Friday Five: Rainy Day Edition

I'm at the library and supposed to be reading for class. Instead, I thought I'd post a Friday Five.

I finally---finally!---got my netbook. I'm still getting used to the smaller format of everything. The keyboard is close to standard size, but the touchpad is tiny. And supersensitive. Also, I keep inadvertently resizing the screen. I'm not sure what action causes the screen to resize, so I can't not do it.

But the computer can actually keep up with the speed of my typing; my high-speed Internet connection is really high speed (and not rivaling dial-up); and I can type the number 4. So, yay.

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TAing has been a mixed bag this week. We didn't have any readings to discuss, and I was struggling to come up with substantive discussion questions so that I wouldn't just be quizzing the students on the lecture material. So I decided to put together a game. In an effort to do something a little creative, I put together Trivial Pursuit: 277 Edition.

It failed. So very badly. More than half the students had never played Trivial Pursuit, so they didn't understand the point of the game. And going team-by-team was rather dull.

Today, I set the game up as Jeopardy! and had much better success. The students were really energetic and fun. Even in my 8.50 a.m. section.

I was feeling much better about my TA abilities, until an incident during office hours. I won't go into detail here other than to say that I showed some very poor judgment and am now beating myself up for it.

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My nephew is crawling. Crawling! When I last saw him, he was just starting to be able to support his head on his own. Now, he's mobile. Ridiculous.

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I have finally turned the corner on my back. The acupuncture is helping tremendously. Doing yoga and the PT exercises also helps a lot; I'm just struggling to find the time and energy to exercise. But I'm starting to back off the pain meds. I'm down to one heavy-duty dose of ibuprofen in the morning and one Vicodin at night. Yay!

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This coming weekend is supposed to be cold and rainy, so I'm planning to get caught up on a bunch of work: revising my grant proposal (again), reading for prelims, and working through the pile of paperwork for my publications job.

In reality, I will probably watch the approximately 4,000 hours of the Ken Burns' documentary on National Parks; page through a pile of magazines; and eat my weight in comfort food.

I also still want to go see The September Issue, and now Whip It! is out.