ugh, another week

The Milton Writer's Conference was fun. So was seeing old friends/officemates. That lasted until Sunday morning, at which point the weekend turned not-fun-at-all. I have come down with a miserable cold which seems to mess up my brain functions. Also, I spent 11 hours on Sunday grading papers, while battling a miserable cold. I've had better days.

My aunt passed away this weekend from cancer. It was a bit of a shock, at least that it happened this soon. We'll be going up to Winnipeg for the funeral later this week. She was only 46.

To lighten the mood a bit, here are a couple funny things my students said yesterday:

"Do you drive the car with the bumper sticker that says 'I'd rather be reading Flannery O'Connor?'" (No! That's not me! Is it someone else in the English department?)

"This story really surprised me. I thought the theme for this unit was promiscuity. But this story was all about murder." (So we've happened to read some stories with sex/sexuality in them--Happy Endings, A & P, The Storm--but that doesn't mean the theme is promiscuity! And I never said that there was a theme for this unit in the first place, because there isn't. But I conceded that the student had a point.)