Life and Times of an English Language Doctor

  I'll write early this week to see if I can finish this posting by 8:22 pm on the 22nd of Februrary, 2022. I suppose I could wait a couple hours and have another 2 in the datestamp for this Twos Day.  I'm not sure that I have that much to report. In the news, I've heard that Russia is trying to takeover Ukraine. I've also heard from someone who has Ukrainian friends that the parts of Ukraine that Russians are occupying are places in which Russians are the primary inhabitants. It seems that in Ukraine the situation is not as serious or as dangerous as is reported even in Hungary  There are also ethnic Hungarians that live in Ukraine. These, too, are not seeking to escape.  The scarier news is inflation. In translating for me, my Hungarian friend learned the word subsidize. The Hungarian goverment subsidizes energy for its residents, so the bills are not quite as high as in Romania and Ukraine at the moment. April 3 is Election Day. Even on YouTube I'm bombarded with...

 My Google Photos is showing the snow pictures taken during the ice storm last year. On a video call with my parents and friends from my church in Texas last Saturday, they reported that it was snowing and the snow was blowing in horizontally. My last snow pictures from my current abode were taken the morning of January 24. If memory serves me, the snaw was melted by the afternoon.  During January,  on calls with my parents, they reported balmy weather while I was cold, even bundled up. For the last couple of weeks, though, there have been some days like Satruday, when it was in the 30's in Texas and in the high 40's here. When I went to the prayer meeting last night, it was 60 degrees. Right now, it's cloudy and 42 at 8 in the morning. This week, attendance has been down.  We haven't had any tests to avoid during the second week or big projects to keep students up all night, so the students have no reason to play hooky. Even wearing masks at school, in stores, in ch...

The Spring 2022 semester began on Monday. I had planned to also incorporate a routine writing of this blog on Mondays, but was still preparing presentation slides and first week assignments on Monday morning and was waiting in my office for a student who is studying abroad this semester but still wanted to take my Teaching with Games Class. I am teaching five different courses at the university this semester, so I spent the last couple of weeks organizing my schedule to make sure I don't have five different assignments coming in at the same time. I spent last Saturday coordinating schedules. A screenshot of the fruit of my labor graces the top of this post. My schedule this semester is both jammed together and spread all apart. I have at least one class every day. If you start the cycles at 2 pm, I have 5 classes on Monday and Tuesday, a 22 hour break, 2 classes on Wednesday, a 22 hour break, and five classes (high school classes are only 45 minutes) from Thursday at 2 to Friday no...