Avril's OzBlog

[sunfrog]

Tyler's ad is giving out the wrong ads that's why it's not making money. It was giving me ads for cosmetics. That can't be right.

[Avril]

What, you don't use product! Sunfrog!

[Avril]

Assignment marking time.

Term 2's first assignment is due at midnight this coming Sunday for both my online classes, They're two different classes, Part I and Part II of the same module. The more advanced studes have got theirs in early, bless 'em. I've reciprocated by marking them immediately and posting them back. I give copious feedback and detailed notes on how they can score higher next time. Most studes seem appreciative.

So far the assignments are either brilliant or barely adequate, being woefully bland, superficial and uninsightful. What's happening to my bell curve? WHERE ARE THE MEDIOCRE STUDES? Possibly this sample of early essays indicates students who are either too anxious or very competent, with the ordinary students struggling to get theirs in on time. We'll see.

[PigsnieLite]

I wondur how many students call you nasty names behind your back. Wheeeeee!

[Avril]

How would I find out? Why should I care? ;D

[dragrat]

I've done my assignments!! Not another for six weeks!!! yayayya

[Avril]

Whaddya get? Credit, Distinction, High Distinction? Or are they just Pass/Fail assignments?

[dragrat]

I don't know actually. I'll have to show you next time I see you.. I've only had two assignments that are pass/fail or as they like to call it, satisfactory/unsatisfactory...

[Avril]

How do you find that? Isn't it annoying?

[Avril]

Here's an excerpt from my new book. Feedback welcome.

In a busy family-friendly Italian restaurant recently I noticed a family of eight. Two parents in their late forties accompanied five children and the fiancé of one daughter, ranging in age from three to twenty-two. They were enjoying a regular weekly outing in their favourite eatery, owned and run by an old friend from their home town in Calabria.

The youngest was Isabella, three, a dark-eyed little beauty. Rarely seated, she looped around her family’s long table, receiving mouthfuls of squid linguine, pesto ravioli, buttered herb bread, a prawn here and an olive there from her parents and siblings. Venturing farther, she wandered from her family’s table to the front desk, to the kitchen. She chattered happily to staff as they whizzed around her and stopped at the tables of other diners to make friends. At each table she would stand still for long enough to make joyful eye contact, naturally adorable, until she got a smiling response from complete strangers. She happily told me about her family, naming each one. Then she was off again. Her parents and siblings kept an eye on her to make sure she was not annoying anyone. She was delightful, and it was clear in the relaxed, loving attitudes of most members of her family that she was given a great deal of love and security.

Gracie, her next older sister, was a different story. At ten, this child was overweight and anxious, leaving her seat more than once to lie across her mother’s lap and constantly whining and complaining. Her mother’s response appeared to be annoyed and resigned, as though she’d had to deal with Gracie’s neediness many times, fruitlessly, in the past. In her clinginess and evident unhappiness, it seemed that Gracie felt ignored and unnoticed.

Looking a little closer, I noticed most of the attention in that family, when not momentarily on the enchanting Isabella, was on the only son. The hierarchy of seating at the table subtly underscored it. Seated at the honoured head of the table, flanked by his father and the fiancé of one of the girls, handsome, seventeen-year-old Frankie was the focus of all eyes. Not all children in a family feel emotionally secure to the same degree. Each has their individual personalities, and the family dynamic is often not straightforward.

The boy Frankie was literally at the centre of the family, with two older sisters and two younger. Gracie was placed at the opposite end of the table, the low end, between her mother and her eldest sister. The oldest girl was spectacled, demure with downcast eyes and an unflattering haircut. She sat unobtrusively next to the second oldest, prettier, curly-haired sister, who in turn leaned into her fiancé, her arm entwined in his. In this formation at the long table, little Isabella’s wanderings were like scalloped lace around a central motif.

We stood to leave, having finished our meal. Isabella was there at our table, eyeing the complimentary chocolate I'd left on my saucer.

'Can I have it?' she asked. It was impossible to say no, though I looked at her mother first for her okay.

The chocolate disappeared into the rosebud mouth, and simultaneously Gracie began to wail and sob, directing to herself a stern shhh from her eldest sister and an exasperated frown from her mother, instead of the sweetie her darling little sister had gobbled.

[PigsnieLite]

why didnt you tell Isabella to share the sweetie wid Gracie? Poor thing. This is like a subplot in all those Regency romances Ive ..errr .. skimmed ... the Wallflower, the Diamond & the Attractive Heir.

[Avril]

Gracie was not connecting with anyone but mamma, and was too far away. Isabella felt entitled to all sweeties available.

You mean I write like a bodice-ripper writer!!?? Gee THANKS!

[PigsnieLite]

A Regency romance is not a bodice ripper, madame. Tsk tsk tsk. Georgette Heyer would turn over in her grave.

That Isabella is going to be a fat butterball someday, wid all that food wheedling. Me, I always feel sorry for the *ugly duckling* of the family.

[Avril]

Hmm, Georgette Heyer has escaped the purview of my perusing eye. But I've read all the Regency contemporaries. Does that count for something?

True about la principessa Isabella. Remember Gracie would have been the darling youngest favoured by all before Isabella came along.

[sunfrog]

Does seating at a table mean anything in real life? Our tables don't have heads. We don't put chairs on the ends, those are the ends. They go against the wall or just sit there unused.