“I thought you said this haunted house was supposed to be frightening,” he complained.
“No,” she said calmly as she led him onward. “I merely promised you’d be frightened. I didn’t tell you when. Or why.”
Month: November 2019
Modern Problems With the Staircase Grading Method
One of Prairie’s classes turns in papers tomorrow, and as she’s dealing with a cold, she said she wasn’t looking forward to having to grade while her head is all foggy. So I suggested using the “staircase method” (for those who aren’t teachers, this involves tossing the papers down the staircase: the further down the stairs they go, the better the grade, because more pages = heavier papers).
She then pointed out that her students turn their papers in electronically, and mimed tossing her laptop.
“Thud, thud, thud. Well, they all got the same grade, and now you need a new laptop.”
She decided not to do that.
It’s not the scarecrow itself that’s bothersome. Okay, we don’t know who put it up, and it’s a bit disquieting that it’s dressed in our child’s old clothes. But it’s the slowly oozing goo that constantly drips off of the stick fingers that really gets me.
Good news: My Norwegian Blu-ray Edition Monty Python box set from Network arrived!
Bad news: As gorgeous as the box is, the internal structure didn’t hold up through international shipping.
Still, it’s the content that counts, and I’m looking forward to watching these!
She was used to seeing the street disappear into the distance in fog, or in the dark. Seeing it fade away into nothingness in the bright light of mid-day, however, was a new experience. As she started walking, she wondered if she would fade away as well.
They had been observing the planet for close to seven orbits around its star, and yet they were still avoiding making contact. Never before had they found an advanced species where every identified language had the concept of “being mean”.
Fashion had reached such heights over the years, with everyone doing their very best to upstage everyone else at every event, that perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the prize for best fancy dress went to a janitor in plain unadorned overalls.
Nobody knew if people left the town on their own, or were taken against their will. All anyone knew for sure was that one day, they were there, and the next, they were gone — and there was one more mark carefully inscribed on the wall surrounding the town.
The key didn’t look particularly important. Just one of many on the keychain. Weathered metal, obviously long-used, but nobody could remember when it was last turned. The mystery wasn’t what lock it would open, but what would be released when it was used.