Hello! My roof is fixed, my bank account is very empty (the lack of "running away money" doesn't feel good...)
For pictures today, first I have a final paisley - Fluffball's favourite sleeping position is definitely a paisley "feather" or "seed" or "flame"...
For tori, a few examples:
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| Tori for play... |
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| Artistic tori - stainless steel sculpture in a public park twists the familiar, digital art of a knotted torus |
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| And a ceramic double torus - donut AND mug! |
For sharing, I love making iced gingerbread biscuits (my grandma's recipe which is not excessively spicy and has a really good crunch, rather than the snap of most commercial ginger biccies) or sugar cookies (recipe acquired during my post-doc in a North American lab so nostalgia factor), or if I'm tired and in a hurry I make a seasonal tiffin cake (melt chocolate, golden syrup and butter together. Mix in various items - the rule of thumb is at least one crunchy and one chewy add-in, and one add in at least should be not too sweet - and press the mix into a greaseproof paper lined cake tin of some sort. Chill until set. If you feel fancy, top with a thin layer of melted chocolate or drizzled icing (icing sugar (powdered sugar) and a little water mixed to a thick paste). I like to do a ginger one (gingersnap cookies roughly crushed, chopped preserved ginger, possibly chopped apricots, and dark chocolate in the melt. If the ginger was the 'wet' kind in syrup, you can use some of the syrup in place of the goldernsyrup, or save it for porridge and cocoa addins), or a "christmas" one (the soft ready to eat style dried apricots, glace cherries, good plump sultanas or raisins, a little candied peel, blanched or caramel almonds roughly broken up if you have them, a plain biscuit like a digestive or graham cracker roughly broken up, some Christmas spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves) added to the melted mixture and stirred before the addins, topped with sprinkles). But there are a very large number of variations, just go with what sounds good/is lurking in the cupboard).
For me I like hot chocolate with add ins (ideally made with grated real chocolate - the best recipe right now involves putting orange wedges and a piece of cinnamon stick in the milk (I use oat milk mostly at the moment, sometimes goats milk) when it's being heated, then stirring in the grated chocolate to melt it) or coffee with seasonal syrup (there's a refined-sugar-free gingerbread syrup available in one of our supermarkets which is great). Chestnut soup. Spiced caramel nuts. Lebkuchen. ALL the marzipan things. Brussels sprouts (always cook extra and extra potatoes for bubble-and-squeak, an excellent post-big-meal brunch or lunch with an egg).
LAST WEEK'S LISTS:
Daisy
- Marking and logistics for class
- Set up final exam and practice exam
- FINISH revisions for old paper
- Finish enough of the out-of-my-field discussion paper to send to co-authors
- Finish website and award stuff for association
Dame Eleanor Hull
- - work on essay endnotes
- - Continue to pretend I will take notes on MET book and C&C read weeks ago
- - work for at least an hour on at least one spring class
- - grade as many undergrad final papers as come in on time
- - dead language prep
- - do some tidying, unpacking, or other house task
- - do yoga at least 4 times, weights x2, walk x5
- - pick up new glasses, I hope!
heu mihi
- no goals set
JaneB
- * get an abstract in for a conference I don't want to go to, but OUGHT to want to go to a lot, so I might actually want to by the time it comes around
- * get a few Christmas packages to friends wrapped and posted, and work out what to buy the last few difficult people that they will actually like and use
- * get all of next week's teaching prepared
- * mark a lot of things
- * work only 30 hours... (not compatible with the previous point at all). No, work 22.5 hours as there's another strike day included. It sounds so little... but between a foggy brain and emotional labour, it really isn't.
- * focus on restoring baseline habits, like movement every 45 minutes and eating the foods that suit my body FIRST, once the roof work is finished
Julie
- 1. Apply for much smaller grant to salvage some of my plans - URGENT (deadline today)
- 2. Marking
- 3. Teaching prep for next term
- 4. Research/writing - this ought to be TLQ, but will probably be squeezed by 2 and 3 becoming urgent. Sigh.
- 5. Xmas stuff - parcels in post like JaneB, buy & wrap presents
- 6. House stuff - declutter
- 7. Exercise - pilates x 1, run x 2, walk as many days as possible.
LOVE the cat paisley! That is adorable! Can I have some sort of garment printed in sleeping paisley cats? Also thank you for the tiffin cake recipe as that both reminded me to order crystalized ginger and is something I could adapt to my dietary restrictions! In recent months I've been able to add peanuts and peanut butter back to my diet, and while peanut was never a favorite flavor of mine, at this point any variation is very welcome, so I've been making peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies (with rice and potato flours) and enjoying them very much. Also, after being absent from store shelves for awhile, rooibos tea is back, and I have both rooibos-vanilla and rooibos "orange creme," which are a pleasant change from decaf green tea and feel like a real treat after not having them for a couple of months. I like this prompt because it's making me think about things I can have (and make myself, so extra points for creativity) instead of regretting the lost coffee and donuts. :-)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like the perfect fabric design for some t-shirt material sleep pants - I have a set with paw prints on, but sleepy paisleys sound even better...
DeleteI love the cat picture and the sculpture. And a great prompt. I enjoy Christmas cooking in the few days before - batches of soups and things like tagines and casseroles that need time I don't have in a normal week. Mince pies are the only real sweet thing I make at Christmas, usually with carols on in the background.
ReplyDeleteI also look forward to the week after my term finishes and my kids are still at school. Our town empties out of students as soon as term ends, and so it's quiet and peaceful. I will have lunch in my favourite cafe, with a book, and a notebook, and just take some time to read and write. Other treats I promise myself is time to read by the fire, sadly not a real fire, but close enough. And I will do a jigsaw at some point.
Last week's goals:
1. Apply for much smaller grant to salvage some of my plans - URGENT (deadline today) - YES
2. Marking - YES (but there is so, so much left to do)
3. Teaching prep for next term - NO (trying not to panic)
4. Research/writing - this ought to be TLQ, but will probably be squeezed by 2 and 3 becoming urgent. Sigh. - YES (only a couple of hours and part of the reason for panicking about 3, but I was in the mood to write on Thursday so went for it)
5. Xmas stuff - parcels in post like JaneB, buy & wrap presents - YES, thanks to strike day
6. House stuff - declutter - YES (well, some, it's ongoing)
7. Exercise - pilates x 1, run x 2, walk as many days as possible. YES - pilates and run. One walk, but it was a long one at least.
This week:
1. Final teaching prep of term (yay!)
2. Marking
3. Writing maybe, depends on progress with 2.
4. Read a PhD chapter for a student
5. Final meetings with students stressing about essays.
6. Try not to stress about next term's teaching.
7. Lunch with friends
8. Exercise - pilates x 1, run x 1 at least, walks
Ooh, that week gap sounds lovely! I hope you really enjoy your cafe break! (I miss that sort of thing - as a single, I used to treat myself to writing in a cafe on Sunday afternoons pre-COVID but I'm not back to comfortably unmasking around a lot of people especially in a warm indoor space). We teach until the 16th this year (& I keep reminding myself it's NEVER been as bad as one of the places I did a post-doc at, where there was a required staff meeting on the 24th and one female professor had to use the lunch break to rush out and queue for her turkey at the butchers, then put it in the cold store until she could go home... not needing a turkey also helps although Fluffball doubtless thinks different on that score).
DeleteThat was a great lot of YES last week!
The 24th??? Ouch! Teaching until the 16th is tough, especially if attendance is already so low. I'm lucky in that we always tend to have a good gap before Christmas. We start teaching again on 9th January this year, which is earlier than usual, and means I will be squeezed before the start of term, as kids aren't back at school until the 4th.
DeleteLet's make a pact: neither of us will panic about prep for next term. Instead, we will have faith in ourselves and each other that it will get done!
DeleteA lot of students have just been clear that they are leaving earlier, as there are train strikes etc. and prices soar for travel before Christmas. So it'll be interesting to see if anyone attends anything! At least after Christmas is "assessment weeks" so minimal taught classes (I do exam reviews or assessment Q&As for my students, but we don't HAVE to do anything - some people just don't come back to teaching stuff to be honest), just a pile of student stress (for my modules and for those whose academics are busy doing non-teaching stuff) and grading (and teaching prep) - at least it makes for a smooth re-entry, even if its get messy once teaching starts again (and we STILL have grading, exam boards etc. from the previous trimester - no clean break between trimesters as in the North American system).
DeleteAnd NONE of us will panic about prep for next term - it's all the way in next year, after all...
Can't blame the students for wanting to avoid train strikes, but a pain for you if you drag yourself to campus, with the stress that entails, only for no one to show up. Is online an option? We are not supposed to be doing anything online now, but in practice sometimes that does get better attendance or make life easier.
DeleteOK, agreed on not panicking about next term (or at least I'll try!). I'm increasingly too tired to have the energy for panic...
We also are not supposed to be online, but I took one class online in the week just gone and had 5/28 attend instead of 2/28 the previous week, so we'll definitely be online in the last week!
DeleteLast week was OK. For a term time week. Although only 2 out of my class of 28 final year students chose to show up after I went onto campus to teach them, and something (either the car, my work chair or the shoes I'm wearing to work - probably all three) has triggered a novel sort of pain down the front of my hip, DELIGHTFUL.
ReplyDeleteLAST WEEK'S GOALS
* get an abstract in for a conference I don't want to go to, but OUGHT to want to go to a lot, so I might actually want to by the time it comes around YES, and I think it was quite good in the end. Also helped post-grad who's struggling with burnout write theirs and count up their leave days and admit they really COULD take almost every day of December off and that they SHOULD...)
* get a few Christmas packages to friends wrapped and posted, and work out what to buy the last few difficult people that they will actually like and use I wrapped a few gifts today & booked post office pick up tomorrow (I LOVE that pandemic left over), and I've now worked out what to give everyone and ordered it. And only ONE small chocolatey present got eaten by me, despite stressing about sorting out the roof finances, and it will very easily be replaced
* get all of next week's teaching prepared yeeees... although one of them I only remembered Friday afternoon. And did a LOT of stuff very late Friday evening/early Saturday morning because I thought I did all the ViLE set-up but apparently I didn't. Or it ate stuff. I had some very not-thinking moments that created extra work, but hey. It's done.
* mark a lot of things Marked a small number of things. SIGH.
* work only 30 hours... (not compatible with the previous point at all). No, work 22.5 hours as there's another strike day included. It sounds so little... but between a foggy brain and emotional labour, it really isn't. 34 hours, and so, so, so much not done. But I'm really running out of energy again; it is what it is.
* focus on restoring baseline habits, like movement every 45 minutes and eating the foods that suit my body FIRST, once the roof work is finished more than nothing most days - cautious stretching (hip ouchies feed into lower backs and arms and knees and all sorts of odd places), making sure I had fruit/vegetables and protein at every meal, doing tiny chores (e.g. "five things out of the dishwasher and put away every time I'm boiling the kettle" or "fold three shirts" or whatever - really micro steps that feel manageable).
NEXT WEEK'S GOALS:
* get rest of Christmas packages to friends wrapped and posted
* wrap family gifts (posting dates are all earlier than normal this year due to periodic strikes which is not helping).
* get next week's teaching prepared - including lots of NAGGING of students who need to sign up for 1:1 meetings
* mark a lot of things
* work only 30 hours... (not compatible with the previous point at all).
* restore baseline habits, like movement every 45 minutes and eating the foods that suit my body FIRST
* NOT feeling pressured to drive to campus if I still have hip pain - I am supposed to be on Tuesday to do a Social Thing with External Visitors and I would feel bad about not going, especially as I've not been able to hide that I don't WANT to do the Social Thing, but it's not worth causing more hobbling around the place. And also on Thursday to teach the same class as last week - I will NOT feel bad if I end up deciding to move that session online, I usually get better attendance on line anyway and whilst I'm willing to teach in person for say 10 of them, for 2 it starts to feel pointless (and my planned activities don't work)
Oh, students: show up! LRU has been posting signs urging students to go to class, saying that there is a correlation between attendance and doing well (no, really?? like duh), and I'll be interested to know if they think it's helping. I will say most of mine have been pretty good about attendance, including one who is going to fail because he's turned in one piece of written work in the entire semester (out of, I think, seven assignments).
DeleteMarking a small number of things is much better, in fact infinitely better, than marking no things, so yay for small steps.
What's interesting at the moment is that when I look at our best students, they're about evenly split between attends everything in person and attends almost nothing in person, our doing OK students tend to start off strong on attendance and get less and less visible (and make less use of the ViLE too) as term goes on then panic near assignments, and the weakest ones tend to disappear abruptly. The correlation seemed to get weakened by COVID - I guess we'll see in a couple of years if things return to former patterns or not.
DeleteAttendance for me has been very poor compared to pre-Covid. I didn't teach last year, so I don't know if things were even worse then. I think there is more of a culture now in the UK of just not attending - there's a real problem with kids missing school a lot more, having been unable to get back into school post-pandemic and I don't know if that feeds into an attitude later on of 'I'm having a bad week, so I'll just skip stuff until I feel better'. We do monitor seminar attendance, which is meant to be compulsory, but the penalties are fairly minor (unless they are on a Tier 4 visa, in which case they are potentially at risk of deportation).
DeleteInteresting on what the correlation might be between attendance and achievement. I like to believe there is a correlation, but in the arts and humanities, it's harder to defend - people can in theory read all the stuff by themselves, turn the essays in and do fine without showing up. Because assessment is usually anonymous, it's hard to pin down how the non-attenders and the attenders compare. But I agree that the weakest students do tend to drop away very quickly.
