9/14: another anthem

...and this time for Monday.  As I was driving home this afternoon I heard The Bangles' "Manic Monday" on the radio.

9/13: fitting in

...some baking amid work and other frustrations.  In the morning I made my blueberry baked oatmeal for the week ahead.  In the afternoon I made a chocolate-pepper-pecan galette.

9/12: making progress

...on some bureaucracy for work, even though the website was down!

9/11: an anthem

...for Fridays:  "Friday I'm in Love" by The Cure.  Chris and I danced to it in the morning.

9/10: quiet time

...in my school office with the digitization of the Codex Amiatinus.

9/9: a student's laugh

...as they sight-read a (silly) little dialogue in Ancient Greek.

9/7: day 2

...of the cleaning-my-school-office-carpet project.  It is much better now.

9/6: if I hadn't

...gone into my school office this evening to scrub my rug, I wouldn't have seen light on the lake glinting through green leaves.

If I hadn't forgotten the vacuum's battery, I wouldn't have seen the small rabbit hopping across the road as I returned to the house to get it.

If I hadn't left my office when I did, I wouldn't have seen pink clouds at sunset.

(I really didn't want to go into my school office to scrub my rug, but I'm glad I did.)

9/5: getting

...some work done that cleared my mind.

9/4: designing

...a pamphlet in a 10-minute stretch between meetings.

9/3: streamlining

...the grading of an assignment I've been using for a few years now.  I like it--the students need to collect passages of interest to them from the day's reading assignment--but my system for determining partial credit had gotten too complicated.  I'm hopeful that this will be smoother for me and for the students.

9/2: starting verbs

...in Greek.  We had a week of preliminaries (alphabet, pronunciation, accenting ground rules, technical terminology for verbs), and it feels good to now be generating and translating forms with the students.

9/1: ducklings

...popped into my head as I was making up English sentences to explain active, middle, and passive voice to the Greek students.  I save the duckling.  I save the duckling for my own benefit.  The duckling is saved.  It made me smile, and I think it helped the atmosphere in the classroom.

8/31: a good switch

...in my school-morning breakfast routine.  A batch of baked oatmeal with blueberries can last all week.  It keeps me more satisfied than cereal, and it has less sugar (and more protein) than the chocolate flaxseed muffins I sometimes make.

8/30: hand-feeding

...Emma the Cat his pill.  He is very good about taking it that way, and I am grateful every day that it isn't a contest of wills.

8/29: thinking a little

...about museums in children's literature, prompted by a student's observation yesterday, and enjoying coming up with some new thoughts.

8/28: squeezing in

...some bookbinding.  I went to bed thinking about a possible solution to a teaching conundrum (what bindings to include or not in a course), and I woke up wanting to see if a new-to-me binding would be manageable (it was).  I also thought of a way to incorporate discussion of some other bindings through examples I'll bring in.

8/27: considering

...pages and how they work.  Students brought in interesting pages that they found and had good things to say about their own offerings and other people's.

8/26: educators

A high school friend / now school administrator had his final first-day-back-to-school.  It was great to take some time to think about him, his career, and how lucky students have been to have him on their side.

A former student / now teacher sent me a card with some amazingly kind words about the time she spent with me during her undergraduate studies.  It was wonderful to think about her and those days--and to know that she is doing good work in the world with her own students.