cliffhanger until March 20th. I'm actually enjoying Juliette storyline, go figure.

Today, while my parents came to babysit, Bear and I braved the freezing, freezing cold (16F), to walk 15 min to the tax accountant to do our taxes. Good thing about having a baby last year (well other than baby, who is awesome despite all the sleep deprevation)- child tax credit. Yay. Glad that is done.

My taxes are done. I’m very happy to get it over with. We’ve been going to an accountant in Brooklyn for probably ten years now and he just makes it easy. I give him $75 and in half an hour he e-files the taxes. All my refunds will later magically appear in my bank account. The power of the internet and the made up money that no one sees. And it is all refunds this year, a nice chunk of it too. Go vacation this year!

We also stopped by my grandparents. They always want to give us food, most of it they receive from various places. They had tomato juice this time and I was really craving it for some reason.

Writing “Persia and Alexander” lecture was pretty easy since I really just needed to do Persia – I taught Alexander the Great before. One of my first historical novels, that I read when I was maybe 6 or 7 was about Alexander the Great – so he holds a fold place in my heart. But it was really fun to focus on Persia too and present both sides of that story.

In honor of the fake romantic holiday a Cracked article on 6 most cynical exploitations of romantic love in history .

I watched “Brothers and Sisters” in the evening. Saul is adorable.

Exercise: walk