I got very wordy in my responses to a couple of comments to this recent post, so if you can’t get enough on dealing with difficult students, here are the links:
There’s also an interesting discussion on Google+ that I discovered by looking at my stats, which opened up a whole bunch of related and semi-related discussions, and reminded me of some cool old posts. (Hi, Google+ readers! Please come over here sometime and play with us in the comment section!)
In other news:
I have two students graduating soon, so I have spent a lot of time in recent weeks (including over this holiday break) inserting hyphens, clarifying the use of the hyphen versus the en dash or em dash, inserting or removing innumerable indefinite and definite articles, correcting subject-verb disagreement, inserting commas and periods in equations, rephrasing run-on sentences (!), and generally just editing text. I am a grammar and punctuation nerd, but my students… are not, despite my valiant efforts throughout their time in my group. Which makes me sad and grumpy, especially since I would like to spend one goddamn holiday not having to edit something because there’s a hard deadline on the other side.
By the way, here is a Thanksgiving pic. I didn’t bother staging, so this is simply a pic of DH’s plate seconds before he dug in. I didn’t go shopping until noon yesterday, so yes, it is entirely possible to be a lazy cook and not do anything for Thanksgiving until the day of, and still serve a full dinner in the evening (you can oven-roast a frozen turkey, it just takes 50% longer). We had 3 kinds of taters (mashed, plus both white potatoes and yam roasted in oven), homemade cranberry sauce (with cinnamon, as per Alex’s tip from last year), roasted turkey, and steamed broccoli. Nobody likes stuffing, so I didn’t make it, and I was too lazy to make gravy this year.
xykademiqz 
“Nobody likes stuffing”
SACRILIDGE!!!!!!!!!
🙂
Sorry — that should say “Nobody in my family likes stuffing…”
Then again, we don’t care for pumpkin/pecan pie either…
*ducks for cover*
I’m with you on the pumpkin/pecan pie (bleurggh) but… no stuffing and no gravy?!!?!! They are the best parts 😀
I do like gravy, didn’t make it this time as I was tired/lazy/pressed for time and the gravy-needing mashed potatoes were decidedly secondary to the awesome roased ones (I do make excellent gravy — exhibit A). As for the dislike of stuffing, I have no explanation… It may be the reason why naturalized citizens aren’t allowed to be president, as they never really truly appreciate Thanksgiving turkey stuffing! 🙂
I made my very British and simple sage and onion stuffing (just breadcrumbs, onion, sage, salt and milk, dotted with butter and baked). I was worried that my US husband might not like it but he polished off about half the dish and said I should make more next time – phew! But, each to their own and, yes, your gravy does look good 🙂
Have those cranberries not popped their skins? Now *that* is bizarre.
Huh? Their skins have popped and the cranberries are very soft and mushy.
Well, thank goodness, because unpopped cranberries would be disturbing! Now what’s that green stuff doing on the plate?