RBOC: Mired in the semester

• This semester may never actually end.  CBU actually lists the due date for grades as December 26.  Fucking seriously, CBU?
• I just finished grading the papers for my little topics course.  On to the two intro courses' worth.  Oy.
• Two more weeks of classes before the exam period even starts.  Seriously, FML.
• On the plus side, I'm still wringing the occasional tenure-track job posting to apply to out of this semester's listings.  This seems more exciting than it really is only because I've already begun to steel myself to give up on the tenure track and apply to more contract jobs.
• Three weeks away, and I'm already dreading going to visit the folks in Hometown.  At least I'm only going for a single week.
• This should be the place in the post in which I complain about having to teach a truly pointless January term course, thus rendering my winter break almost non-existent.  But, since that will at least occupy some of my mind and make me wake up at normal hours so I can work, it may well be a blessing in disguise.
• The wretched Christmas shopping season is upon us, complete with that goddamn music in every place of retail business, including my local bar.  I grit my teeth.
• Which reminds me: when people here in Cornstate ask you this or that about "the holidays" coming up, and you explain that you don't actually celebrate that holiday, they think you're setting them up for a punchline.
• Then, when you explain that you're a Jew, they think you're using some kind of profanity in a sick self-deprecation bit gone wrong.  It terrifies me to see South Park come to life in any degree.