· Finals Week Follies:
o “I thought our final was on Thursday!”
o “I thought our final started at 1:50!”
o “About the incomplete option….”
o A gift: a stapler with staples and those curly cue paper clips (after a term of stapler issues)
· Post Finals Week Paper Shuffle:
o Best papers: Communicating Art (Baroque Art as Catholic Mass Media); A Refutation on The Supposed Influence of Homeschooling on Public Schools; and Jane Austen: The Trend that Keeps Trending (ok, I took some liberties with the titles, but the topics are real).
o Saddest paper: One with mostly quotations (only the introduction and conclusion, plus a few topic sentences, were mildly original words and thoughts)
o Blackboard: worst grading program EVER
· Post Grading Reading Twist and Shout:
o A perfect poem by Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”
o Peter Ho Davies’ quiet but pulsating novel, The Welsh Girl (a novel that reminds me, perhaps in its quietness, of the teen dreamy novel of my youth—sans vampires– Summer of My German Soldier).
o New York magazine’s blurbs on Michelle Obama…. [Image of Obama from here.]
· Doing the Spring Fling:
o Prepping: spring quarter starts in one week, sigh.
o Running: half marathon this June, corns on my toes be ready soon
o Socializing: shopping, drinking, eating, and Lost-ing
o Digging through the pile next to the bed:
§ Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses
§ Don DeLillo’s White Noise (thinking ahead to that revised American Lit course)
§ Bram Stoker’s Dracula (really, I’ve never read it)
o Netflixing:
§ Elegy (watched last night: the professor and his student—Woody Allen would have made it funnier than ole Philip Roth, thus the next movie on our list….)
§ Vicky Christina Barcelona (to make up for Elegy, but only if it’s no longer a VERY LONG WAIT)
§ Quantum of Solace (hubby and I saw this being filmed in Siena—who knows if we’ll get it this week)
From the Mixed Up Bloggings of Annie Em 
What a fun-to-read list! Starrifying you immediately. 🙂 Am completely impressed with your accomplishments…and your running plans.
Doesn’t Billy Collins’ “Sonnet” rock, too? He’s just fab.
Oooh, I’ve been starrified! I am incredibly honored (and darn, I never did go find my own word—I went to that site and was so overwhelmed by all the possible words I could “save”—I’ll add that to my spring break activities);-)
Billy Collins: his a teacher’s poet. That reminds me: have you read or better yet heard Taylor Mali?? An amazing poet/teacher. I’ll blog about him soon….
Ciao, Ink!