We're back from our holiday expedition. It's time to wind down the gruelling schedule of relaxation and move back to the occasional stint of work. I start teaching again in less than a week.

I don't have any news to report. Our trip to Montreal and Ottawa was enjoyable and uneventful, save for a cold that we all managed to catch in varying degrees.

First thing this morning, after returning to town yesterday evening, Nath went for an ultrasound. Say hello to Vorlon:

That's about as cute as a baby can get when you take its picture by slicing through its head. If you want anything more, say, fleshy, wait a few months.

And before you ask, we don't know what flavour we're having. And even if we did know, we wouldn't tell the likes of you. Deal with it.

Through no fault of our own, Zebula has accumulated a lending library's worth of children's books. I must admit to having bought her about ten books since she was conceived. I think Nath's bought even fewer. Doting grandparents are the most likely culprits.

One type of book that appears several times in the Thingo Children's Library is the counting book. I think you can probably guess what these look like. Usually they count from one to ten by using familiar baby-related objects. Now, most of these books are innocuous and definitely useful. But we have one that makes my skin crawl. For reference, I'm talking about Babies Have... Fun With Numbers by Eileen McCarney-Muldoon and Mary Bennett O'Brien. The series of which this counting book is a part is structures in question-and-answer format. They do great from one to nine: hats, lollipops, socks, teddy bears, and so on. But when they hit ten, they lose all reason. Here's the page (with excess empty space removed):

Go ahead, smarty pants, answer. How many blocks do you see?

How completely stupid do you have to be to think that this is a good idea? Did anybody bother to look over the book before sending it out to be printed? It's not like they couldn't have fixed it easily -- just use blocks for any of the numbers from one to nine, where it's not ambiguous, and put in anything else for ten. This is unforgivably bad judgment for people teaching my daughter to count. Come to think of it, she can count up to about twenty but almost always skips eleven. Is it because she can't tell the difference between ten and eleven? Curse you, Mrss. McCarney-Muldoon and Bennett O'Brien!

This book would be a wonderful piece of absurdity if it didn't claim to be educational. I mean, who else was reminded of Hofstadter's self-referential sentence "This sentence has cabbage six words."?

The fall term is all over except for the counting. Together with the head TA for my course, I've got to count up student marks in order to assign final grades. I'll be counting words and pages with my grad student as part of finalizing a paper submission for next week. Next Wednesday I'll be counting kilometers as the Thingos make their pilgrimage to Ottawa and Montreal to visit our families.

This was a tough term. I was up working past midnight on probably 75% of weekdays. Given that I was teaching a large course for the first time, I was probably overly invested in administrative duties. I did end up dropping at least one administrative commitment, and wisely turned down requests to help with other things; that lightened the load a bit. I also sat in on another professor's course and supervised two undergraduate research projects. All optional, all drains on my time, but all worthwhile and hard to give up. The end result? A productive term, but the productivity came with the cost of increased grumpiness and reduced family time. And a correct balance surely lies a long way in the direction of family time. It'll be a bit hard to achieve that balance consistently -- although a professor's job consists of a few types of responsibility repeated over and over again, the specifics and their relative weights change every four months. Clearly there's a knack to figuring out that balance at the start of every term.

That's all the complaining I need to do about last term. In any case, I exceeded my quota early this fall. It's time to move on and prepare for a fresh batch of complaining in the winter term.

Don't get me wrong. I had a great time teaching, as I always do. I love being in front of the class, more so when the two sections of the class total nearly 200 students. Let's face it -- they're a big audience, and they've paid good money to give me their undivided attention. What more could you ask for? Sure, there were toadies, whiners, cheats, sleepers, no-shows, and so on, just as there would be in any class this size. But the vast majority of students were friendly, hardworking, and supportive.

One section was very bright (or was it the time of day?) and issued a constant barrage of questions. That's just about the best environment I could hope for, even (especially!) if it constantly derailed the lecture. That section applauded me at the end of the last lecture. I find that strange, gratifying, and deeply embarrassing. Certainly I never applauded my professors, and I've had some great ones. I've never heard of a professor being applauded before. I finally asked Rachel if this had ever happened to Steve, since it would happen to him if anyone. Yes, I can say with relief that he's had that experience once too.

As the fall winds down, I was hoping to have long stretches of free time in which to pursue research at a more relaxed pace. I don't know where I got that idea. It's the usual running around, as it turns out. If I'm lucky, I'll get one day for research before I leave. Then we'll come back and I'll be preparing for my winter teaching. The upcoming term should be considerably easier. Only one course, and it's one I've taught twice before. Let's hope I can fit some research in there somewhere.