Celebrate good times... come on.

You know you're really tired when you lack the energy for even the mildest of celebrations--in my case, standby favorites include renting a DVD from the library and getting take-out pizza from Pisanello's.

And celebration is indeed in order--apparently I get to graduate after all! Monica, the department secretary, ran my (signed) form to the grad college during her lunch break, since I was teaching in Sandusky, and said she watched as they attached it to the other form and stamped it as complete. Today I had an e-mail that I needed to start each new "chapter" of my thesis on a separate page and resubmit the PDF, but apparently that was the sole violation of the intricate instructions given in the thesis/dissertation handbook, and I easily remedied and re-sent the file.

Class, however, was thoroughly exhausting. Last night I managed to put together a quite passable lecture, complete with group activities, slides, and a video, and this morning even got all the working bibliographies graded before class. But when I got to campus, my classroom, which as a general rule alternates unpredictably between humid sauna and icebox and has the unique feature of causing my nose to itch (especially when I'm hauling an armload of returned reflection journals), smelled awful. Apparently they were replacing the entire ventilation system, so not only did we have to talk over machinery and thumping from the ceiling, there were toxic fumes wafting about. Yesterday classes had actually been cancelled; today they were meeting, but my students complained terribly. In the middle of class, as I was attempting to speed toward an abbreviated conclusion (having already decided to nix the video), the registrar came in to tell us we could move to a different classroom. We did, and I finished the lecture, but I think I had already lost the class as I wrapped up my double-time presentation--still only letting them go 30 minutes early.

I'm afraid they think I'm evil for not dismissing class out of hand--but we've only met twice in the past five weeks, and the nutrition class next door was meeting. I realize now that I should have attempted to relocate at the very beginning of class. I guess that's my lesson for the day.

In any case, after returning from that adventure, I did barely manage to run today's three, but wasn't good for much more than sitting on the couch (sans movie). Maybe I can get (ooh!) pizza and (ahh!) a DVD tomorrow.