A few pieces of news:

1) The Verb To Bird leaves the printers on March 7th and will be shipped out by Paul Dry Books on March 12th. If you want to get it as quickly as possible, you can do it by visiting www.pauldrybooks.com and thereby avoid the middleman.

2) I'm heading out on two missions tomorrow morning: first, lead a couple of my debaters to state titles, and then drive to West Virginia to spend a week building and renovating houses as part of the Appalachian Service Project. After that, my spring sabbatical officially begins--and about time, too--but it does mean that for the next week, I won't be writing in my journal. Sorry!

3) At 12:07 p.m. tomorrow, it will have been 40 years since my birth.

Bake a cake if you like, but please, no black icing.

Licorice. Ewwww.
7:39 PM

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My fault. I did it.

That four-to-eight inches of snow we're getting now and tonight and tomorrow? My fault.

Sorry.

What did you do, PC? you may well ask, and the answer comes down to one word: footwear.

When the big blizzard hit a week and a half ago, I changed into my heavy weather boots, my big brown-and-green Timberlands. Ordinarily I use them for hiking, but they're the most durable (and warmest) of the shoes I own, so when there's ice and/or snow on the ground, I put them on. I wore them on Saturday the 15th, as the precip started down, and then again on Sunday and Monday, of course. Once the long slow thaw began, I was still walking through and around puddles and snow patches, so I kept them on whenever I went outside for another week. But on Sunday night, I finally opted to wear my Nunn-Bush mocs to our final seated meal of the winter term, and I followed that decision up by wearing my New Balance cross-trainers to work on Monday so I could write my exams.

Obviously this cockiness was too much for the Snow Demons, because when I got home from work yesterday, they were already sending down the white stuff anew. And now we're supposed to get somewhere between four and eight inches. I've heard that the Farmer's Almanac predicted over fiftyinches for us this winter; we're certainly well on our way past thirty already.

And I have every intention of wearing my boots until May, OK? Satisfied.

Sorry. Really.

1:11 PM

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It's the final week of my school year and there's still snow on the ground--how weird is that? Yes, the end of the year is within sight. I'm taking a sabbatical during the spring trimester, as I think I've mentioned before, and all I have to do now to have some time to myself is complete the following eight steps:

1) Finish grading for the marking period. I still have five English essays to grade, plus a couple of batches of reading quizzes, but that's not a huge obstacle. To my own surprise, I'm already done with my Speech students' grades for the fourth term.

2) Give exams. I wrote the English exam yesterday, and students will be taking it tomorrow. I have to finish writing the Speech exam, though I've got a pretty good start on that, and I'll give it on Wednesday afternoon.

3) Do one last dorm duty. I'm on call Wednesday from dawn to midnight. Ordinarily this is a pain, but in this case, I can use the time away from home because of #4.

4) Grade exams. This will take some time, but since I'll be on the dorm, I'm hoping to have some.

5) Write trimester grades and comments. To calculate the trimester grade, I have to factor in three sets of figures: third-term grades, fourth-term grades, and exam grades. Once that's done, I can write the comments for each student. Since these are read by parents (and eventually even colleges), I try to put a little extra effort into them, but the occasional temptation to write "He would do a lot better if he weren't so lazy" is powerful. Luckily, I've got a few glowing comments to send home this time out, and several kids turned their grades around very nicely during the fourth term, which makes the entire process a lot more pleasant for all concerned. It's time-consuming, but it's a big part of the individual attention we try to pay each student. It also beats the hell out of the bubble-sheet grading I had to do when I taught in Fayetteville; when a kid was failing, I would just bubble in the code for the computerized comment "Parental conference requested." Naturally, most of the kids who were failing had parents who wouldn't bother to show up for a conference--another frustration of working there. So I don't complain too loudly about writing comments at WFS.

6) Get my two qualifiers ready for Saturday's VCFL State Tournament. Woodberry's done fairly well there in past years; last year we had five qualifiers, two of whom ended up winning berths at the CFL Grand Nationals. This year the Va. Catholic Forensic League's schedule didn't mesh well with the WFS schedule, so we were able to attend only one qualifying tournament. Still, I'm hopeful that we can do well this Saturday, though travel details are becoming rather complex at this point. From the tournament, I'll depart for step #7

7) Drive the minibus to Chatham, Va., to pick up a crew of students for our week-long community service project in the West Virginia mountains. I'll be driving and supervising a crew of 5-8 students while they repair, renovate, and build housing for some of the poorer folks in the region. I haven't had much chance to work on my carpentry skills since the fall play ended, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty again. I can think of worse ways to start a sabbatical, too; since I'll be spending the next six months focused on myself and my book, a week of focusing on other people who aren't so lucky will probably give me the proper perspective.

8) Drive the minibus back home.

What then? Play with the kids, kiss Kelly, and kick back and relax for a few days. I'll have a little over a week before my first reading, which will be at the Virginia Festival of the Book on March 19th. Here's hoping I can last that long...
8:48 AM

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