Close enough to taste it

The end is in sight; I have one more essay question to grade for the exam in the Civ class (that is, 58 essays), and then it's calculating the grades and turning those in. After that it's time to read the 33 research papers for the upper-division class, which at least ought to be reasonably literate by comparison and are also typed.

I really, really want to get these all graded and finished with by Monday morning, because a friend is coming over from Other Big City in the state for the afternoon and evening and I would like to be able to hang out with her with a clear conscience. But I also have to attend commencement tomorrow, and a luncheon, and do the usual things like grocery-shopping, cooking, talking to my mom, etc. So... we shall see.

Bad and good

So, I've been kind of bad in not posting here very much, partly from the end-of-semester business and partly because I've done a lot of posting elsewhere. In the holiday season I write drabbles (little 100-word pieces of fiction) by request for online friends, and this year I've written 26 of them which I'm posting one per day this month. So that's the good thing, to be giving something that I hope makes the recipient happy.

Today I need to finish wrapping some gifts so I can mail them off Saturday morning, if possible. Once I've finished teaching (last day, hurrah) I'll dash home to do that, because my spouse's departmental holiday party is tonight and I said I'd go. It's a bit of a pain to make an extra 3-hour round trip for that, but at least he's driving. We also need to write our holiday letter this weekend, and I want to buy and put up the tree; three weeks or so is long enough to have one for me (it comes down on January 1), so I hadn't done it earlier, and I don't have any class prep now of course so there's time to buy and decorate.