This is the last Saturday I'll have to teach this year. Our school has classes on Saturday mornings from 8:00 to 11:00, which has a profound effect on everyone here, for better or for worse:

For worse:
*Travel on the weekend becomes a real challenge; when you don't get free until 11:00 on Saturday and have to be back on campus at 6:00 Sunday evening, you can't go very far. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that you can't stay very long once you get there.
*Visitors (such as the family members staying at my house right now) don't get to see much of you when they come for the weekend.
*You have only one real weekend night; you can't really get wild on Friday night if you have an 8:00 class the next morning.
*We have no breaks in the schedule on Saturday, so if you have all four classes, you're going straight through for three hours; you don't have much of a chance to hit the xerox machine, the phone, the coffee maker, etc., or do any last-minute preparation for classes. Everything has to be ready to go AT 8:00.
*If your kids have Saturday morning activities--soccer games, classes, play dates--they happen without you. I have yet to see my younger son's soccer team play this spring.
*Students are often absent on Saturdays due to athletic commitments, special trips, or their occasional weekends at home. This sometimes makes it difficult to conduct classes on some Saturdays, knowing that you'll have to bring the absent kids up to date when they return.

For better:
*Every Saturday meeting means a weekday meeting we don't have to have. As a result, our breaks are long; we end school around Memorial Day and don't start again until mid-September. We also have a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Xmas, a real three-day weekend at the end of January, and a two-week Spring Break in early March.
*Saturday morning classes mean we have no afternoon classes on Tuesday or Friday. Those mid-week breaks can be very helpful if you need a few hours to get off campus and do something with your family. Of course, there are usually athletic contests scheduled for those days, so the coaches don't get much of a break.
*Having classes spread out over six days gives the students a better chance to keep up with their assignments.

On Saturdays themselves, I really don't like the idea of having to teach, but when I'm on break, Saturday classes seem like a pretty good idea.

I will say this, however: this year has been the first in which I've had all four Saturday classes, and THAT sucks harder than Charybdis. Our old schedule had periods F, A, D and E on Saturday; the sequence is now D, E, F, A, but the local expression "FADE into the weekend" has a resonance for me now that it never had before.

Next year will be different. I feel sure of it. And just in case, I'll be bribing the Academic Dean...
8:47 AM

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LBJs

*I worked at the Record Bar in Chapel Hill for three years during & just after grad school; since we got a 40% discount on the stuff we bought there, a significant chunk of my paycheck went home in the form of CDs and albums. My exposure to pop music from 1987-1990 was therefore about as good as it could have been. I'm therefore sometimes amazed that people don't aren't familiar with a particular album from those days, especially if it's a good one. Right now I'm listening to Squeeze's 1989 release Frank, a simply wonderful album that apparently had no commercial impact whatsoever. What the heck? Go buy it.

*Our school has a summer reading program in which faculty members, their spouses, and other people in the community sponsor certain books for the students to read for pleasure while they're on vacation; when the students return in the fall, they discuss their books with the sponsors. Last year my wife sponsored Neil Gaiman's urban fantasy Neverwhere, and today one of the kids who'd read it came in to sign up with me to read Good Omens, Neil's hilarious and apocalyptic collaboration with Terry Pratchett. I am pleased that we're creating new readers for him.

*I called Neil Gaiman "Neil" above because it seemed more appropriate than "Gaiman," somehow. Odd, because I don't really know him. I've exchanged comments with him online in Readerville, yes, and he seems like a perfectly splendid fellow, but he wouldn't know me from Adam's housecat if we met in real life. As far as I know.

*We've all Googled our own names, haven't we? Soon after I started using Google as my search engine of choice, I of course tried my own name, and discovered that Michigan State University has archived a collection of old Comics Journal issues featuring my reviews. The possibility that some undergraduate in East Lansing may someday cite my pan of Wild Dog in a critical analysis of the works of Max Allan Collins fills me with utter bewilderment.

*And how about old friends? Old girlfriends? I Googled one of the latter a while ago. Found a picture, biographical info, all sorts of stuff. She seems to be doing all right; better than when I last saw her, and better than when we were together, certainly. Maybe she's even Googled my name. For all I know, she's checking this journal.

I haven't gotten in touch. It's odd to be certain that a decision is the right one without quite knowing one's motivation for making it.

1:08 PM

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