Hot water | Warm houses | Fuzzy Dogs | Exams that eat my Advent calendar

 Life continues to be rich and full here and Enoughsville.  We're particularly rich in house-related updates this week.  For example, Inkling shared this news:

I have a working hot shower!!

Early Christmas present... A shiny new water heater

There were multiple cold-water adventures happening in her home, including water heater conking and thermostats on the fritz; the first round of visits from the plumber had the mysterious effect of fixing the hot water in sinks but not in bathtubs or showers.  Fortunately, Inkling is (a) hardy and (b) close by enough that when she no longer wanted to be hardy, she could come shower here.  

She says she takes away from this (mis)adventure several reasons for gratitude: having the resources to pay for these expenses; having a part-time job so that she could wait at home (multiple times) for the various plumbers to come do their things; and having family nearby.  And now she's grateful for hot water -- and even though my own water heater didn't break -- now *I'm* remembering to be grateful for water that is clean and that runs warm when I ask it to.   I'll get to hear more plumbing updates when she comes by for waffles tomorrow.

Here's news from someone who not only has hot water in the house, but who now has the WHOLE HOUSE that goes with it!  Whoop!  Nelson wrote early in the week to say . . . 

I'm most likely going to be moving into my new house on Friday so happy and excited for the new opportunities that god and life has for me in the future thank you all for being an amazing support system and a family I can go to to talk to I love you all

And sure enough, here's the photo of Sizzling and Nelson outside the place.  Yay! 

Look at those smiles!  Matches mine!

And Gosling has a new source of heat at her place, although it's a fuzzy kind of heat.  She says,

While we are sharing big news, some of you have heard but Colin adopted a 8/9month old pup (lab Airedale mix is best guess) from the rockbridge spca, so the boys have a new friend/ sister who they get to hang out with

Welcome to Strider! He looks cuddly.

This past week was finals week at my college, and with that comes lots of office hours, giving the exam, and grading it.  I'm kind of brain dead right now from all the grading that I barreled through yesterday and today, actually.  I know my students want to know their grades, but even more, I always feel an intense urgency to get the grading behind me instead of in front of me.  Maybe that's because I'm curious about how my students will do, or possibly it's because I don't feel like winter break really starts until the grades are submitted. 

Either way, while I'm in the throes of grading I always feel like a terrible terrible teacher.  How could my students have not learned all this stuff that I keep marking wrong?  And when a bunch of students get a problem wrong and then another student gets it right, I'm certain that they're cheating.  This year, just to help ensure I didn't give my students temptations that have snared them in the past, I had four different versions of the exam, and I mapped out where every student was sitting (spread well apart in the large auditorium), and even noted the timing of their bathroom trips.  

At any rate, 48 hours after I collected the exams from my students, I finished the grading . . . and once I tallied the results, I discovered (as usually happens once the grading frenzy is done) that they actually did okay.  In fact, I think I won't fail any of the students who took the final (the exception being the student who missed both midterms, most of the homework, and the final exam).

Part of the reason that the grading took so long was that, in the middle of it, I also organized a farewell party for our department coordinator, who's retiring before classes start up again in the spring.  She, like me, loves very colorful things, and also chocolate.  So here's the cake I made for her.

Guess what her name is? 
(M&Ms hide lots of mistakes in frosting, by the way.)
(Also, sorting the M&Ms by color is a lot of fun).

And I gave blood this week.

What I did NOT do was the vast majority of my advent stuff.  Christmas Boggle Night with Inkling, yes; and I also dashed off a quick note to our sponsored children through World Vision.  But Christmas caroling? No.  Flap Jack fest? bringing in pine boughs? Nope and nope. Christmas photos? not that either.  Wrapping presents?  Nopety nope nope.  My relatives in far-off places (Nelson: I'm looking at you), I apologize that your gifts might arrive late this year, because I'm not mailing them until Monday.  

But I *did* write the weekly family update at least; here it is, with the last remaining shreds of my brain attached.  May you and yours have clean water and warm houses, too.