For Lee L. and other Knitters and Teachers

These past five days have been paper and knitting driven for me. A stack, a BIG stack of research papers has commanded my attention and must be finished by tomorrow. I deal with these grading challenges by separating the papers to be graded into piles of five or six and handling the reading load determined by the number of days I have before they are due back to the students.

It's always easier to grade papers that are well-presented so I experience a little thrill whenever these pop up in the pile. It's horrid and even painful when the papers are so bad that I can easily tell that they were thrown together at the last minute. It's even worse when I know I've worked hard to teach the research process at a level where it can be understandable for students. That's the part that bothers me the most. And that's why I try to turn up new teaching tricks every time this comes up in the curriculum. And I won't even say anything about the MLA changing the format for Works Cited entries.

At the same time that I'm grading these papers, I am also working to complete a knitting project that I'm not supposed to be working on. It's the one for the baby sweater that I bought the yarn and pattern for at our all girl beach retreat. Peg and Tracie took us to this yarn store I didn't even know existed after all the times I've stayed in Seaside. Of course I had to buy a project in spite of the fact that I have two projects underway and others waiting in my stash. But this project is tempering the pressure I feel to get the papers graded. "Five more papers and I can work on my knitting for a while" has become the mantra for this five day period. And my thinking constantly returns to the challenge of figuring out just exactly what the pattern means for the sleeve knitting portion of the project.

So paper reading and a new knitting project rule the current world for me. Hmm. . .but then there's Season Two of "Breaking Bad" to factor in.

Watching

Since I'm sort of retired, I have more time to watch TV, an activity I used to scorn. None of that couch sitting, time wasting stuff for me. After all, we don't want to turn into real live Fahrenheit 451 characters, do we? BUT. . .yesterday was an exaggerated exception. I managed to watch The Hurt Locker, The Academy Awards, a Trailblazer game and The Barbara Walters Special almost all at once. It only took one movie order, one program DVRed, and one channel switching process. Don't get me wrong; I'm not proud of this but I was visually entertained for several hours even if my rear end and lower back did get cranky.
I just came from tutoring a student who is finishing up a paper on the subject of greed in The Little Foxes and Uncle Vanya. My thinking skills seem to be in tact

News Flash!

Notice to all the owl lovers: As of today, I have relinquished the bulk of my Owl Grove information to the website at www.wirthwhilebooks.com. The site will become the public entity of owlgrovegirl while this blog will remain for the private enjoyment/amazement of myself and my little band of followers.

On the Web!

I am building a website! I don't have a clue about what I'm doing. Brian says he will help me this weekend and that will be good. In the meanwhile, have a look at www.wirthwhilebooks.com. It's starting to look like something. All suggestions and tips are welcome.

The Grove Revisited

It was like we were returning to a magical kingdom when we went back to Owl Grove last Sunday. The whole area simply took on a green shimmer and sparkle as we pulled in. We kept our excitement quiet and moved slowly through the trees hoping and hoping to find evidence of last year's nesting pair. We looked for thick, chalky owl poop around the bases of the trees. We found it. Two trees wore lots of poop and we decided they were perching trees since we couldn't spot a nest. We found pellets under a couple of trees. A couple of the pellets were fresh and at least one was bone bare from one of last year's meals. Last year's nest showed no signs of occupancy but we decided that the female could have been hunkered way down in the hole. And then we heard it: a distinct warning trio of hoots. We decided it was the male cautioning the female to keep extra still and quiet. We were delighted. We have evidence that the pair has returned to their nesting territory. We drove away content.