I would joke "don't get injured in any Black Friday shopping sprees," but I teach consumer behavior and study this sort of thing.

Instead, I would like to seriously intone "don't get injured in any Black Friday shopping sprees."





Edit: perhaps I should have considered stepping away from my default icon for once.

I am more than halfway through my required word count for Yuletide and am not quite done with the first scene.

"A thousand words" just seems adorable.

Thanks to this amazingly awesome spreadsheet I have located some other entertaining requests that I might tackle for stocking stuffers. karenhealey can attest to the fact that I seem to be flat-out incapable now of writing just a few words. (I do manage for sake of academic brevity, but that takes drafts. Many, many drafts.)

Hopefully everyone else's Yuletide work goes well!

And speaking of lots of words, I have about 15k between these two HP fics that have sat unfinished for a long while. I should really fix that some time.

In conclusion, my current music has absolutely nothing to do with my assigned story. Although it would certainly be an amusing pairing.

Also, I am doing at least a couple of entries for the Blizzard holiday card contest. I say at least a couple because, well, my first one is close to being done and I have more ideas.

This first one is stupid and cartoony, of course, because that has just turned into my niche. And it's adapting a joke sketch I did earlier for the general forums. But by god it makes me laugh!

( In part because Tyrande is making this expression. )

My Yuletide assignment is in exactly the fandom (out of my 25 offered) that I thought it would be, involves my two favorite characters from the source material, and the specifics of the request look like a hoot. And I've never written in this fandom before.

Fun!

*eats more fudge-based cookies to get into a holiday mood, then goes off to work out like a responsible little writer*

HAY LOOK, IT'S ME.

I have been consumed this semester by teaching and research. On one hand it's much more stressful than attending seminars, as everything falls on me to plan and schedule and execute. On the other, it's less stressful as I'm setting my own goals and managing my own time. So: mixed bag.

I should note that I had a completely absurd number of seminars I was responsible for taking. 15 doctoral-level seminars over two years... on a semester system, mind you. The accounting and MIS students with 9 required seminars were horrified at our requirements. I suppose there was some very minor apology in the structure of our respective comprehensive exams: I wrote mine in five hours, walked out, and waited for my results. They prepared a take-home exam or essay prompt for a week, wrote a full day's exam, and then had an oral exam to finish it up. I suppose the faculty had a better assessment of my knowledge after all those seminars.

( I continue to discuss the PhD program. )

In lighter news: SO WHO IS DOING YULETIDE, Y'ALL?

I just came from my third session of teaching consumer behavior. Or, as I said on the syllabus, "consumer behaviour." On the first day of class I apologized to everyone, said my spellcheck was screaming at me with a forest of red lines, and they would just have to expect American spellings from that point out. They laughed and a good mood was set. This is fairly unsurprising, now that I've had more encounters with them, as they appear to be a good group overall: they nod, they pay attention, they laugh when appropriate, and they seem genuinely interested in what the class is about.

I am somewhat lucky in that my first class is an interesting one; it is much easier to discuss consumer behavior and make it interesting than it would be to discuss research method design. (An important topic, to be sure, but talking about multiple presentations of questions with different phrasings is not the most thrilling lecture one might give.) I get to sprinkle in various references to... oh, everything, and it is somehow relevant.

Like the butt brush.

Even if I did have to promise them I had not made up this term.

In short, what everyone told me has (thus far) come true: even if I feel that I don't know everything I should about the topic, I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective. I'd been trying to measure my knowledge up against research careers of decades, rather than seeing that I am instructing people who are getting their first real exposure to the topic. Processing capacity issues, something we take for granted as a nuts-and-bolts factor of experiment design? Is actually new and exciting in the classroom!

Due on Friday: the first assignment. We'll see how it goes.

The vacation continues, with me on my teeny-tiny little MacBook that has seen years of use. It may not be very fast, as I bought the cheapest model available years back, but by God it is STURDY. It's seen three years of being kicked by people as they take the seat next to me in classrooms or the train, popping from a car with a 60F climate to the terrifying outdoors with -30 day after day, and generally being a little trooper as I tote it along with me to class and travel alike.

It is seriously obnoxious to play WoW on it after I'm used to my ginormous iMac screen, though.

Not that I flew here to play WoW! It is simply a logical thing to do in the late evenings, as I am somehow a night owl born to two... even "early birds" seems too restrained a description. But it's all to be expected: I get increasingly liberal as they get increasingly conservative, I like the North End and they like out west, and left to my own devices I'm going to sleep at 4 shortly before they're getting up. And yet my mom and I are engaging in that most universal of behaviors this afternoon: LIKE, SHOPPING. OMG.

Hooray, I desperately need new shoes. I may have discovered my favorite suede tennis shoes are suddenly in possession of a tiny but growing hole in the side. Gasp! This shan't do.

Also, I used some grandparent gift money to buy a new Wacom tablet. After 11 years of working with my Intuos workhorse daily (I don't even have a mouse hooked up), it is starting to glitch. Occasionally. Once or twice a week. Seriously, Wacom makes good stuff. I looked at reviews of their refurbishing work and, convinced, ordered one from an academic reseller. The almost 50% price savings off new let me move up a size to 9x12. Very exciting! I can't wait to hook it up to my iMac. With its big screen.

I love your sturdiness, MacBook, but I appear to be a size queen. Sorry. :(

Upcoming plans: seeing ifritah (and hopefully coldfury) on Friday, and popping down to SLC next week to see karenhealey. Our plans as we roam the Wasatch Front: more SHOPPING!

