Disappointment/frustration/failure update.

Today, the day that was supposed to be the last day my students were to post their preliminary portfolios on their e-portfolio sites, I got a plenty big rash of student e-mails saying, "Uh, I know you said to ask for your help last week, even begged us to ask for your help, but, dude, I totally thought I could figure it out, but I can't, so, uh, what should I do?"--or some variation thereof.

Today, when college daughter and I met up at Brewvies, which would have been her first time there, and where we would have ordered up a tasty lunch to eat whilst viewing Charlie Bartlett, we found out that there were workers doing something noisy and smelly to the carpets in the theaters. The ticket guy said, "They said they would be done by the time we opened, but . . . I'm pretty ticked about it," while handing us vouchers to come back later. Or never.

Today, I got an e-mail from the custom publishing person at a large textbook company, saying that the little plagiarism "thing" they hounded me to include ("it won't cost students a thing!") with the new edition of a textbook we've used for like ten years made the textbook a custom publication, words they never used with me in the midst of all the hounding. The consequence of this is that our bookstore can only return 20% of the copies they have on hand. I am mad and also I feel like a chump, even though it turns out to be of little real significance, probably.

Today, the dog park was filled with big muscular dogs, some rather small-ish children, people holding their teeny dogs up high, and in general a host of dangers for Bruiser. It was like the Slough of Despond for me, since watching an excitable dog in the midst of temptation is kind of enervating and maybe a little depressing.

Today, after I had sent a chatty, voluble, filled with cheery details letter to running son the missionary, one feature of which was a series of questions I needed to have answered (Can you print out the e-mails you get? Will you be limited to 30 min. a week of e-mail time in the field? how is your hip? etc.), the e-mail I got in return was comprised only of answers to my short series of questions.

Today, when I tried to start some curriculum work I would very, very, very much like to get done before school starts again in a week, the curriculum site was down.

The first day of spring break has clarified the following points:

1. Don't read student e-mails for a few days. Just don't.
2. Publishers are jackals.
3. I will bombard running son the missionary with letters for the remainder of this week, come hell or high water.
   
4. Screw Brewvies.
5. Curriculum work is for suckers.
6. I may be a chump, but I will prevail with a carefully worded, civil-but-savage e-mail to the publishing people, outlining the book reps' perfidy.
   
7. I will use the word "perfidy" a lot in said e-mail.
8. The dog park is a good place, but it will be better starting April 1, when it's open later, and therefore we can spread out the dog-per-hour ratio (that was a mathematical analysis, by the way, hope you enjoyed it).