Sundays are for rest

You would never think that Logan is covered, as most cats are, in fur: as soon as it gets the teeniest bit cold in the house, he parks his fur-covered self under the radiator in the bathroom and stays there the entire day. Nas put a bathmat there a couple days ago - Logan, as far as I can tell, will soon be demanding his meals upstairs. Laila, on the other hand, clearly has some residual memories of living outside and is much more properly gracious to her humans for her timely delivery from the elements. Thus, she prefers to be no fewer than three feet from one of us (preferably both) at any given time. Except her naps - though she does tend to wake up and come running down the stairs to check that someone is still around.

I'm baking bread this afternoon and putting off the last of my first batch of marking. For the record, I'm also currently procrastinating on finishing my 'supporting statement' for job applications, researching for an article due in April, turning my thesis into articles, reading for tomorrow's seminar on Romanticism, the laundry, and ... um ... dinner. In the success column for today, however, we have: slept in with minimal guilt resulting, ate cake for breakfast without increasing guilt, washed dishes including pots and cutlery, thought seriously about attack-strategy for CV while washing dishes, and caught up with news (okay, on FB ... but still ...). Oh I also looked outside and got so annoyed with the greyness that I spent about half an hour searching the interwebs for a cheap flight out of here. For the record, I need to update my understanding of 'cheap' when considering 'international travel'.

There is a massive difference, I've discovered, between teaching 8 students and teaching 30. I can see how that observation ranks up there with finally understanding the difference between swimming in a pool and swimming in a lake - and I mean a black water kind of lake. I guess my seminars at Queen's were nearing 30 students, but the best ones only had about 13-17. Or do I only remember 17 people? How horrible. I'm sure the very best seminar ever only had about 12-13 of us. Every seminar I teach is an attempt to recapture Dr Pat Rae's 1997/8 Modernism seminar at Queen's University. Runner up is Dr Asha Varadharajan's post-modern North America seminar (must have been 1997/8 as well) - but less for the overall experience than her teaching, which I loved. And, of course, I was spoiled (and ignorant of the privilege at the time) in taking American lit from Prof. Jed Rasula. But I think it is a good thing that I haven't managed to come near those experiences of superior pedagogues: I've only been teaching for three years. Surely it would be a very bad sign to hit my apex three years into my career! Anyway, I've been assured that I'll never have all 30 show up again - which is a strange consolation.

But I've put off everything long enough for today ... and I'm hungry.