Bingo! Research Contacts!

So I was having a difficult time finding someone in Panama who knew something about gubernatorial campaigns in the U.S.

My solution was to Facebook my request for contacts, and two of my friends found me people who may be willing to go back and forth with email more in-depth as I am actually doing the writing.

Hooray for technology!

Also, I am rather happy because my struggling student gave me a proposal for her research essay that I was a little worried that she wouldn't complete. We had an entire conversation--no tight lips, no tension, all normal. Hooray!

The bad news is that I am swamped with grading. I have to grade short stories, essays, journal entries and somehow get grades out by Monday. I have a long weekend ahead of me, thank God, but it's very hard to get work done with my daughter around. I get MAYBE 5 hours straggled throughout the day to myself which also includes cleaning the house, doing laundry, etc. I really have no idea how I'll slug through, but I am determined to finish the revised synopsis of my political campaign short story as soon as possible.

A student of mine also gave me the graphic novel V for Vendetta that I am itching to read, and apparently I'm the first of a waiting list. He's dying to find out what I think of it because I used a quote from it to discuss the proles of the novel 1984. You know, the one in which V says that people should not be afraid of their governments, but that governments should be afraid of their people. Granted, Alan Moore is an anarchist and Orwell/Blair was a democratic socialist, but it worked.