Snow Day Goodies

The overnight snow managed to miss us, which is just as well. I have to head into the School of Ed in a few moments to put together a PPT, meet with students, and practice for this weekend's conference. It's Tuesday already - how do these things happen?

The downside to the snow day? I had baked for my students, homemade chocolate cupcakes and mocha buttercream from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. No class means no students which means I have twenty-six cupcakes sitting around. I've been wandering though the house, trying to avoid grabbing random cupcakes as I pass through the kitchen. Whether you love her or hate her (I love her, not going to lie), Martha knows good things and these cupcakes are no different.

Ridiculously moist, the frosting gives a great bite them. Truly a grown up's cupcake. If you have the Handbook, the frosting recipe is way too much for approximately 30 cupcakes. I probably could have halved it and been fine. If you don't have the Handbook, I found similar recipes on MarthaStewart.com: cupcakes here, frosting here. Definitely worth trying. 

Off to trudge in the snow. The cupcakes will be coming with me. Someone has class today and I'm sure their students will enjoy the sweet treats. Be warm, peeps. 

The Summer, She is Finished

I am of the opinion that syllabuses (or syllabi, depending on your preference) are best introduced when accompanied by a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. As the instructor verbally outlines the work load of the semester, they give students something to munch on and, I would like to think, reduce the amount of stress they experience as I repeat, over and over, "late work is unacceptable and don't copy and paste off of the Internet. I have mad Google skills and will find you out."

I don't teach until four-thirty in the afternoon and have a seminar immediately before, which may work out to my advantage tomorrow. When I stopped at the School of Education this morning, the copier was refusing to make double-sided copies. The day before classes begin and the copier has decided to be moody. This is not good.

My advantage is this: I can drop off my syllabus, timeline, and phonics pretest at the copy center early in the morning and they should be done by the time class actually rolls around. I would go and make single-sided copies of all three pieces tonight but at seven pages each times twenty-four students, that's a lot of pages. (504 pages to be exact.) I'm trying not to be a tree killer.

But the syllabus is finished, so there is that to be thankful for. Not copied, but finished at least.

Waning Days of Summer

I've been baking up a storm, slowly but surely working my way through the baking section of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The latest project: cinnamon buns, which were stickily delicious and forced me to engage in an extra half-hour on the elliptical yesterday.

I'm procrastinating, wishing and hoping that a slew of baking will slow down the onset of the school year. I had my first "not prepared for the first day of school" dream last night, a reminder that yeast will make bread rise but will not make the hours pass any more slowly. I'm teaching two, taking four this semester, which may very well change before the end of the day. Two of the classes are in my minor, gender studies, while another is dissertation proposal preparation; the fourth is a class in online content analysis through our School of Library Science. When scheduling in the spring, I was counting on only teaching one section this term. With two, I'm unsure I can manage such a schedule and actually learn something in it. Online content analysis may be going to the wayside.

I'm looking forward to returning to teaching, despite the fact my syllabus has been chopped up into pieces. This will be the third year I've taught this class and finally feel like I have a grasp on how I want it to go, what I want to change to make it a better class for both my students and for myself as an instructor. I'm introducing a memoir project through which I hope to walk my students through both the writing workshop structure and process writing. I've mapped out concepts to be covered throughout the course of the year. I hope this will alleviate some of the pressure I feel to cover everything in the fall and then flounder a bit in the spring. I'm also hoping that this will more authentically connect assessment and methodology for my students. We shall see.

All of this, of course, relies on finishing actually writing the syllabus and then working through all of the assignment sheets and rubrics for grading. Syllabuses (just as correct as syllabi) are never simple and this current one just seems overwhelming...

Baby Sweaters, Craigslist, and Settling In

One of my roomies is leaving for the weekend, which made me think that I would prepare some sort of baked good for her this morning before she left. So I gathered up baking ingredients last night and threw together a dough for cinnamon buns, allowing it to rise overnight so I might put the buns themselves together this morning. The alarm goes off, I get up, consult the recipe book, and realize that I made the wrong dough. The dough I made is for regular-type bread, which would make for some funky cinnamon buns. As soon as I post this, I am off to Dunkin Donuts to buy something sweet to send her on the road with. Drat.

Really, though, living in the house has been good. The third roomie has arrived home from Taiwan and we've managed to work with and around each other really well. There's a decent amount of space in the house, so it's not as though we are ever tripping over one another, which may be helping the "wow, I now live with two people" thing I've got going." It's good, this move into the house.

Also good: I met the Craigslist chap for coffee yesterday. Not a crazy, actually pretty interesting. I just hope I didn't babble too much... I'm a babbler in new social situations. I'm hoping there will be more coffee with this guy in my future. We shall see.

And the cute goodness above? That's the baby sweater I knit while on vacay in Michigan for my friend Emi's impending little person. I like to call it Baby's First Smoking Jacket. I'm a little in love with it, actually. It was a one day knit, moving pretty quickly on big needles, and I am absolutely in love with the color of the yarn, which reminded me of pickles. Who doesn't love pickles? I think one of my favorite features of the sweater might be the buttons, which my aunt gave me: vintage little Big Mac buttons from an old shirt of my cousin's. The perfect caramel color to complete the look. Adorkable.

Alright - off to Dunkin. While there will not be cinnamon buns this morning there will be sweetness. And bread.