2/28: unexpected
...quiet during my office hours today. Though I generally like it when students come for help, having no visitors today meant that I could grade all the Greek tests before leaving work. And that was a good thing, because my evening tasks took me longer than I anticipated.
2/27: spending some time
...digitally tinkering with photos I'd taken as far back as November. I haven't been taking pictures as much recently, and I've been downloading and processing them much less regularly. I don't even understand how I had time to do more with photography in the past; I feel too overloaded these days to add another thing. But it felt good to work with some of the pictures and be surprised at what I had taken and forgotten.
2/26: taking pictures
...of green grass, fallen leaves, and various twigs caught under thin layers of ice. A new subject for iPhone photos during my walk this afternoon.
2/25: ah!
This morning I saw two bluebirds sitting on the electricity lines outside our house. It had been too long since I'd seen any in the neighborhood. Definite rejoicing.
2/24: punctuating
...a work-at-home day by talking with my mother on the phone for an hour this afternoon.
2/23: a good virtual session
...on Greek pronunciation with a student this afternoon. Usually doing Greek via MS Teams is awkward, but today it worked so well. I was able to share a document into which I kept typing new words with slight spelling changes so we could practice specific sounds. The student seemed to make real progress in our 45 minutes together--and the virtual format was perhaps even better than an in-person session would have been.
2/22: similes
...that my students noticed in the Odyssey and brought up in our conversation today without my prompting. There were some other good moments of discussion traction in class today as well, and I was grateful for them.
2/21: midwinter break
It was a day of no classes, so I slept 45 minutes later than usual on a weekday. Chris and I spent the morning on errands, including a doctor's appointment in Little Rock. In the afternoon I went for a walk. This evening I caught up on grading (only a temporary victory, since more papers will come in tomorrow) and replied to a wonderful email from a former student.
2/20: eating pot-pie
...(of the vegetarian variety) for breakfast! We had leftovers from yesterday's dinner, and it was a fun way to start the day.
2/19: going out to woolly hollow
...with Chris for a walk, which entailed a number of good things.
It's so good that Chris' foot has healed enough to make a walk possible.
Being out in the sun was welcome after so much time spent indoors these days.
The color on the creek was different from what I've seen there on other walks, and it's nice to be surprised by seeing a familiar sight in a new way.
And on the drive back we saw a bluebird, which I had been hoping for.
2/18: still seeing
...pelicans on the lake in the morning! This might be the longest they've stayed around.
2/17: things taking a turn
...for the better after a rocky morning and early afternoon. Students in my late afternoon class did some especially nice close reading, and this evening I enjoyed some prep work for tomorrow.
2/16: typing
...the first poem PDF of Heron Tree volume 9, which we'll start publishing next week. The poem is glorious on its own and perfect as the first one in this year's series. It's by a poet whom we've published before, and I feel so lucky that we have the chance to publish her work again. It was so exciting and refreshing to spend time with her piece this evening that I lost my tiredness while readying it.
2/15: getting caught up in thought
I had a hard time concentrating at times today, but at other times I got wrapped up in thinking in ways that felt nice. I made some new-to-me observations about book 14 of the Odyssey. I talked with a friend and colleague about her upcoming conference paper and some similarities with my recent work on romance novels. I looked at some ancient sources adapted by Rick Riordan in The Sea of Monsters and was surprised that my evening prep time flew by.
2/14: two sweet things at school
A friend brought me a homemade chocolate cheesecake!
And I stayed late to work with a student on her Greek homework after dinner. Though I'm trying to minimize evenings on campus, it was the right thing to do in this case: the building was quiet and there weren't other meetings or classes or waiting students limiting our time.
2/13: trying out
...a new cookie combination: I added powdered strawberries and some mint extract to a lemon shortbread batter. I was inspired by the taste of the "echinacea enhancer" strawberry mint lemonade that I used to buy in Los Angeles. I think next time I make them, I'll cut down on the mint extract a little, but all in all, I got the taste!
And while I'm on the subject of Los Angeles tastes, Chris and I had LaBrea Bakery bread for lunch today. So strange (and sweet) to find that part of our lives in the grocery story in Arkansas.
2/12: three surprises
Two were in books: one in the book I'm reading (Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land), and one in the book I'm listening to (Michel Faber's Crimson Petal and the White). I didn't see either coming, and it's nice to be surprised and yet realize that the moves make sense such that, looking back, they're not twists at all.
Another kind of surprise awaited me in my mailbox today: a package from a high-school friend. Just seeing his handwriting on the box cheered me up. The package included some soaps made by his partner, and they are making my home office (where the opened package is right now) smell so good that I'm not sure I want to transfer them into the shower to use!
2/9: looking at sentences
...with students. We talked about the sentences that end the first nine chapters of Rick Riordan's Sea of Monsters, and they had nice things to say about individual sentences and about general trends.
2/8: finding
...a great snippet from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations to share with the Greek students: o kosmos alloiōsis. The order of things is the process of becoming other. This is extraordinary. I ran into a colleague I hadn't talked to in years at the end of the day, and I told her about it, and she loved it too.
2/7: starting
...the work-week on a nice note by seeing a rabbit hop across my path as I walked down the hill to my car this morning and also by spending some time appreciating the Jack Frost patterns on my car windows.
2/5: coming together
I've been tinkering with some ideas for projects for the past two weeks or more, and nothing seemed to click. Today there was some clicking for two different projects. I try not to get anxious and frustrated when things don't come together quickly, but I'll admit I was getting frazzled at being stymied on two fronts, and it feels good to end the day unfrazzled.
2/4: good things in books
I got to think about similes as I was comparing a Vergilian simile to one from Rick Riordan's Lightning Thief. While I was making the salad for dinner, I told Chris that it always makes a day better when I get to think about similes.
After dinner Chris and I read more of Moominland Midwinter aloud. It was a fantastic chapter about a blizzard (among other things), which made it fitting material for a snowed-in day.
And I looked at Twain's Extracts from Adam's Diary with a view to using it in a project soon.
2/3: outright cancelled
I didn't teach online today after all: my school officially cancelled everything due to weather. That didn't make the day "free" for me (like snow days of childhood), since I spent a lot of time figuring out how to reconfigure things to cover the missed material and rearrange assignments. Still, I think it was good for me to have a break from people (other than Chris and the cats) today.
2/2: being relieved
...that we'll be allowed to shift our classes online tomorrow and Friday if the winter weather that's coming our way makes getting to campus tricky. In the past that hasn't been an option, and the decision to drive into town or not on icy and/or snowy days was stressful. In December we had gotten word that we wouldn't be able to go online for weather-related reasons; I'm glad that the administration changed its view.
2/1: two Greek things
The quotation I started Greek class with today came from Hippocrates, and it made me think about the impetus behind ancient (and maybe modern?) medicine: to find any patterns amid the great varieties and differences of "both souls and bodies," to use Hippocrates' phrasing.
And then I lingered on a simile in the Odyssey that I can't believe I hadn't been struck by before: the Phaeacian women's hands, moving quickly while weaving, are like leaves on a tree.
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