We're Just Going to Assume that This is Okay

After several long and incoherent conversations with the ticket people, I am confirmed on a flight out tonight (instead of the tomorrow morning flight they wanted to put me on.)

I just got the confirmed itinerary that I requested, and I am not only confirmed on the new flight, but apparently on the flight that's leaving, oh, right now, and that I was moved off of.

I *then* got a receipt with price information for the new flight (it's about the same, if not exactly the same, as the original price).

So I thought about calling back to confirm that a) I am not actually confirmed on two flights to Other Side, and b) that I am not expected to pay for Booking # 2.

But then I thought, "You know? I've spent a long time on hold today."

And then, "What if they tell me that I need to pay for the new flight? Of course I won't do it. I'll yell at them and risk not making it out of here at all."

So I concluded, "Far better to just show up at the airport and then, if they somehow try to make me pay (and how would they do that?), refuse."

Finally, "I'm surely just being hyper conscientious here, and there's no chance they're actually going to try to bill me for a rebooked flight when they're the ones who screwed me over in the first place."

Because the airline industry is fuzzy like that.

Right?

I Hate Airlines.

Not only have I been delayed at some point during virtually every flight that I've taken in the past year, but this morning I got out of the shower to find a message from the discount ticket company informing me that my flight today has been canceled. Well, one leg of it has. A short leg. But there's nothing they can do.

I was able, after a long time on hold, to get rebooked (or partially rebooked--I need to call back in a few hours) on a flight out tonight. But that means that instead of arriving on Friday afternoon, when the Boyfriend can conveniently pick me up and it'll only be a few hours until I can go to bed, I arrive at 5:30 in the goddamned morning on Saturday. So he'll have to get up at an ungodly hour to fetch me, our plans for that day are shot, and I'll spend my first full day in Exciting City totally jetlagged.

Plus it means that I have to go an extra 14 hours without seeing him, and I haven't seen him in two months and this sucks.

I Will Not Kill Myself with Grading

But I will come close.

I leave for the Other Side of the World tomorrow, and this week I received 85 midterm papers (give or take a few). The goal is to get through as many as I possibly can tonight so that I can spend the bulk of my 14-hour flights relaxing with novels, knitting, movies, and the inane little games that you can play via the movie consoles. Go spring break!

I may post more substantively here later on tonight; it's been a while since I said much of anything, hasn't it? But if I don't, well, I'll let you know when I get back. I'm not taking my laptop with me, and 10 days sans computer will be good for both me and the laptop, I think!

Why I Am Drinking a Beer at 5:15, Even Though I Have to Go Back to Campus Tonight and Have A Lot of Grading to Do

1. Today I got a "rejection that is not a rejection" from Dream U. Goodbye, Dream. There will be others.

(May I also interject here a request to search committees? When you reject a person, reject her. None of this "Our search is completed! I'll bet your search is going well, too!" nonsense. Seriously. Dream U was absolutely splendiferous in all aspects of the process saving this one, so I'm really not too bothered by it and I think it just comes from an exaggerated anxiety about upsetting people--a misplaced courtesy, in fact--but it's not the first such letter I've received and I don't relish having to reread rejection letters two or even three times to figure out what the hell they're saying to me. It doesn't cushion the blow.)

2. People were crying in this afternoon's faculty meeting. Crying. Obviously I can't and won't talk about why--and honestly I haven't been here long enough to know what the real deal is--but suffice to say that there is Drama. And I will be accepting the Field offer in the next two days, so. The Drama will soon be mine.

3. In the last three days, I wrote up extensive comments on 47 drafts (10 to go!) and conferred with 18 students (2 to go!). So there's cause for celebration + lobotomy.

4. Hey! I have a job! It's almost official! So, in spite of everything, I get to have a small mid-week celebration. Right?

We Interrupt This Grading to Bring You a Picture of Shoes

I bought these! They are lovely.


I guess that should be a question: Aren't they lovely?

It is, of course, far too cold to wear them, but the weather will get warmer eventually. Or so I have read.

Back to the grading mines I go. At least they've fixed the music down there; we've currently got a bit of an Erasure thing going. Nothing like Andy Bell for correcting semi-colons.

Sunday Sunday

This weekend's lists:

DONE:

• graded batch of 55 short papers for comp (should have been 57; 2 are missing)
• read for tomorrow's class
• cleaned apartment

TO DO:

• grade batch of 18 responses from survey (should be 25; what happened?)
• prep for tomorrow's class
• finish reading play for independent study
• swim

This is all quite doable, although I'm not sure I can stomach the grading. I might put it off until next weekend. For--tomorrow I get comp drafts! And have to comment on all 57 of them by Friday!

I fear that blogging this semester will be naught but one long grading whine. Bear with me, please. *Sigh.*

Memoriam

I don't know what to say about the NIU shootings, except that they were horrible, and I'm frightened by the recurrence of such incidents in this country.

A student on our campus was directly affected by the shootings--one of his close friends was killed--and seeing him at today's memorial service, surrounded and held by the other students, made everything terribly vivid.

Again, there's nothing I can say. I'm at a loss. This is awful, and I don't understand why it keeps on happening.