Three busy weeks - one down

Last week loomed rather darkly on the calendar.  If you looked at my online diary it was absolutely full of yellow slots (teaching sessions), red slots (meetings), blue slots (duty advisor shifts) and bright green slots (things to do and prepare).  It was a bit intimidating, from the perspective of last Sunday!

In fact, it went fairly well. The students were all amiable and attentive. The classes seemed to go quite well. The meetings were uncontentious. The only problem was on Tuesday when, mid-morning, external access to the internet disappeared.  This might not seem such a big issue to you - but things like our library catalogue, our subject guides, our databases, all sorts of things that we use extensively, are hosted externally.  And it is very hard to teach students how to use them when you can't get to them!!! It made the middle part of Tuesday a bit challenging for those of us who had classes scheduled.  In fact, after I had tried to run one class without the internet, I cancelled the next two.  For the last one the problem had been fixed.  Mercifully!  Wasn't just us, though. Universities across Yorkshire and Humberside were affected.  My Japanese class on Tuesday evening was postponed, not because there wasn't any internet access which we don't really need for the classes, but because the school where they are held was being used for a parents' evening.  I was not unhappy about that. It meant I got to go home instead of trying to engage my brain in student mode :-)

The other thing that was scheduled for last week, which had been worrying me quite a bit, was that I was timetabled to go to Collegiate and to do a law session.  I know pretty much nothing about the law databases. I had swotted up on the databases we were supposed to be looking at in the session but I still wasn't at all confident about this.  In the event, the somewhat over-stretched law librarian rocked up just before the session and asked if I would like him to do the session with me.  I practically bit his hand off!  He did it much better than I ever could have done. But I am better prepared now for next time!

I had lunch with Freyja on Wednesday in Wa Ding, a new Chinese grocery with a small cafe above. It was very encouraging to walk in and find that it was quite busy and that the clientele was largely Oriental.  Always a good sign, I find.  And the food was lovely.  We got two enormous plates of food for £10, plates so enormous that we struggled to eat them.  Maybe next time we should share a plate

And so the week passed, in a puff of activity.  The weekend passed in a lazy, leisurely sort of a way. We had no plans and didn't do very much.  Except that I stewed another mountain of Bramley apples.  I have run out of jam jars now for my apple sauce.  I have some plastic post which I could use to store apple sauce in the freezer, but probably not enough to cope with the large bag of remaining apples.  I think we are just going to have to shovel down apple-y things over the next couple of weeks before the apples go off.

It has been very autumnal around our place this last week or so, although Sunday was a beautiful day. I ought to have got out and started pruning the garden.  But I peeled apples instead!

Autumn vista

Looking out the kitchen window on Sunday at lunch time

Is that a duck I spy down the path, asks Marlo

So one very busy week down.  Two to go. Then things should drop back to normal.  Which isn't to say there is nothing to do, just that it's not quite so frantic