I've spent the day here at the office polishing things off for my classes that start tomorrow -- copied the syllabus, emailed my advisees, labeled my notebooks. . .

Speaking of my advisees, I freaked out when I noticed they were all born in 1987. 1987!! This means I am old. Withrop also lets you look up photos (from the student ID pictures) of your students and advisees in the computer. This is good for me because I have trouble with names. Hopefully, it will make it easier to remember the 75 or so students I have this semester.

My student loan business seems to be taken care of. The woman I spoke to today was very helpful when I explained my problem, then called me back within an hour to tell me she had figured out what happened and that she cleared it up. Looks like I won't be needing Winston's services after all.

I spent a little time on ENWorld
today while eating lunch. GenCon was this past weekend. I'm jealous of all those people who went (Rich, Tim, I'm looking at you). Next year, perhaps.

Andre and Heidi arrived back from their honeymoon yesterday morning. Sarah and I picked them up from the airport. They rested at our house for a bit, then headed back to Conway, taking Harley back with them. Of course we miss the dog now, despite our complaints of last week. The first thing Sarah said when we got back from dinner was "I miss Harley waiting for us at the door."

Movie report: Saw "War of the Worlds" in the theatre Saturday. It was pretty good despite really, really obvious logic and continutity problems -- like the guy using the camcorder after an EMP knocked out all the electricity and Tom Cruise having the only working car in New England. I am usually willing to let the small stuff go -- it's a movie, after all -- but these were enough to shock me out of my suspension of disbelief. In the spirit of world disaster, we also watched "The Day After Tomorrow" via netflix. I knew that was going to strain credibity, so the "ice age in 6 days" thing didn't bother me as much as the "fighting wolves in an abandoned oil tanker outside of the NY Public Library" did. Really, that was just silly. Also Netflixed "Big Night" about two brothers and their failing Italian resturant. Good stuff, there, and a nice indie, small film contrast to special effects driven blockbusters.

Next in the Netflix Queue is more "Sex and the City" for Sarah, more "Firefly" for me, and "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" -- the Wilco documentary.

I'm also rereading A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, since the next book in that series comes out in November. More on that later, as I've noticed a few new things about that book on this reading.

Now, I've got to don the black robe and kick off the new school year.