Aaarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhh!  I am drowning in grading!  (Mostly because of my own laziness/slackness, of course, but I have a ton of grading to do right now and even more coming.)

It’s Sunday morning here now – about 9:38am.  I just woke up and am having some coffee and checking the football scores from yesterday’s games.  More on that in a second.  Thao is off in District 7 participating with her colleagues from her hotel in the Terry Fox 5K run.  She assures me that she is walking, not running.  I assured her that I would be sitting on my ass drinking coffee and playing around on the internet, not walking or running.  (Seriously, I injured the plantar tendon (I think it’s a tendon – anyway, whatever it is, I injured it) in my left foot a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to stay off of it as much as possible to let it get better.  Otherwise I would have been walking/running/hobbling in the 5K too.  And I can say with pride and conviction that whatever I would have been doing in it, I would have been doing it bowleggedly!  Anyway, she got up at 5:45am to head off for that.  She was trying to show me how cute she was in her outfit for the run, but I wasn’t exactly perky at 5:45am.

We went out to a nice dinner last night at a cafe we’d never been to before.  As is sometimes the case here, we were the only customers inside the place.  There were a couple of tables of people sitting outside, but it was on a busy street and noisy so we ate inside.  We had very good service!  I actually had a very good salad – kind of what I think you call a Waldorf salad with walnuts and apples and blue cheese.  Very good.  Before dinner we had gone to get a massage.  We have found a place – the place I’ve mentioned before – near my house that has very good massages for very cheap.  We each got a one-hour massage and the total bill for both of us was 340,000 dong, and that includes tips totalling 100,000 dong.  So that’s about $18 for two hour-long massages, including tips.  Not bad.  I am sore today – I always tell the masseuses that I like it strong and they outdo themselves trying to hurt me, I think.  Sometimes it does hurt, but I grin and bear it.  And then the next day I am always sore.  I think it is good for me, though.  Loosens me up and is certainly relaxing.

Sharla and her friends, Jennifer and Beth, left on Thursday morning to fly to Hong Kong, and then back to the U.S. on Saturday.  They finally got back to Saigon (after the visa incident in Cambodia) on Wednesday afternoon at about 3:30pm.  I picked them up at the airport and got them checked into their hotel, and then we went out to “see Saigon” – which ended up being sitting in restaurants eating and drinking beer and coffee.  We kind of got on a roll, and then it got dark.  So they really ended up seeing very little of Saigon.  Thao met us for dinner, as did my friend Tim.  We had a fun night and I was sorry to see them go – and sorry that I saw so little of them while they were actually in Vietnam.

Sharla was kind enough to bring “two” books over here for me.  One was Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson, which I’ve just finished reading and frankly wouldn’t recommend.  I read it because my favorite author, David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve mentioned on this blog before (R.I.P.), said it was one of the most important books of modern fiction, etc., etc.  Well, I read it and although it was interesting, I didn’t really understand the point of it.  I think it was over my head.  Then I went and read the detailed review of the book that DFW himself had written back in about 1990 after the book came out – and it was even more over my head.  So I don’t know what DFW – or Markson – got out of it, because I don’t really understand it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.  Unless you fancy yourself super smart and able to parse impossible books.

Sharla also brought me the three-volume set 2666 by Roberto Bolano, which I have read so many good things about.  I have started reading the first volume, but haven’t gotten very far into it yet, although it seems to be well-written and interesting.  I am still working on the biography of Mao Zedong, which is very good.  I think I’m a little over 400 pages in and it’s about 700 and something pages long.  I have been reading more lately for some reason, and I’m enjoying it.

I’m still downloading the entire set of “Dick’s Picks” of live Grateful Dead music.  Dick was, I think, the Dead’s soundboard guy for years and years, so if anyone knows what the best live versions of certain songs are, it would be him.  Anyway, someone has helpfully put the entire Dick’s Picks catalog on Bitorrent – all 17 gigabytes of it – and I’ve been in the process of downloading it for about ten days now.  About 74% done.  Should be a few more days then I’ll have it.  Can’t wait.

Thao just walked back in the door (9:54am), so I am going to take a break and go hang out with her for a while.  More later!

I’m back.  Thao is in the shower now.  She had a fun time at the 5K.

Okay, what else.  Ole Miss beat Miss. State 45-0 in the “Egg Bowl” this year, so that’s good.  And Miss. State’s coach, Sylvester Croom, “resigned” afterward.  Ole Miss went 8-4 for the season and won their last five games.  They are projected to play in the Cotton Bowl or Capital One Bowl.  Both of those are New Year’s Day bowls – so a big step from last year’s 3-9 record and, of course, no bowl game.  GA Tech beat UGA 45-42.  I didn’t see it but it had to be a wild one.  What a huge first season coach Paul Johnson had had at GA Tech.  The Dawgs were, sadly, a bit overrated this year as they suffered crushing losses to Alabama and Florida, and then the embarrassment of being beaten at home by their archrival GA Tech.  And now it looks like their quarterback, Matthew Stafford, and star running back, Knowshon Moreno, will likely be going pro.  Oh well.  I’m sure they have plenty of talent stacked up behind them.

I bought my first two paid (not free) applications from the Apple App Store.  I bought a camera utility called Camera Bag ($0.99) that lets you tweak photos you take with the iPhone camera with various effects.  I really like the “Lomo” effect that I used in the photo of Thao smiling in the post below.  I also bought the Ocarina app that lets you play your iPhone like a recorder by blowing into the mic and using your fingers to play it like a recorder, or maybe even like an ocarina.

Other than the grading, school is going well.  I’m enjoying teaching again, and every semester I do it, I know the material better and think I cover things a little bit better.

Oh, I ended up not going to the Thanksgiving buffet at the hotel here.  I ate and drank so much Wednesday night with Sharla, et al., that I just didn’t feel like doing it again the next evening.  So I went to the gym instead.  Of course I haven’t been back since, and that was Thursday.  Still having trouble getting motivated to have a regular workout schedule like before.  Not really sure what’s up with that.

I can’t believe it’s already December tomorrow.  This year has really flown by.  Thao just told me that we go to Bali in only three more weeks.  We’ve started doing some research about different things to do there, etc., and are really looking forward to it.

Okay, that’s about all I can bore you with right now.  I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and a nice long weekend.

I’m out.