The Hellish Handbasket

I'm flogging the concept paper again. It just won't stay dead. The wretched tome was returned to me with a few relatively minor revi...

Despite the gloomy fact that it is pouring rain outside, and despite the equally gloomy fact that the pouring rain feels completely normal t...

I check my email pretty much every day. Today there was an invitation to link up on LinkedIn from a colleague at work. Without thinking, I c...

Last night in the College & Career Success class, I gave a little demonstration to my four students on how to structure a five-paragraph...

After I flunked the two Wilsonville students, Gina and Jimmy (not their real names), I retired back to the Clackamas campus in relief, hopin...

It's so weird how you can be having a conversation with someone you think is completely “normal,” and then they say something like, “I...

As a chronic malcontent, my natural inclination is to focus on the dark side. You could say it's a habit. Some would say it is a failing...

I'm closing in fast on a birthday, who cares which one, and I was reminded of it today while standing in line at Good Will to purchase s...

So much to rant about, where to begin, where to begin... First, I suppose I should grudgingly mention that the weather has been.... fantas...

I'm prying apart my gritty eyes to blearily type this post. I uploaded the second draft of my dissertation concept paper a few minutes a...

Lots of noise in the apartment next door. At first I thought the Love Shack had been invaded by an elephant. I couldn't believe my landl...

My life feels sort of like Groundhog Day, the movie. I feel stuck in a loop, endlessly recycling my frustration at the slow pace of my docto...

When I was a kid, I lived on 87th Avenue near Glisan Street. If you know Portland, you know that in the 1960s this was a working-class neigh...

It's getting down to crunch time at the career college, and students are weeping in the halls, dripping on keyboards, bogarting the tiss...

Good news. My chairperson liked the Methods section of my concept paper. I am pleased (and embarrassed) to report that she praised my paper ...

Tuesday during the test review in the Excel class, one student, I'll call him Jimmy, started to turn a rather troubling shade of red. He...

My last post was my 100th. Yay me. Someone called me prolific, but blogging twice a week isn't exactly a world speed record. Still, I gu...

Yesterday I started feeling a bit under the weather, even though the weather is as good as it gets in the Pacific Northwest in early Septemb...

Last night I posted Chapter 3 of my concept paper for the chairperson to chew on over the next week. She's taking an extra day over the ...