She has decided to pursue a new career as a mouser. That wouldn’t be so bad — every time the weather fluctuates and cools, the local mouse population decides to move indoors until it warms up again — except for a few small problems.

• The mouse hunting hour begins at 3am. It can then go on for a few hours.
• She is not a stealthy feline making swift, silent pounces. No, she’s a klutz. Hunting involves much bouncing off of furniture and knocking things off tables or just generally over.
• She’s a sadist. One mouse is good for hours of bumbling, brutal torture.
• She is finally succeeding at her profession. She used to just bat her prey around like a toy, but now she eventually actually kills. This is not for me, at all — she doesn’t proudly present me with a trophy. Nope, she leaves the sad little corpse where ever it eventually succumbs, and then it is my job to find it before it rots and stinks up the house.

It’s not just the classwork that is turning me into the shambling undead. It’s also my roommate.

Please? I have finished grading my nightmarish genetics essay exam (do not ever assign essay exams to bright, ambitious, literate students without setting an upper page length — I had over 400 pages to read. Will not do that ever again. Ever.) and finished the first wave of lab reports. Oh god my eyeballs are about to explode. I think I deserve to take a little walk in the sunshine, don’t I? Don’t make me sit here in my office any longer.

Really, just a short walk, maybe look for a few spiders, then I promise to get back to work.

I have two more sets of exams to finish — but they are much more sensibly designed with short calculations to read, and they either get them wrong or they don’t. And then I have to write two final exams.

There is another lab report and the answers to the final exams to read, but they don’t come in until Friday and next week. Please don’t punish me if I go outside for a little bit. Maybe I can just go feed the spiders? I’ll be right back to buckle down again.

<whimper>

LeVar Burton is something special — he is beyond being a science communicator, and is more of a knowledge communicator, which is something we desperately need. Science is beautiful, but so are history and literature and philosophy and art and all human endeavors that make the world a better place.

So he appeared on The View, and Megan McCain, of course, thought she’d challenge him with the Dr Seuss “ban” (it wasn’t) and that deplorable cancel culture, and he gently and succinctly shot her down.

In terms of cancel culture, I think it’s misnamed — that’s a misnomer. I think we have a consequence culture and that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society, whereas they haven’t been, ever, in this country.

I think there are good signs in the culture, and I think it has everything to do with a new awareness on people who were simply unaware of the real nature of life in this country for people who have been othered since this nation began.

Nice. Listen to LeVar, everyone.

I own a crocoduck tie, somewhere. I was actually gifted this tie by Richard Dawkins himself, many years ago, and I thought I’d wear it as a talisman this afternoon, but now I can’t find it. I haven’t been at any events that warrant a tie for many years now, and honestly this past year I’ve barely left the house. Maybe if I went to church more, I’d have an excuse?

Anyway, the reason I was looking for it is that I’m supposed to have a livestream on youtube with Kevin Logan and Kristi Winters about science as a social construct, which it is, prompted by this other YouTuber going by the name of King Crocoduck, who claims to have something he calls a “naturalist nuke” that demolishes all those SJWs who don’t recognize the omnipotence of True Science. I guess it’s happening around 3:00, my time — it’s all very informal, since I don’t have a link yet. In which case I guess it’s just as well I’m not putting on a suit and tie for it.

Sadly, Shadowrun is not correct. It is a work of fiction.

That said, will anyone be surprised if I turn into a tiny, decrepit gnome overnight?

I’m teach two courses this term (well, three, actually), Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development, a required introductory biology course, and Genetics, an upper level elective. And they’re killing me right now.

But yesterday, I went all ADHD on FunGen and focused from 1pm until well after midnight and got all caught up on grading that course (my inbox is empty), and also prepped today’s lecture and next Tuesday’s, and wrote the exam I’m handing out today, and assembled an outline of the final exam. No, really, I can stop thinking about it for a while. It’s like I had two biting, clawing, screaming monkeys on my back and I took one and bashed its skull with a rock. Very satisfying.

Unfortunately, it meant I had to ignore the other monkey for a day, but I’m going to address that today, focusing on just the backlog in Genetics and clearing that step by step all day and all night, if I have to. It’s a monkey-killing rampage!

There’s a possibility that I might even get a free day this weekend, before the next round of exams show up and demand to be graded. Maybe I can do something exciting, like laundry. Or nap. I’ve only been getting 4 hours of sleep each night, so the latter is tempting.

It’s happening again. I’m falling behind on the grading, and today I have to give another exam because the syllabus says so. The exam is ready to go, but I’m not.

I’m going to go hang out in the lab for a while and relax.

Must think soothing thoughts, don’t want to break down. Just buckling down, trying to get all the work done, eyes on next week when it all comes to a close.

Also, thinking thoughts of revenge.

See? A positive mindset will get me through this.