http://zemblangrammar.com Alfina the Vague: shamelessly overusing commas since 2004. Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:09:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Thanks, everybody, for the words of encouragement here and elsewhere.  It was really nice to wake up the morning of my presentation and see your friendly comments in my email! My talk went well, even though the panel chair managed to cause some delays and technical difficulties -- almost setting the ... http://zemblangrammar.com/2008/10/05/back-to-the-grindstone/ I've got to dash off a quick post while my laptop seems to be working -- earlier today, the display backlight wasn't functioning, and, though the computer itself was working just fine, I couldn't actually SEE anything on the screen.  Knock wood and all, it seems fine now. In fact, ... http://zemblangrammar.com/2008/10/02/mercury-retrograde-please-let-this-be-all-you-have-in-store-for-me/ So far, this week has been one magical moment after the next, most of which have involved grading.  I know, you are all incredibly jealous of the fact that every couple of weeks I have to read, analyze, grade, and comment on hundreds of student essays that demonstrate only the ... http://zemblangrammar.com/2008/10/01/whippersnappers-for-president/ I'm faced with about 47 million bad literature papers to grade right now, and I thought I'd share the pleasure with you, dear readers.  I'll be posting actual quotations from my whippersnappers' essays on Twitter.  If you don't already follow me on Twitter, you can see them in the sidebar ... http://zemblangrammar.com/2008/09/29/this-is-actual-now-on-twitter/ It's been a long, long week of grading and other lame duties -- no, seriously; my week even included that quintessentially Lamest of the Lame Duties, an afternoon spent at the DMV. Actually, a morning and an afternoon. Five hours, almost! (Sidebar: Can you believe it? FIVE HOURS? ALMOST? I had ... http://zemblangrammar.com/2008/09/26/perfect-friday/