9/30: coming across

..this from W. B. Yeats: "The birds of fairyland are said to be white as snow."

9/29: glowing

After I finished kayaking I joined Chris and our neighbor at the dock, where they had built a fire and were hanging out.  As we talked it got darker and darker.  At one point Chris walked away from the fire circle to look at something in the grass and then called us over:  he had seen an insect glowing green and wanted to check it out.  None of us had ever seen a bug like it before.  It was an actual glowworm!

9/28: two seasons

...in the air at once during my evening walk:  the spring smell of honeysuckle and the autumn scent of fallen leaves.

9/27: a good meeting

...with my committee colleagues today.  A very welcome 50 minutes of bureaucratic sanity.

9/26: other people's art

This morning I was reading a poem that a friend of mine had recently gotten published--and--boom--there I was in the poem, unexpectedly, mentioned twice.

And this afternoon a student stopped by my office to drop off a copy of print she made.  I am so happy to have it!

9/25: an unexpected conversation

...with a friend at the end of the work-day.

9/24: finishing

...a draft of a bureaucratic document that ended up not being too hard or time consuming after all.

9/23: Tilde and Simon

...coming onto the bed.  Emma and Phineas sleep with us all the time.  Tilde used to (in the days before Simon), but now that Simon's here both of them stay aloof from one another and stay away from our bed.  At separate times today, though, they came onto the bed and slept and cuddled with us, and that made me happy.  The real victory will be when they both consent to be on the bed at the same time!

9/22: gin

It was a bit of a rough day arthritis pain-wise.  At dinner time I decided to try drinking some gin, which often helps.  And it did.  I'm not sure why it works--other kinds of alcohol and spirits don't--but I'm grateful for the relief.  (And having the gin mixed with seltzer water and some of the mint-and-basil syrup I made this summer was lovely even without the medicinal effect.)

9/21: writing of all sorts

Some days the words don't come easily; other days I manage sentence after sentence.  Today I produced a fair amount of bureaucratic prose for work, went to the library in the late afternoon for a quiet writing session, and tinkered with a Homeric cento using Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey.  And now I get to write here, happily marking the 10th anniversary of this blog!

9/20: the OED

In the Odyssean cento I worked on last night I used the word grain in a potentially odd way, and today I worried about it.  So I decided to consult the Oxford English Dictionary's entry on grain--and hurrah.  I didn't know that grain used to be used to refer to dye, especially red dyes.  That makes my use of it in the cento even better and not odd at all. 

Though I still have my 2-volume compact OED (which my father got for me back in the 1980s by joining a book club so he'd receive it as a welcome gift), I love using the online OED nowadays.  I'm so grateful that my school has a subscription to it.

9/19: Odyssean centos

I'm preparing to do a cento workshop (using Homer's Odyssey as the source text) at school in early October and then at a professional conference later in the month.  This summer I worked on a Homeric cento using Chapman's famous translation, and last night and today I've made two little ones using Lattimore's text.  When I teach the Odyssey I use Fagles' translation because of its high readability for students, but Lattimore's version has a more Homeric texture so it's been interesting to use for this project.

9/18: getting to think

...about Seneca's Phaedra.  I'm so glad I chose it as the Latin text for this year's senior Classics majors.  It seems like a good fit for them, and it feels like a good fit for me these days, too.

9/17: ending the day

...by reading more of The Priory in bed.  It was a day of weirdness that had me keyed up, but the novel helped me unwind.

9/16: feeling better

...today, though with some lingering wooziness.  I managed to catch up on a few things (grading homework assignments, doing some Heron Tree stuff, sweeping the floors), read an older New York Times Book Review that I had never gotten to, get farther in my Dorothy Whipple novel, talk to a friend, and watch some TV with Chris.  All of that was good.

9/15: starting to read

...another novel by Dorothy Whipple (The Priory this time), and the first page was so good.  I feel like I'm in the hands of an expert guide.

9/14: the time of the year

...when the orb weavers' webs are out in the morning.

9/13: two of us

I stopped at the pier on my way home from work this afternoon, and while I was there taking pictures another woman stopped.  Before she left she told me she felt like she just had to stop and photograph the water and clouds, and she seemed glad that I felt the same urge too.

9/12: early

I thought I'd be handing in my five-year evaluation dossier around 4, but I had it ready to submit by 1:30, and I was glad to get it out of my hands that much sooner.

9/11: being grateful

...for the nice vegetarian selections at the school cafeteria, for the wonderful people who work in dining services, and for the getting a "disco tray" (a gold glittery tray that's supposed to be good luck when it happens to come your way) for the fourth time this semester already.

9/10: coyotes

...yipping and howling in what sounds like a frenzy.  I know I'd be scared if I saw them up close when they're being so vocal, but it's still pretty thrilling to listen to them in the night when I know I'm safely separate from them yet still close enough to feel like they're my neighbors (because they are).

9/9: yoga

When I told my doctor this summer that my arthritis pain medication wasn't working all the time, she gave me samples of a scarier medicine that I decided not to take once I read about its side effects.  I decided to recommit to doing yoga instead, and I think it's helped.  Now that school is in session it's harder to fit in, but I did some both mornings this weekend and it felt good.

9/8: full draft done

...of my self-evaluation letter for work.

9/7: a lucky break

As the rain started coming down hard on my drive to work this morning I realized that I had forgotten my umbrella--but then it paused, just as I pulled into the parking lot on campus.

9/6: forgetting

...some of my work at school.  Not enough of a problem that I needed to go back and get it, but enough of an excuse to go walking at the track for the third night in a row.

9/5: pausing

...in the morning at the pier to take some pictures (for the first time this school year):


...and in the evening on the deck to see the stars.  It made me think of James Joyce's "heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit," a phrase I have loved for decades.

9/4: lots of words!

I was lucky today in getting to spend time with different kinds of texts:
The English Teacher by Lily King, an unsettling but somehow compelling novel;

Phaedra by Seneca, which I'm translating with the senior Latin students;

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, which I just started listening to while walking and was kind of charmed by;
 and
The Gospel of Mark, which my students did a narrative analysis of.

9/3: unexpected lunch out

Our electricity went off in the middle of the night and wasn't scheduled to be restored until the late afternoon.  So we went out into town for a lunch of pizza and beer!

9/2: lots of time

...with Tilde the Cat.

9/1: an okay start

...to the writing of my "self-evaluation" letter.  There's plenty more to go, but I'm glad to be well into it now; the pre-thinking of it was beginning to stress me out unduly.