Moving Party

Well, it has begun. Classes started yesterday, and the spring semester is underway. Oh goodness, this one could be a doozy, we have term papers due in all three courses this semester. I think I wanna cry already. But anyway, after Mesoscale Dynamics and Cloud Physics, Caren invited several of us along to Starbucks, and treated us to the use of a gift card she’d received over Christmas. Yes, I caved and finally ordered a coffee at Starbucks, I’d managed to avoid that my whole life until now, but I guess there’s gotta be a first time for everything. 🙂 But the cafe mocha was actually really good, I might end up going back sometime… Anyway, since it was warm out in the low 50s, we even sat outside at the patio tables. It was definitely good to see everyone again though, and hang out for a bit. We didn’t have any homework assigned yesterday, which allowed me to relax and spend the evening just writing a couple overdue emails to people, plus getting a few more photo albums up on my Photos page.
Today for lunch Daniel & I resumed our regular Tuesday tradition of heading down to the Sports Cafe for their 25-cent wings. Mmm, so tasty… I also did a bit of work in Walker on making my syllabi for my lab sections, and getting my grade spreadsheets ready, in preparation for the labs starting next week. I’m gonna be kept so busy by Meteo 003, this semester I have 79 students currently, it’s insane. And they all have assignments every week they have to turn in, which means I have that many to grade every week. I thought it was tough enough last semester when I had only 50 or so students… So I talked to Bill about my predicament (usually they try to cap at 60 the number of students any individual TA has), of which he was unaware, so he’s gonna try to talk Dr Shirer into having the department splurge for an undergrad “floating” grader or two to help us Meteo 003 TA’s cope with our ridiculous class sizes. Here’s to hoping that works, otherwise I’m gonna be driven straight out of my mind.
This afternoon several of us (me, Daniel, Amber, Mario, Amy, Levenia and Caren) all helped Kerrie move to different apartment. Helping to fill up the moving truck kinda made me glad that I can still currently fit all my belongings in my car. 🙂 But I was glad we could help her out and all that, and fortunately unloading everything went far faster than loading it, but that’s always the case. We even got a little help from a random guy (who I think called himself DayDay or somethin like that) who lives in Kerrie’s new building, he just happened to be outside when we all pulled up, and graciously volunteered to pitch in. He was actually pretty amusing, constantly calling both Daniel & I by the name “D” the whole time, though Kerrie was made a bit nervous of his calls of “just push it in” and stuff like that when we were trying to get her couch and other large furniture up the small staircase and into the small doorway, hehe. But we got it all in, and then just sat around in Kerrie’s new apartment talking for a few hours and having a good time just hanging out, until suddenly we realized that it was 9 o’clock. Yet more evidence that time flies when you’re having fun!
Well that’s about all the excitement that’s going on for now. Well, apart from Josh trying to sully my name in Japan. Josh-san wa baka desune!