Random bullets of midweek muddling

• Whoever assumes that college professors work only a few hours a week ought to take a look at the piles of student drafts I've been taking home every evening. What kind of idiot assigns drafts in four classes in the same week? (Um, that would be me.) I finish commenting on one set of drafts just in time to collect the next set, and then I have to comment on them right away or I'll get inundated by the next set. Why do I do this to myself?
• The most common comment I'm writing on drafts in my literature classes is "An analysis essay composed entirely of plot summary is unlikely to earn a passing grade." Putting it perhaps too gently?
• The local birding group (made up mostly of retired professionals with lots of time on their hands) sent out a flurry of e-mails the other day notifying anyone interested that a harlequin duck had been sighted about 15 miles from where I sit, with frequent updates from every single person who went in search of the visiting duck: "It's swimming in a spot of open water just below the bridge! Now it's moved downstream! I saw the duck I saw the duck! And by the way, I dropped my cell phone somewhere so if you happen to see one in the snow out there, it's mine!" Part of me wanted to drop everything, bundle up, and brave the arctic vortex to go in search of a duck that rarely visits our waters, but I had all those papers to read--and besides, it was cold. Next morning came word that the water had frozen over and the duck was nowhere to be seen, but I still enjoy living in a world in which receiving frequent passionate bulletins about a visiting harlequin duck can be considered normal(ish).
• And today, eagles. The birding group reports that 12 or 14 bald eagles are hanging out and hunting just below a dam that happens to be more or less on my way home. If I leave here while it's still daylight, I'm looking for eagles.
• I'll take away with me today the joy of teaching Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat." (Join us on the Lido Deck where we'll be nibbling the sacred cheese of life, but don't expect pie. Don't even think about pie.) But I'm trying to forget the panicky looks on the faces of my Florida Lit class when I made them do a small-group activity focusing on three assigned readings that very few had actually read. Yes, students, life is difficult. Get over it and move on. (But don't think about pie.)