First day night of school

Tonight is my first night of classes for the spring semester. In fact, I'm in class right now, although we're on a break to log-in on the attendance tool.

Once again I have managed to arrange both of my classes on Thursday night. That makes for a long evening, but after tonight, attendance at the first class is optional. It was optional last semester too, but I always went. I'm going to try being a little more laid back this this semester. Frankly, I get more out of the message board participation anyway.

I'm taking Information Policy, which I hope won't be as tough as everybody says it is given that I've got a legal background. My other class is Cataloging, which I'm really looking forward to! Apparently I'm somewhat of a freak in that regard. My Cataloging textbook starts off with: "If you are looking at this book it may be because you are interested in cataloguing. If you are not, I hope that by reading it you will find that cataloguing is not as bad as you thought." Later on, we learn that "[c]ataloguing has long been unpopular, and nowadays is little taught."

As you might have noticed from the spelling of "cataloguing," the author of my textbook is British. Accordingly, I read it with a British accent in my head. I think my mental narrator is a part of Monty Python, but that might just be due to passages like this:

The main thing is to have a sense of humour. You will have to apply rules which you find quite silly, and you cannot really take them all seriously. On a scale of the world's problems cataloguing would not feature at all. However, you must pretend to take them seriously, and pretend, while you are doing it, that cataloguing is the most important thing in the world. You must regard every decision, as well as every full stop and comma, as being of vital importance.

"Silly" rules? I love it!

Freedom--so close I can almost taste it

This semester will be DONE soon. I'm currently sitting in my last class, waiting for the prof to post the final. My other class is over, and yesterday I turned in the paper that is due tomorrow. It has been a really good semester, but I'm dying to get on with vacation.

Oh, he's getting ready to post the test! Must go!

Mild panic

I have had it in my mind that my last big paper for this semester is due Friday, December 14, the last day of the semester. I discovered the other day, however, that no, it is actually due Friday, December 7. That's next Friday. Ack!

On the one hand, that'll be nice, as it will mean my holiday starting a week sooner than I had expected. On the other hand, I have to write this paper, and I just lost a week of working time that I thought I had!

Again, ack!

Another busy day

Hard to believe it's been a week already since I was blogging during class, but here I am again. I worked on my indexing project all morning, but then I had a school board meeting at 2:30, and I haven't slowed down since.

Mike had a rehearsal this afternoon for a talent show he's participating in tomorrow night at the Leaders Club. I let Fred take him to that since Fred will be out of town for the actual show. Apparently Mike did really well and impressed the warrant officer for the 113th US Army Band. He gave Mike his card and said he wants to talk to him about jamming with the band at their spring concert!

Tonight the kids had their second swim meet. I volunteered as a timer, so I had one of the best seats in the house but was too busy to really watch much of the meet. I totally missed Annabelle's 50-yard freestyle, because she was out of the water before I knew she had even been in. She did great though--shaved 3 seconds off her time! Mike also had a really good night. He came in second (by a whisker) in his 100-yard breastroke. The other kid's mom was my co-timer in lane 2, and we had a good time cheering for our boys.

Now I'm in my Intro to Legal Resources class (because FSU wouldn't give me credit for my ADVANCED Legal Research class from law school--duh) and just marking time until I can crawl into bed and catch up on "Grey's Anatomy." Tomorrow I'm helping out with band uniforms after school, picking up Mike from swim practice, taking Annabelle to a meeting at her old school, and going to Mike's show. Saturday is an ALL DAY swim meet in Elizabethtown. And Sunday I have a welcome reception to attend. The fun just never stops!

Sh! No talking in class

Distance learning has its drawbacks. It can be hard to make friends, for example, when you're just a name in a chatroom once a week. But then there are the advantages, like being able to wear your PJs to school and being able to have a glass of wine during a lecture. Or being able to post to your blog, thus not falling off the NaBloPoMo wagon scarcely one week into the month.

My whole day has been taken up working on my current indexing project. I really underestimated the time this would take, and now the deadline (Saturday, but really Friday, as I hate working right up until the last minute) is staring me in the face. So I'm multitasking during class tonight: working, studying, updating the blog.

I'm in class from 6:00 to 10:00 each Thursday night this semester with a break from 7:30 to 8:00. It makes for a long night, but I really like having just one evening a week dominated by school. In fact, I like it so much that I've pre-registered for back-to-back classes again next semester. I just wish it were almost any night except Thursday: That's the night with the best TV!