Day 87: possibly not actual eels
Wednesday, 17 June 2020 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtMy desk chair arrived! choosing, of course, the one single stretch in the 8 hours of the working day when I was actually on a video call, which I suppose is the Cosmic Wossnames for you, but on the upside it wasn't actually a work call, I was catching up illegally with jo&stv on the grounds of, fuck, I worked one 12-hour Friday and one 7-hour Saturday weekend before last, the faculty owes me this.
So, desk chair. Not, in fact, eaten by eels en route, although I spent most of Monday and Tuesday darkly suspecting that eels had at least nibbled it, as it was new and spanky and adjustable and, despite frequent fiddling with multiple levers, bloody uncomfortable. Which turned out to simply be my butt and limbs adjusting to a different chair than the one I've sat in for a decade, who knew, because it's fine today. Possibly I'm just getting old. Sigh.
It occurs to me that the 12-hour Friday and 7-hour Saturday in fact handily explained my absence from Teh Intarwebs for ten days or so, we had a curriculum change deadline and the Dear Little Students, despite careful announcements and desperate pleas to the contrary, all piled up their submissions on the last day, concentrated in the last two hours before the deadline, leaving me with a hundred or so to process before Monday. I was really quite exhausted for most of last week. I enjoy working with students, really I do, they are bright and interesting and frequently lovely, but just-post-adolescent narcissism and the concomitant lack of development in the organs of perspective make them a little wearing at times. Yes, in the abstract getting the form in twenty minutes before deadline is "in on time", but consider that this faculty contains over five thousand of you, if you all do it at once the system collapses. Sigh.
On the upside, @GinevraCat posted on Twitter this recipe for quick chocolate lava cakes, which I have just made myself for lunch, and bugger health food, anyway. Pro tip: it helps to actually include the egg, which I accidentally overlooked, first time round, leaving me with the interesting problem of how to extract the solidified chocolate tar from the bottom of the ramekins, it appears to have fused. I haven't achieved that kind of rookie baking fail since I was approximately a teenager, I have been cackling derisively at myself all afternoon. Good chocolate lava, though. Eventually.
So, desk chair. Not, in fact, eaten by eels en route, although I spent most of Monday and Tuesday darkly suspecting that eels had at least nibbled it, as it was new and spanky and adjustable and, despite frequent fiddling with multiple levers, bloody uncomfortable. Which turned out to simply be my butt and limbs adjusting to a different chair than the one I've sat in for a decade, who knew, because it's fine today. Possibly I'm just getting old. Sigh.
It occurs to me that the 12-hour Friday and 7-hour Saturday in fact handily explained my absence from Teh Intarwebs for ten days or so, we had a curriculum change deadline and the Dear Little Students, despite careful announcements and desperate pleas to the contrary, all piled up their submissions on the last day, concentrated in the last two hours before the deadline, leaving me with a hundred or so to process before Monday. I was really quite exhausted for most of last week. I enjoy working with students, really I do, they are bright and interesting and frequently lovely, but just-post-adolescent narcissism and the concomitant lack of development in the organs of perspective make them a little wearing at times. Yes, in the abstract getting the form in twenty minutes before deadline is "in on time", but consider that this faculty contains over five thousand of you, if you all do it at once the system collapses. Sigh.
On the upside, @GinevraCat posted on Twitter this recipe for quick chocolate lava cakes, which I have just made myself for lunch, and bugger health food, anyway. Pro tip: it helps to actually include the egg, which I accidentally overlooked, first time round, leaving me with the interesting problem of how to extract the solidified chocolate tar from the bottom of the ramekins, it appears to have fused. I haven't achieved that kind of rookie baking fail since I was approximately a teenager, I have been cackling derisively at myself all afternoon. Good chocolate lava, though. Eventually.
