If having a cold and finding a second case of academic dishonesty were not enough of an impediment to finalizing grades, yesterday a neighbor came home early from work and mowed the grass for what seemed like 7 hours straight. I had the window to my office open -- it was a beautiful day and it gets hot upstairs. I'm noise sensitive, and by 6 PM I thought I would go insane. Then today a crew of roofers arrived; they are ripping the shingles off the house of that same neighbor! What the...? What's the next thing that is going to happen to ruin my progress, flames shooting out of my computer, frying the files on both the hard drive and the back-up flash drive?

Amazingly, the dogs have been fairly restrained. If they barked all day (not unexpected given the construction activity, shouting etc.) I would have to throw in the towel. I should note that Rosie still doesn't bark at anything except Sam when she believes he is threatening the food. (She is crated during all eating.) Perhaps her calming presence has influenced Sam's desire to bark?  (He barks plenty otherwise though so I am not sure.)

So "dogs" should not have been plural. I wrote it out of habit, because Sophie and Sam enjoyed barking their heads off together whenever one of them detected something that was worthy of barking. (It is a low standard, BTW.) And Sophie would have been furious over the various noises and workers on ladders. I'd happily throw in the towel if she was still here to do it. :-(

As it is, I have made surprisingly good strides even with the various distractions and at this point can see that I will make the deadline without breaking a sweat.