If I type in 18-point Courier New font, does it actually show up on my blog like that?

[Yes, apparently.]

We had our Commercial Law final on Saturday morning, and I’ve been grading exams pretty much nonstop since then.  Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’ve done a ton of grading already.  I graded 50 Saturday afternoon and night, 50 on Sunday, and 128 today.  We have a total of 278, so only 50 more.  I should finish up tomorrow.

The grades are awful.  I’m grading a question about negligent misrepresentation, and the average score is probably about 4 out of 15 total possible points.  Most of the students could not be more wrong.  The quality of the answers seems worse than usual.  I’m not sure why.  It’s times like these that I am always happy that I am the teacher vs. the student.

Everything’s good here.  Thao and I went for a swim last night at the Sky Garden pool about 5 minutes from our house.  She enjoyed it – I’ve read that swimming is good for pregnant women because the water helps support the weight of their bellies, relieves the stress on their backs, etc.

That’s all I’ve got.  Grading exams and swimming with my pregnant wife.  I am sort of like a rock star.

1 and 2 with home losses to Jacksonville State and Vanderbilt.  I’m done, Ole Miss.  Call me when Houston Nutt is fired.  

Actually, don’t even call me then.  You’ve already stripped the university of all of the tradition most of us ever associated with it.  The “Ole Miss” we’ve been pulling has really been the ghost of an Ole Miss that’s been dead for years.

Timebomb

The late, great David Foster Wallace’s final book – the unfinished manuscript The Pale King – will be published on April 15, 2011.  (The book is at least in part about an IRS branch office, thus the tax day release.)  The U.S. and U.K. market covers have been released.

U.S.:

U.K.:

It’s probably bad form to admit it, since the U.S. version was designed by DFW’s widow, Karen Green, but I like the U.K. cover better.  I “get it” more intuitively and it seems like a less forced, more natural fit with the book from the limited amount I know about it.

If you haven’t read his masterpiece, Infinite Jest, do yourself the favor.

Week 7 (May 4):

Week 26 (earlier today):

Here's one more.  I don't think I ever posted this one before.  Better nine months late than never.

I don't know why, but this is still one of my favorite wedding photos.  I hadn't seen in in a while and ran across it recently.  I love it:

I recognize I've been a little light blogging lately – especially about anything substantive.  Everything's good here.  We finished our classes last week and are in the middle of exams now.  Our Commercial Law exam is this Saturday.  The marking.  Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!  Then about a month of no class – we start back up on October 18th.

Thao and I are going to take a week off in October and go fly to Hoi An and Hue.  Thao has never been to Hue, and I've only been once back in 2001, so that will be nice.  And we really like Hoi An.  She will be 7.5 months pregnant then, so we won't be doing a whole lot – we're staying at resorts so we'll just relax, swim in the pool, eat some good food, etc.  It will be our last trip as a couple before our baby arrives, so we're looking forward to that.  In Hue we're staying at the Pilgrimage Village resort, which looks really nice and peaceful:

Thao has her 6-month checkup Saturday morning.  She's technically in Week 26, so 6.5 months already, but her appointment got rescheduled so she's a little late going in.  I can't go with her this time since I'll be in the Commercial Law exam – but they're not doing an ultrasound this time anyway – just a regular checkup so I'm not too bummed.  She's continuing to do great.  Hasn't been sick.  Feels fine.  We're still reading to the baby at night and getting up early and going for walks to get her some light exercise.  We feel very lucky that her pregnancy has been so easy so far, and we're getting very excited about the baby being here in 3.5 short months!  I went to the baby store yesterday and looked at beds, strollers, etc.  We're going to convert the spare bedroom next to ours into a nursery for the baby.  Fun!

I've been continuing to work out a lot – mostly on my rowing machine now.  I haven't lost any weight, but I've converted a lot of fat to muscle and look leaner.  I feel better and have more energy.  Last night I did 76 minutes on it and burned 750 calories.  I slept well after that!

I've been playing the new Halo: Reach game on the Xbox.  It came out about a week early here, and of course only cost $1.20 USD.  It's pretty good.  If you like the other Halo games, you'll like Reach.  I've only been playing the single-player campaign, since the multiplayer requires a real, non-bootleg disk or Microsoft will brick your console.  But the campaign is good – it feels more difficult than the prior games.  I think they stepped up the difficulty a bit since it's the last Halo game that Bungie will develop.

I had to invest in a new iPhone – or at least new to me.  I didn't get the iPhone 4 – it's just too expensive.  I bought a slightly used 32GB 3GS on Ebay for $455.  I'd been using the same old 2G version that I got in November 2007, and it's on its last legs.  It's really slow now and also the screen has some areas where patches of the pixels had died.  Anyway, I bought that one back in November 2007 for $399, and it was only 8GB, so to get a basically new, much faster version with 32GB for $455 seems like a pretty good deal – especially if I can make it last as long as the 2G did.  A buddy of mine who is going home in October is bringing it back for me.

A friend of mine from Portland is moving to Vietnam and will start working at RMIT in October.  We had an opening on our Commercial Law team, and she interviewed for it and got it.  She's currently a partner in a big law firm in Portland, so I know she will be a good teacher.  I think that she, like me, was just kind of burned out on the whole super-hardworking thing and was looking for a change of pace.  Her husband, who is also a lawyer, is going to move over here with her and we will try to find him something to do as well.  There's always the possibility that he could also end up teaching for RMIT in the future.

I guess that's about all of the news I have.  I hope everyone out there is doing well.  Peace!