fflo: (Default)
fflo ([personal profile] fflo) wrote2018-11-08 10:05 pm

midweek yardwork & HEL-lo, Elijah

I took yesterday afternoon off to work in the yard, and was aiming to take this afternoon off to, but ended up taking the whole day off, cuz last night I took a painkiller (uncharacteristically hours before bed) and ended up staying up half the night in a fuzzy kind of indulgence.  So this afternoon I did yardwork again.  Haven't taken a painkiller yet tonight, tho.

I'm well over half done cleaning up what the tree guy down the street cut out of one of my big maples (which was a lot).  I'm also getting closer to having cleared the pathway portion of the second big brush heap out back, and if I can get that finished by the end of the compost pick-up year, I can be okay with that.  I mean, it'd be nice to finish the whole heap, but I've cleared SO much back there already.

There are also leaves galore, and bunches of buckthorn volunteers I need to tend to before winter.  At least the ones where there are bulbs that sprout in the Spring.

At the curb now:  3 bags of twigs and probably 8 or 9 bundles of branches.  The big compost bin's almost full.  This is good, cuz we're heading in to a stretch of days with highs in the 30s (they've been in the 40s recently, with some 50s not very long ago).

So one day of work at work, tomorrow, to finish the week.  Catch up with one of the trainees.  Or maybe both of them.

Elijah Cummings is on my TV.  Back before he was in Congress, when he was in the Maryland House of Delegates, he visited a class I was teaching at the community college in Baltimore.  The students liked him a lot.  Sometimes when he wanted to emphasize something he'd just said, he'd say (right after he said said thing) "Hello!", with the accent on the first syllable.  Kinda like an "A-men".  It was cool, and for the rest of the time that class ran, this one student (I want to say Omar) used "Hello!" that same way, off and on.

Sadly I haven't seen Representative Cummings do it on TV even once, but I suppose that's no big surprise.  He's a dignatary now.  HEL-lo.

[identity profile] pane-carasau079.livejournal.com 2018-11-09 12:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I wasn't aware you used to teach - and near where I am! What was your topic?

[identity profile] fflo.livejournal.com 2018-11-09 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Mostly writing (and, of that, mostly "remedial" writing). I also joined a handful of various faculty in teaching a "student success" course one of the English profs got going. At first I thought it was silly, but a lot of the students in the computer lab that I ran as my day job (the teaching was adjunct) were really enthusiastic about it, so I got onboard.

I also taught freshman comp at the state penitentiary a coupla times, also through the community college. That was somethin', getting locked in behind all those locking doors.

[identity profile] pane-carasau079.livejournal.com 2018-11-10 12:04 pm (UTC)(link)
That is really awesome! Did you find that the stat penitentiary members were just as enthusiastic? Or did you sense it was all around different?

[identity profile] fflo.livejournal.com 2018-11-12 04:10 pm (UTC)(link)
They were more enthusiastic on days when the weather wasn't nice, as evidenced by my not losing any of them to the basketball game in the yard that they passed through to get to class. :)