"Holiday Weekend" my Aunt Fanny

I have so many idiotic little bits and orts to deal with before I feel remotely on top of things, I know I'm going to be working most of the weekend on checking and rechecking and re-rechecking for dropped/lost pearls. I don't even know where to start.

And I just found a truly embarrassing blunder on a number of handouts--and the most embarrassing thing is that I've been using those handouts for eons and didn't notice the error until just now. And it's the kind of error I give my students shit about: misuse of an apostrophe. I have no idea how I managed to do that in the first place (using "professor's" instead of "professors"), but then that I didn't catch it and that it proliferated like tribbles on other handouts... Color me stupid.

But I did catch it, mercifully, and in time to correct at least most of the handouts on which it appeared. That did mean recopying a bunch of stuff (waste, waste, waste, gawd, the guilt)--and I had sent some stuff off to Printing and Publications with the error on it, so I'm hoping they get the corrected originals before they embark on copying the problematic originals that went out in today's mail before I could snatch them back. If not, I'll just tell my students they can get one point extra credit if they find the error--but only if they don't tell anyone else what it is. (Our little secret.)

In other interesting adventures of the day, there was a brief--very brief--moment when it seemed I might get Nature in Lit back on my full-time schedule, even though the enrollment actually went down yesterday. Sometimes the dean will let things go to try to accommodate the last-minute surge in enrollment--but there are enough seats in other online courses for the seven who were in my class plus a bunch more. That's completely OK: after a brief moment of mild drama (well, mild for me, the Queen of Operatic Reactions), I'm quite content to teach what I have lined up.

In any event, I think I have enough stuff copied (and in teetering piles all over the radiator and my desk) that I can get through the first week and then some, so all the bits and orts at this point are things I can do at home. I've got a bunch of scrawled notes that I've gathered together to take home with me, even though I know the scrawled notes are nowhere near comprehensive in terms of all I need to do.

But we're rolling along here. I'm curious to observe my own reactions to things as the semester gets under way. (I just looked that up; I realized I didn't know if it's "way" or "weigh." Thanks to Wikipedia for a nifty little explanation:
"Underway, or under way, is a nautical term describing the state of a vessel. "Way" arises when there is sufficient water flow past the rudder of a vessel that it can be steered. A vessel is said to be underway if it meets the following criteria:

• It is not aground
• It is not at anchor
• It is not drifting
• It has not been made fast to a dock, the shore, or other stationary object."

So, there you have it. Applying the nautical metaphor to the impending start of the academic year, we find that, as of Tuesday, Sept. 4, this semester--my last as a full-time professor--will be underway. Cool beans.