Friday, May 14, 2010

as we walk in fields of gold

As it is apparently a pretty cinematic week 'round these parts, we went to see Iron Man 2 last night. (I've also watched both A Streetcar Named Desire and Party Monster this week.) IM2 is pretty much exactly what you'd think it would be: it's nowhere near as bad as some early reviews implied that it was, but it certainly doesn't exceed the original. The only thing in it that really bothered me was a touch of lazy writing: to have two Russian characters and not ever really acknowledge what that means...I don't know. I suppose that a) one of the characters is technically American (in which case the naming of that character is unfortunate) and b) as Mat points out, the vast majority of the film's audience knows nothing about twentieth century Russian history. (Which is, I suppose, unfortunate, since so much of the Iron Man stuff is informed by the Cold War...)

I received my course evaluations for the Winter term in my mailbox at work yesterday, and they were the best set of evaluations that I've received yet. (We are evaluated by both a 5-point Likert scale scantron sheet as well as an anonymous written form.) I received a 4.40 out of a possible 5.00 for my Likert scores, and the most negative comment that I received in the written was that I was "just okay" in seminar. I also had a couple of people comment that I was "well-groomed" which is...hilarious? bizarre? irrelevant? untrue? I try not to think too much about my evaluations because they don't necessarily mean anything, but I have to confess, it's particularly gratifying to have such good evaluations for this term because my evaluations for the Fall term were actually the worst evaluations I've had in my three years here. It feels good to have made that kind of improvement, and to know that my students enjoyed this year as much as I did.

I've cast on a February Baby Sweater, and I have to say, it's a bit terrifying. EZ's pattern doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me, but I am trying my best to trust that it will turn out well. I guess that if it doesn't, at least it's a very small sweater, so ripping back won't be too painful. I'm using one of the yarns I picked up last weekend, a superwash DK dyed by Tanis Fiber Arts in a beautiful blue/purple mix, and it's knitting up beautifully.

1 comment:

Sparky said...

Oooh, Feb. Baby? Sounds lovely!

IM2 was pretty good, I agree. I don't know much about Russian History, mainly because I've always hated studying history... too many dates and things to remember. I have a hard enough time remembering my own history, so the bits I do get interested in have to be pretty engrossing. I thought the storyline was more about how Americans have a bad habit of taking credit for ideas that aren't totally theirs, and how celebrity is more important to the "first world" nations than the effect of pretty much anything on other people.

I'd really like to see how your february baby sweater turns out! :)