In my field attendance and achievement are perfectly correlated because of all the practical stuff and the hands-on work that just cannot be replicated online or on their own. Online options are useful for some lectures, but I do a lot of interactive hands-on stuff in lecture periods to make things easier to understand (I teach some pretty obscure stuff...) so online attendance is an ok emergency thing but doesn't work over longer terms. I wish there was a way to reconcile the accessibility and flexibility that comes with online options with the real need for hands-on practical learning...
DeleteThat's a lot of 'yes'. Well done on the abstract and on encouraging the post-grad. That's a lot of emotional labour and kindness, which we don't see enough of in academia. They'll remember that in later life. And micro-steps is absolutely the way to deal with chores and often everything else.
ReplyDeletemicro-steps are mostly good but then some days I get overwhelmed by the number of micro-steps... sometimes my brain squirrels just win out!
DeleteOr I get a migraine. Which might be connected...
Treats! I like to make an oatmeal-raisin-chocolate-chip-peanut-butter cookie; it's my standard and absolutely delicious. For the holidays, the family favorite is Magic Cookie Bars (one of those super-easy bakes: graham cracker crumbs, coconut, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, nuts). I'm looking forward to getting home--two weeks!--and having a few days to settle in and get festive before Christmas.
ReplyDeleteThis week--I finally have to give my talk (my first ever presentation in French, outside of a French graduate seminar). It should be fine. I'll just be glad when it's over. We also need to start organizing our packing (e.g. determining whether we need a second extra suitcase...).
So, goals:
1. Finish, prep, give talk; don't stress too much.
2. One yoga class (online), for God's sake.
3. Journal: Find second reviewers for two articles; process latest article.
4. Schedule haircuts
5. Enjoy Strasbourg as much as possible and do some of the things on our Last-Things-Before-We-Leave list.
Sending good vibes for a triumphant talk - and I hope you get lots of little Christmas treats to take home (one of the nice things when I lived in North America was how much everyone enjoyed the little Christmas things that were not what we have in the UK - my Mum is still reusing some of the containers and ornaments).
DeleteHope your talk goes really well and that you enjoy it!!
DeleteGood luck for the talk, and hope you get to do nice Christmassy things in Strasbourg before you leave!
DeleteLate to the party this week… Totally buying the cat paisley fabric! I love that. The Christmas treats made for great reading, made me want to go and bake stuff. I usually do biscotti of various kinds, almond/orange, cranberry/pistachio, chocolate/coconut etc. I like that those are good with any number of combinations of additions. I think it is time to do a giant batch again!
ReplyDeleteIt was a busy week, but fun. Hosted an external speaker who is also a great friend and coauthor so that was fun but time-intensive. Many end-of-term events including concerts, and then I had a public lecture to prepare for at the beginning of this week, so I’m just catching up now… I got an extension for the old paper submission, all my coauthors are extremely relieved so it was worth asking for it. House is still a wreck, term is almost over, new grad student is arriving on weekend, so all kinds of chaos! But mostly the good kind.
Last week’s goals:
Marking and logistics for class DONE
Set up final exam and practice exam ALMOST
FINISH revisions for old paper NOPE
Finish enough of the out-of-my-field discussion paper to send to co-authors HAHAHAHA
Finish website and award stuff for association DONE
This week’s goals:
Finish final exam and practice exam
Finish enough of the out-of-my-field discussion paper to send to co-authors
Endless meetings, lots of association-related cat-herding
Clean out office space for new student
House stuff as much as possible
mmmm, biscotti!
DeleteIn all the excitement over cat paisley, I never got around to checking in. Here goes!
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- work on essay endnotes. YES (still not done)
- Continue to pretend I will take notes on MET book and C&C read weeks ago. Pretending successfully! I found a page of notes on MET that I wrote in August, so at least I started at some point.
- work for at least an hour on at least one spring class. NO.
- grade as many undergrad final papers as come in on time. YES in spirit: actually did the grad papers first, and they're done. Three undergrad papers remain as of this evening (plus one that hasn't been turned in yet; that student better get on the stick).
- dead language prep. YES.
- do some tidying, unpacking, or other house task. YES for a very small task, plus I paid bills.
- do yoga at least 4 times, weights x2, walk x5. YES.
- pick up new glasses, I hope! YES. I have new distance glasses and a new pair of computer glasses, set for a bit further away than my "reading" glasses. The computer glasses make computer work much more comfortable.
New goals:
- finish the essay and send it
- finish all the grading, work out and post final grades
- pack for week visiting family
- exercise as usual
Lots of done things, that was a lot! And sometimes successful pretending is a good strategy while things percolate and work themselves out... Glad the new glasses work!
Delete