grading, and going places

Life here in Grading-homeworks-ville is . . . well, the name of where I'm at is where it's at for me right now.   

The offspring have been having other kinds of travel adventures.  Gosling invited travel to her town, luring Inkling with exactly the right kind of lure:

Inking, I stumbled upon this store last week,
so if you are ever in Richmond...

But she did some traveling herself:

Also, I'm in Lexington with Colin and his family this weekend
and we had a bon fire...

... it was a pretty large fire 🔥

Inkling has not snapped up the bait, but she has already started her sweater for Rhinebeck, also known as the New York Sheep and Wool festival.  Her end-of-the-week update included this cheery news:

Got my new COVID booster! 💉

The cheery news was indeed approvingly cheered by all, including Kinderling:

Thank you! We have covid running rampant in the home I work at. And spend a very nerve-wracking couple of weeks. Stay safe, ink!

Kinderling has had some wanderings, though: 

Went to Boston, MA for a couple days. <3 

Museums, Sailing, city!

So fun!

And of course, there's my husband, who's in . . . wait, where is he now?

Sunday I spent the afternoon in the vast Musée D’Orsay. 

There were cows!!!

[ibid]

From Friday to Tuesday I walked 60 miles in Bordeaux and Paris.  

[continuing the update]  I am now in Brussels serving as usher and speech writer. Friday I will go to see Cliff.  I haven’t touched a bike yet, but maybe I will ride one of the monastery rockets Saturday.

That was the update early this week.  Later in the week, here's what OfSnough wrote:

I just arrived in Darmstadt. Cliff and I are going walking in the rain in Darmstadt. 

Even Nelson is getting in on the travel-mania, at least in an anticipatory way.  He's told me he's planning to go to Chicago for Christmas, to hang with his girlfriend.   Aside from that, though, it sounds like things are falling into place for him.  We'd been waiting to hear from various authorities and bureaucracies about Nelson's situation.  He's just gotten a ruling / diagnosis that will lead to a much more stable and helpful housing situation for him, hopefully within the next few months.  I am very, very happy about this, and grateful to both Nelson and Sizzling for their persistence in this venture.

I don't have travel stories.  I have grading stories [boring], and procrastination from grading stories, with photos to illustrate. 

Here's (as seen from my second-story window)
is the "Free For All" pile I put at the curb last weekend,
as a way to avoid paperwork. The good news is, almost all of
it got taken.  Productive procrastination!

For some reason, getting all the administrative details meshing is just taking more out of me this year than it usually does.  Is it because I'm subconsciously grumpy about switching jobs the way I did?  Yesterday, I finally (FINALLY) got around to putting up pictures of the faculty and staff affiliates in the College House where I work. I'd been meaning to post these photos for a month or more, really. I discovered that one of our two custodians (Chris) didn't have their picture in our college database system, but both of them happened to be in the kitchen early that morning, so I popped my head in and asked them both if it'd be okay to put their pictures up.

The reaction nearly made me cry.  "Do you know NOONE has ever asked us this before?  Thank you so much".  They made a huge fuss about my even asking. Chris emailed me her picture, and then I printed the page of many photos out and put it up; they both came over to take pictures of me putting up their pictures, and immediately texted family members.  "They're never going to believe my pictures on the wall!  My husband works here at the college; wait till he sees this!"  Oh my goodness.   It made me feel both generous and also a bit ashamed.

So.  Putting the pieces of the puzzle together.  Speaking of which, on our family vacation we'd drawn beautiful pictures on an all-white puzzle (really, the all-white back side of a puzzle that had stuff on the other side).  When I brought the puzzle back home, I realized I hadn't taken a helpful picture of the drawing we'd done.  Inkling bravely and cheerfully [she loves puzzles] offered to help put it back together again.  It took a bit longer than we thought, because [reasons], but we (mostly she) succeeded.  So now, we have a photo.  Phew!

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.