20150325.0712

Where were you when the Dark Tower fell and the Ring Bearers were praised with great praise?

I have returned to Sherwood Cottage and my regular work of teaching from my little excursion afield in search of other teaching to do. The trip was productive; I feel relatively good about the interviews I gave and the attitudes towards me with which I left the interviewers. Their thank-you cards are ready to go out in the mail today (along with a couple of bills I had been holding until some freelance money released itself to me). I do still have a few other applications to see about, and I will have a mountain of grading to which to attend, as students have assignments coming in every day my classes meet this week--and they already met once while I was away. But I approach them with more hope and a lighter heart for the trip, because it may well be my turn to have the kind of good news I have happily heard from others of late.

On another note, the English I: Old and Middle English panel/s at this year's South Central Modern Language Association conference (in Nashville this time!) are still open for submissions. The official deadline is March 31; email abstracts to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com or brian.brooks@okstate.edu on or before that day. You could also let other people know about it; you may have friends who are into that kind of thing, and we'd love to see them.

I am in the position of having written in this space on this day in the past--last year, in fact. (I have not been as diligent about keeping up with this webspace this year, for which I apologize.) While I do not have jury duty hanging over my head at present--which I appreciate--I remain convinced of the position I take against skipping days. Even when I have good reasons to be away--civic service or attempts to find a way to make a better life for the Mrs. and Ms. 8--I am displeased to face the catching-up I have to do when I return from being away. I am relatively fortunate this time that I have only the grading to do today and tomorrow; my students have an in-class exercise that will take up the class, so I do not have to plan a lesson. And I do think that the interview yesterday was a better use of my time than the grading I would likely have been doing alongside addressing Ms. 8's needs while her mother worked, but it is still not so easy to face two stacks of papers with a good attitude. It is something on which I evidently still need to work...