I am back at the ol' homestead for a spirit-raising visit to Boise before I head back to Edmonton and begin the grind of a fresh year where I am teaching who the hell thought I was capable of teaching undergraduates?

Arriving here was wonderful. Seeing the city brightens my mood and today's cool and rainy weather perked me right up.

The trip required so that could happen was less than pleasant. It's a bad sign when you're already 30 minutes past the planned Edmonton departure time and you finally get an official "extended maintenance needed" announcement. And then, in the windows directly next to your seating, you see the entire cover to one of your plane's engines slowly open.

It took a while after that.

When I was waiting in Seattle and they said some maintenance would be needed for the Boise flight, I actually started laughing. I got some dirty looks.


Edit: HOLY CRAP you guys I won the Internet Lottery, along with other undisclosed "Internet Users" in the BCC field. I should probably give them all my banking information and my blood type. This day might be looking up!

So we'll see how that goes.


CLICK FOR BIGNESS

It's actually been good for me to do these silly little comic bits, as I'm doing them entirely digitally. Committing to doing that has been a good way to break my habit of always-but-always sketching on paper first and then scanning things in.

( They put him in charge 'cause he's the loudest. )

I decided I wanted to do someone's New Year's Resolution request for Yuletide, so I poked around the requests until I found one that made me clap my hands together and go "ahahaha" in an ominous manner.

Here, for lady_sarai, is my Enchanted fic.

Man I love Yuletide.

I must remember to post things in the ol' personal journal if I post them elsewhere. (This time, in WoWLadies.)

( Patch 3.2: Serious Lore )

( I finally -- FINALLY -- got around to doing For the Alliance! )

You were supposed to have pleasant summers, you big fat liar!

It has been blazingly hot here in the Great White North. Now, I moved up from Boise where summer temperatures of 105 didn't make you bat an eye at the forecast (though they earned plenty of complaints), but the city was prepared for it. Houses are generally designed with heat in mind. My parents' place has some sort of special treatment on the windows that cuts summer heat down by a significant amount. And, of course, air conditioning support is in place. On top of that all, the dry heat means the night cooled down fairly quickly once the sun went down.

Yeeeah, not so much here.

It's been bumping up against 90 degrees¹ inside the house for the past few days. That is unfortunately warmer than outside, as this house was designed to lock in every bit of heat it could latch its greedy little hands onto. There is effectively no breeze and high humidity (for my taste, though not to someone from, say, Florida) that keeps temperatures high during the night. I have two portable a/c units that I use when it gets particularly bad, but thinking of power bills keeps that to a minimum of use. You'd think I could go take advantage of the climate inside businesses, but they're clearly underpowered for these weeks when the temperature spikes. They often feel warm and sweaty inside if there are more than a few bodies.

On top of that, this tornado-speed storm tore through the city last week. Four days of sweltering humidity finally exploded into a massive storm that had power going out across the city for the next few days. Yep, including mine.

I've dealt with a winter week where temperatures never climbed above -40, and I swear that season is easier to deal with.

I am very glad I picked the university here, as it's a great program, but I will also be glad to move away from this city when that program is completed.

BLEARGH BLEARGH GRUMPY STOMP STOMP STOMP.

1 That's right, Canada, I still think in crazy illogical Imperial units!
2 Random play on iTunes, your irony is not at all appreciated

Isn't this ALWAYS the way? I think I'm good for catching up and then I get hit with other things. But at least the "other thing" was rather exciting this time: I'm working on putting together my first class. I'll be teaching Consumer Behavior both semesters next year and get to decide every element of the class from the chosen textbook to the syllabus design. Exciting! Also exceedingly terrifying!

In any event, it has been quite an experience contacting the publishers to get sample copies of their textbooks. I wrote to one company asking for a single edition of a the most popular CB textbook. Two hours later the area representative replied to me and said she was putting together a package of multiple textbooks, case study books, workbooks, and anything else I might find useful. Glancing at their website that's something like $600 (retail) worth of goods being expressed to me for free.

And then I heard from the other publishers doing much the same.

Huh! Quite the experience.

Dreamwidth Stuff

Hey look, a bold header to get your attention!

1. I'll be using my Dreamwidth account to post only art stuff. If that's all you care about, there's a RSS feed button over there to conveniently use. Handy! HAY GUYZ IT'S AN ART ACCOUNT


2. I have two Dreamwidth invites if anyone would like one. Just leave a comment with your email. (I've screened comments on this post because of this, so no one needs to feel iffy about posting their email out in the open.)

Holy crap I posted my comic to wow_ladies and wow.com linked to it. :O

Ha ha, someone's totally nerdraging at me on DeviantArt. Awesome. IF YOU ARE GOING TO JOKE ABOUT SOMEONE THAT WAY YOU HAD BETTER OFFER SOME CANON SUPPORT FOR YOUR OPINION YOUNG LADY I AM NOT AT ALL AMUSED.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who offered the kind words about two posts back! I will respond individually this weekend, as I am about to go off to another meeting, but wanted to give a big pre-emptive :D to all involved parties.

Also, hello Photobucket over-bandwidth journal layout graphic. I thought I had saved these files to my own account; suppose not. That'll teach me to do so as soon as they come back up!

Here I present my first half of the book review of the Arthas tie-in novel, in which I attempt to communicate what I believe to be the most important thematic elements of the rise of this villain who has affected so many within this fictional universe.

It is a very serious response to the book, as you will see.






Thrilling conclusion to follow.