School resumes on Wednesday, three days into the new year. Goodbye, Honors Earth/Environmental Science class - hello, "Nature of Science" class!

But until then, another visit to the Triangle is due tomorrow, this time to deliver a package to a former teaching colleague and take her from the airport to the hotel, where she will stay for one night before going back to her home country.

Have a happy and prosperous new year!

I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications' incomprehensibleness.

For mathemagicians: this snowball sentence is (probably) the longest sentence in English language in which the nth word contains n number of letters. I first encountered this sentence in my textbook back when I was in high school (many years ago) and thought it was amazing. I mean, when do you use the word transcendentalizes in everyday vernacular?

In Canada, my home and native land, education is a provincial matter. In order to 'pass' a course, the minimum grade is 50%. If you managed to get an 80% (=A) average, you would be considered an honors student, and you could gain admission as an arts or science student at most Canadian universities.

In the United States of America, where everything is "bigger and better", education is a federal matter. In order to 'pass' a course, the minimum grade is 70%. If you managed to get an 80% (=C) average in N.C., you would be considered an average student, and you would be lucky if you could gain admission as a liberal arts student at some community colleges in the USA.

For example, at UCLA, for Fall 2006 admission, they received 47,317 applications, of which ~21,000 had GPAs of 4.0 or above in high school. Like the U.S. dollar, where inflation reduces purchasing power, grade inflation reduces the value of a student's high school GPA as a measurement of achievement. Read more about grade inflation here in a USA Today article.

Hope you had a nice Christmas. It was raining for most of the morning; I stayed at home and worked on some top secret documents.

Apart from driving to RDU airport twice, my winter break has also included a pre-Christmas dinner with my "adopted" family and their relatives in Graham (near Burlington), and a Christmas dinner with Hungarian friends in Fayetteville.

My sister is on the tail of a new teaching job in Newmarket, Ontario. She is going there to visit early in the new year. We'll see how that plays out.

Two 200-mile drives in twelve hours. I went to RDU International Airport twice, to bring acquaintances a little closer to their vacation from Raeford. I am now an expert on posted speed limits, exit numbers, and lane closures.

1st trip, Wednesday, 4 p.m.
(insert four hours' sleep here)
2nd trip, Thursday, 4 a.m.

Of note: on NC highway 55 headed east in Apex, I saw a car with North Carolina tags, but on the right side of the bumper there was an Oilers sticker.
Coincidentally, the last time I was on this highway in June, I saw CN railcars as I approached an underpass. Signs of Canada in Apex!

Do not try to drive a car with three wheels and a rim: a lesson in physics -- it will not go very far. Better to pay for taxi cab fare to the auto parts store.

Today I finished putting in my grades (now there's only the attendance left to do). In the afternoon I had to proctor (invigilate?) an Algebra II end-of-course test. Tomorrow I have to do the same thing for both morning and afternoon. One day until the weekend (where I will watch Tv and catch up on sleep). Six more days until I get an uninterrupted holiday break.

I was in Greensboro yesterday for the ViF Holiday Celebration. After reuniting with a few colleagues, I left for home (a 100-mile drive) at 23:45. This is after I've been up since about 2:30 in the morning (see previous post time stamp). So the smallest distractions along the way will make me jump.

1. On I-73 S/I-74 E/U.S. 220 S: A medium-sized mammal crossing the highway, taking his or her time, while I am barreling at 65 mph. I missed it by maybe two metres.
2. On N.C. 211 E: There is a railroad track that parallels this two-lane highway. It is crossing an access road without stop gates when it toots the horn (in case I am turning onto this road, which I was not). It made my heart pound like crazy.
3. On N.C. 211 E: I am the only car going eastbound (obviously, since it is past midnight). A car flies by in the other direction. Then FOUR police cars with their flashing sirens on trail him/her, following the car to who-knows-where. All I know is that I am not guilty of speeding.

It was also interesting going into the 24-hour grocery store in Aberdeen at 1:00 to pick up some things. There were two customers in this humongous store: me and a guy buying some liquor. Then there were all those stockers along every aisle. At this time of day, only self-checkout lines were open, and the guy initially had no way of showing his ID to the computer.

There is a 12-minute break between first and second periods every day at school. During this time (called the walking breakfast), students with a little pocket change can purchase mini sausage biscuits, donuts, fruit snacks and fruit punch in a can. This way, students can eat before school, after first period, during lunch, and after school.

What interests me is the donuts. They are Super Donuts, a product labeled as meeting USDA child nutrition requirements, because they are fortified with vitamins and protein, and supposedly served in all 50 states. Well, for a donut that is about 100 grams (fine), but contains >10 g of fat, of which 4.5 g is trans fat, I would have some trouble recommending it to young'uns.

A new day, and two new leaders in the Canadian political system. First we have Stephane Dion as the new Liberal leader (who came from behind the favourites, Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae), and Ed Stelmach as Alberta's new premier (who came from behind the favourites, Jim Dinning and Ted Morton). Subsequent ballots were counted differently for each election, but the third place finisher (i.e. trailed after the first ballot/runoff) became winners in both cases.

Dion = Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition Leader
Stelmach = Thirteenth Premier of the Province of Alberta

I am sitting here at my computer on an early Sunday morning. I had planned a road trip to Columbia, S.C. today, but decided that with only one week until final exams (for the students, not me!), I'd should be planning ahead. Maybe during the Winter break. Then again, this is the second time I'm postponing. Initially, I had this trip planned out for the day after Thanksgiving (not for the shopping, just because it was a holiday) but was too tired on that day...

Ah, I found my missing textbook yesterday -- it was in a student's bookbag (figures). The corners were a little damaged from the toting over a couple of weeks, but it's going to be locked up from now on, with the other items I have had to replace.

And where have the gas prices gone? We're over $2.25/gallon again.