December 7, 2007

Those people in my office today, the ones looking as if they just hopped down off a swift pony--they've been writing all day.

And yesterday I got in a bit of a knot over a memo from on high, specifying this and that about our language use.

Thinking of it, I remind myself of my dad, who would get good and pissed off at people as much for wherever he was in some kind of passive-aggressive cycle as for what people had said or done. That's unfair to dad, who died in 1992, and not quite true for myself either.

That was yesterday. Today I finished something that took two-and-half solid days--I can feel a grey wall forming as I say those words, so that's far enough.

Anyway, these students have been writing all day, finishing their "writing the western landscape" essays--something on the Fafard show, a parody, a formal essay on historical fiction, or a walk around the lake. A bit cold for the walk lately but a few students did it. One woman said she'd encountered rabbit tracks and used them to structure the rest of her essay; one guy said he saw rabbit tracks but kept on walking. Either way, they're done, and the essays sit on my desk. Have to grade them before Monday afternoon's final exam.

Finally, how about those Leafs, folks. Everyone's willing to rag on them when things go a tad off for a while, then when the Leafs take four in a row, not a peep out of anyone. Schmidt, if you read this--here's to the blue and white.

And now it's off to the Christmas party, too late to get my devilled eggs ready.