Oh my God, T-Rex is me.

Catching up from waaaaaay back (I've missed you! and been reduced to sporadic lurking) ....

Susan, all my sympathies - I hope you can use this time with your mother to make some good memories.

Congratulations to vw for the thesis.

I've loved hearing about Byron and his progress - sounds like he's adjusted well (aside from the giant collar).

And Laga, you know what works even better than sage for cleansing a place? setting the offending person's hair on fire. (and report the ass!)

Hugs to all.

I've gotten this sort of "I'm not a D student" or "I'm not a C student" argument before (sometimes way more hostile than this girl was), and I so don't get it.

I have to confess here that I've used exactly that argument, though only once, for one class--a set design class in which the professor said, essentially, "You know that boy, Leonardo da Vinci, in the class ahead of yours? That's the quality of work that gets an A. Now that I've taught Leonardo, that's the standard I have to hold everyone else to." Which, frankly, still rankles; there was indeed a Leonardo in the class before mine, and he was... well, he was Leonardo with set design. Grading everyone who ever took a class after him based on a curve in which he was the A standard was a pure guarantee of near-failure for everyone else.

And the professor admitted that his Leonardoness was the determining factor: yes, I understood the principles of design; yes, I was doing the required work; yes, I was doing extra credit assignments; yes, I appeared to be working to the top of my abilities; but neither I nor anyone else in my class was Leonardo or Michelangelo or Bernini or anyone but a perfectly respectable but non-immortal craftsperson, so, no A's for us.

Conversely, I've totally gotten Cs and Ds that I never contested, because I knew damn well that either I was an A student slacking off or I just plain didn't understand the material and was thus earning exactly the right and just grade.

Has ND seen this?

the grade was measured, not by how people in the class did, but rather by how much you individually improved over the course of the semester. While it was terrifying for me, the grade whore, I do have to say it really pushed me. I couldn't just skate by in that class. Though, there aren't many subjects you can do that in.

I tried to do things like that in my beginning French classes, where, yes, the goal was that you come out with X amount of French but where, by default, the false beginners always had better grades than the others for whom it was all new. The problem these days though is that, in order to be as "fair" as possible, grading systems have to be mathmatical formulas spelled out on your syllabus, which can often make the system much less organically fair.

If you have a refund coming, you don't even have to file an extension.

No, no. You have to file a form 4868 for an extension whether you owe or not. As I recall, you have to give a reason, but "Illness in the family" is more than enough. I have filed many a 4868. My impression is that "The dog ate my tax forms" would also work. If you think you might owe, you can send some wild stab at it, but it's not a big deal. You will have to pay interest on what you owe, but it's low interest.

I got mine done, except for my figuring out how to actually find the money I owe, and then I found out we had an extra month because the county I'm in was declared a disaster area because of the tornado damage.

As I recall, you have to give a reason, but "Illness in the family" is more than enough

Is "my sister is an idiot" a good enough reason?

signed,

still hasn't gotten the needed paperwork yet.

You have to file a form 4868 for an extension whether you owe or not.

Technically, yes, but there's no penalty for not doing so if they owe you money. (In fact, once they tracked me down in another country three years later and made me recollect all my W2s in order to give me my full, entire refund with no penalties at all.)

Oh, also - the paper had a long write-up on Charleton Heston right after he died and in the discussion of "The Ten Commandments" had a mention of an "orgy" (PG-13 rated), with the comment "Would you attend an orgy hosted by Edward G. Robinson?"

"orgy" (PG-13 rated),

Okay, I'm stumped.