It's late at night, so I can't feel bad that I am procrastinating on other work - all I "should" be doing at the moment is sleeping! I've always done my best work when burning the midnight oil - just like my mother and my grandmother. My mother says, "it's the shank of the evening" when it is 10 p.m. But I have mostly forced myself to conform to the world's 9 to 5 schedule (and I've found in some places 8 to 4 is preferred), although I have a bad habit of being habitually late. Oh well! I can't change, or maybe I just don't feel like changing. I still try to keep up a "regular" schedule - except that I don't start my work day at 8 or 9, but the much more civilized 10-ish. So there.

Tonight I went to the YMCA to go swimming. We have a new one nearby, and it hasn't had time to get stinky yet. Among types of exercise, swimming ranks up there in being enjoyable - although my eyes are burning from the extreme amount of chlorine. And that much activity makes it harder for me to sleep. So I guess I can see what all the fanatics say about having more energy after exercise!

My class is coming to the end - it is finals week - and I am reminded of the reasons I like teaching. Several students comment to me about how they will never forget the class, or how much they learned. They thank me. Now, I know it is possible that some percentage is apple polishing - but I'm a person who likes to believe that a larger percentage is sincere. It makes it all worth it, every semester.

I am starting to get a little steamed...I read in one of the interviews on the home page that there are more than 500,000 users of Blogger - the numbers grow every day - so it seems reasonable to assume that at least a few others decided to invest in a micro-ad. As I wrote on Tuesday, I posted something in user-to-user about this, but have not received any comments from others, which considering those numbers, is strange. My order is still listed as "pending rad approval." My money was transferred on 5/2. That's an eternity in the online world! I have sent two emails asking about the status, and received no response. Now $10 isn't much, but I think it is a question of goodwill. Maybe the system isn't up and running yet or something, and that's fine. But I think some kind of communication is in order. Apart from the ad thing though, lately Blogger has been working fine - so much so, in fact, that I got the nerve to tinker a bit with the template. (More to come, although nothing major is in the works.)