9/29: finding
...a Daphne-inspired poem I really like, "Waking" by Margaret Kaufman. And looking at some Daphne-related art. And generally thinking about Daphne today.
9/28: discussing
...Ancient Greek drama's meditation on bodies with my freshman seminar students. They had good things to say about that and about all of today's topics for pulling together this part of the course.
9/27: being grateful
...for my Greek class this semester. They had their first test this afternoon, and it was wonderful to sit there, quietly working while they were taking it, and just feel how good they are, as people and as students.
9/25: sleeping in
I used to rely on "natural rising"--not setting an alarm--on weekends during the school year and everyday during the summer. But Tilde the Cat's situation means that we have to keep more regular hours: we need to follow a consistent schedule of feeding and insulin shots. So I haven't slept in since she came home from the cat hospital in early June. Yesterday I asked Chris if he could do the morning shift with Tilde so that I could have a day with natural rising, and he did. It felt weird to have fewer hours to do things in the morning! But I needed the rest and to be freed from the clock a bit.
9/24: enforcing
...a Saturday without schoolwork. I usually try to do that, but recently I've needed to do things on Saturdays just to stay afloat. But today I really needed to shift focus. Chris and I watched a lot of Ink Master, but I also walked for an hour on the ridge, texted back-and-forth with a friend, made fried rice (twice! for both lunch and dinner!), baked some walnut meringue cookies with Fiori di Sicilia flavoring, swept the house while listening to a novel, and ordered a bunch of postcards before the sale at Moo.com ends.
9/23: a colleague and friend
...who talked with me for a couple of hours on Friday afternoon when the situation at work just felt like it was more than I could handle.
9/22: spending a few minutes
...with the sky at sunrise and sunset, and with the campus labyrinth at midday.
9/21: being grateful
...for another bloggiversary, for Chris and the cats, for our house and food, and for an evening of work during which I managed to return myself to calmness after a flurried morning and afternoon.
9/20: spending
...some of the day without my brace on. The doctor said that I should start wearing it only part of the time. It feels strange not to have it on, and I'm hoping that enough healing has happened, but it's also very nice to be able to work in the kitchen without putting a nitrile glove over the brace on my right hand. It was much easier to make salad this evening with my hand unencumbered.
9/19: grabbing an anthology
...of haiku on my way out of the house in the morning so that I'd have it to read while waiting at my doctor's appointment in the afternoon.
9/17: getting through
...a set of grading this evening. I am still behind (sigh), but less behind than I could be.
9/16: photographing
...the clouds this morning near sunrise so I could send a picture to the Memory Cloud Atlas for today's first observation of Cloud Appreciation Day.
9/15: the last meeting of the day
...was with a beginning Latin student. I don't know her well, but she seems really nice, and she's working carefully to learn the material. The day had some non-student-related workplace frustrations, so a positive meeting with a good student was not only wonderful on its but also an especially appreciated way to close out my time at the office.
9/14: talking with a former student
...in passing this afternoon, and hearing that her internship from this past summer has turned into a full-time job that she can step into once she finishes her degree. How wonderful that she doesn't need to do job-hunting during the flurry of her senior year!
9/13: a description
...of the graphical qualities of the capital letter alpha by the five-year-old Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
9/11: using
...a somewhat new-to-me flavoring: Fiori di Sicilia. I got it last month, and I used it recently as a substitute for vanilla in a plum cake and in a chocolate cake. Today I used it in a walnut/cracker/meringue pie. It made the whole thing taste like torrone. Amazing.
9/10: cool enough
...to take my morning walk outside instead of on the treadmill. ("Cool" is relative: it was 76 degrees, but that felt like a relief compared to the temperatures earlier this summer.)
9/9: ending the week
...at school by discussing Lilliam Rivera's Never Look Back with some fellow faculty. It's one of the best feelings for me when a book group meeting goes well.
9/8: plenty of time
...to get from my dental appointment in the early-ish morning to a meeting in the later morning. I had thought it might be tight, so I was nervous, but I ended up having time for a half a cup of coffee in between.
9/5: baking
...a mock apple pie for the first time. I remember hearing about it from Chris as many as 30 years ago! He had never had it, but he mentioned it as a curiosity. And it stayed an untried curiosity all this time. But now we can say that we've had it. And yes, a pie made out of syrup-soaked crackers can taste a lot like apple pie.
9/4: ordering
...postcards of photos I've taken. I used to do this every month, but in the latter half of 2019 I stopped and have only occasionally ordered a few since then. Now I'm trying to go through my "archives" and order prints of select photos from then to now. It'll take a quite some time to get caught up (there are thousands of digital pictures to look through, and uploading to the ordering site is slow), but at least things are in motion now.
9/3: sending off
...prints of two collages which my sister and I had collaborated on: she would add an element to each and mail them to me; I'd do the same and mail them back to her. When they were done, I photographed them and had the photos made into postcards. I sent her a couple of each and a set to my mother and brother. I had dilly-dallied way too long in getting the postcards made, so it felt like a little guilt was lifting as I put them in the mailbox this morning.
9/2: hearing
...the first round of student mini-presentations in the first-year course. It's hard for the students in the first round because everything is still so new and they haven't seen any examples yet. But the three students today did a very nice job: they chose interesting passages from Iphigeneia at Aulis and had thoughtful things to say about them. I think they set the class up well for future mini-presentations.
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