And that's the last of the snow pictures, folks. The snow itself left days ago. Tonight it feels more like Florida during hurricane season (well, O.K., minus the heat). The wind's blowing like crazy!

Which it was this morning, too, with the charming addition of rain. Ever noticed, when you're riding a bike, that the wind is always against you? Heading in to work this morning, the wind was out of the east. Coming home, it was out of the west. You can figure out which way I was going each time.

Now, today, so far, marks a historical first. I turned in my first set of marks today, which means that, by this point, I should have received at least two or three emails from students wondering by what cosmic injustice they've come to fail the course. So far? Nuthin'. Very weird. Oh, well - tomorrow's another day.

Oh! Spoke too soon. An hour later and the emails are rolling in. But! Only one of them is about having failed. All the others are actually "thank-you"s! This, too, is a surprise.

The "thank-you" emails also point up an interesting, and sad, aspect of how education works. Some of the students were thanking me for their grade. Now, I'd love to be able to accept the credit, but I didn't do anything. They're the ones who worked their butts off studying. All I do is try to convince them that it's worthwhile. That the material is actually interesting, and worth taking some time to try to learn. So: Attention students everywhere! You're the ones doing the work! You're the ones putting all that information into your heads! You're the ones learning! Give yourselves the credit, 'cause you deserve it.

But, feel free to be nice to your teachers/instructors/professors, too.