Grr

I'm trying to prepare my class for tomorrow, but the election is still too darn distracting, even though it's mostly over: there are still those few remaining races.

I finish talking about Venus tomorrow, and then start with Mars. Mars is actually rather intimidating because there's too much information; we know more about Mars' surface than any other object except Earth and Moon. I have to decide how much geography to teach, and I'm not mentally together enough tonight to do that. I'm trying to cover everything EXCEPT that, so on Friday I can dwell on the surface features. But still, it's damn hard to calm down and focus.

Maybe if I do a little dance of joy. Yay, Dems controlling the House! Yay, no more Rick Santorum! Yay, no more Ken Blackwell! Yay, Democratic governors in NY and MA! *dance dance dance*

Oh, in other news, tomorrow afternoon Mercury is going to cross between us and the Sun, something it won't do again for another decade. It's not big enough to see with the naked eye (given the whole bright-ouchiness of the Sun and all), but if you project an image of the Sun onto a card with a lens you MIGHT see it. Or check out a local astronomy department. I'm going to set up a telescope with a solar filter tomorrow afternoon for my students to see it, assuming I figure out how to make the telescope work. (It's electronic and will theoretically stay pointed at the Sun automatically, but I haven't yet managed to turn it on yet, so I might have to do it manually.)

OK, back to work now....

Election comments

I'll just update this as things occur to me (assuming I can figure out how).


From DailyKOS: "Bush is flustered :) He actually said 'I thought we did fine in the election yesterday'. Wow. If that's how he defines fine, I can see why the war is going so badly."