Last Day with students

This series against the Padres is a perfect example of why the Tigers are a team that will drive you to drink. After playing piss poor for a couple of weeks - coincidentally, the moment the team hit .500 they went into a tailspin, starting with that Rafael Palmeiro grand slam in Detroit - they're now on the verge of sweeping the first place Padres. At times, this team looks like championship caliber. But when they're bad, they're really bad. 83 wins - that's all I want. That will mark a 40-game improvement in just two years.

Speaking of which, I hate interleague play. It might be cool for a few teams that are nearby to each other, but it sucks for the vast majority of teams in the league that don't have natural rivals. This year, the Tigers' big rival was... the Diamondbacks. That sucks! Now they're playing the Padres, who they beat in the 1984 World Series, but is hardly a rival. Because of the 18 interleague games, all teams play a crappy unbalanced schedule that takes away from better rivalries than the interleague games. For example, the Tigers only plays bigtime 1980s rivals the Blue Jays twice this year. They've only played the Orioles - who I always considered a prominent AL East rival to the Tigers while growing up, mainly because of the Ripken vs. Trammell plus the Al Kaline connection - for two series a year since I moved to Baltimore. This year, they've played three, but only eight games - still not much.

Today was the last day with students, and I went home early to grade my finals at home instead of my hot classroom. It's all pretty loose around there right now, so it wasn't a problem. I'm grading and watching the Tigers game on mlbtv, and am about to head to the gym once I get through this next stack. Grading has been pleasant. Sometimes I run across a depressing essay - this one girl who decided to write an essay all in one paragraph, then give me a little note at the end thanking me for all she's learned this year (the girl failed the class, badly, and apparently didn't learn that essays have paragraphs in them... poor, sweet kid who didn't belong in Honors English), or another kid who decides to write about one first semester text rather than two texts from second semester - but, for the most part, they're really good; I feel like they learned. Most of the classes have A's or B's on the essays, which is a nice feeling. It's also pretty great to grade essays and just evaluate them without writing comments. Since the kids won't be seeing them, they're just an evaluative tool, not a learning tool, and grading essays goes a lot quicker without commenting or circling errors.

Tomorrow, I'm flying to Maine for a wedding. Based on the recommendation of a friend, I will drive down to the Falls Church Metro Stop (no idea where that is, but I assume I'll be able to find directions somewhere on the internet), then take the shuttle over to Dulles Airport. Officially you cannot park there for more than twenty-four hours, but this friend tells me that he's parked there over a weekend all the time and nothing happens unless you park for over 24 hours during the week. If anyone has additional insight, I'd appreciate it.