My Wednesday schedule. I do most of my work during regular business hours on Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday, while scheduling my out-of-office commitments on Wednesdays. That means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails on Wednesday than on the other days of the week - but if you send me an email during the day on Wednesday, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.
Storybook Stack. I'm still making my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 5 PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me. If you turned in an assignment after 5 PM on Sunday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I read and reply to the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so if you want comments back sooner, try to turn in your assignment before the final due date. The majority of people turn in the assignment on the last day it is due, and that means it sometimes takes me several days to get comments back to you.
September 8: Final day to drop with refund. Monday, September 8, will be the final day to drop a class and get a full refund. So, if you are finding out that this class does not fit into your schedule after all, or that the workload is too demanding, you can still drop the class and get a refund. The Week 2 assignments will give you a sense of what the regular weekly assignments will be like for the rest of the semester, so you will have a good basis on which to make your decision.
September 3: Ganesh Chaturthi 2008. The Ganesh Chaturthi holiday honors Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god. You can read more about the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, which lasts for a total of 10 days, in this detailed Wikipedia article. Ganesha is the god who bestows blessings on the beginnings of things, and he is known as a remover of obstacles, so we are very fortunate to have his festival come at the beginning of the semester. This image shows part of the elaborate festival celebration in the city of Mumbai:
Here is a sand sculpture of Ganesha made by Sudarsan Patnaik, a famous sand artist from Orissa state, on India's eastern coast:
