4/8: late-breaking good thing

Today I was at work for 13 hours (and intently working for 12 1/2 of them). That's obviously not a very good thing on its own--but as I was leaving the office I saw that there is a large and lush corona around the spring moon tonight. I wouldn't have seen its loveliness if I hadn't been working late.

4/7: family via email

I remember posting it as a good thing once that I had contact with both my brother and my sister in one day. And it was a good thing. But today topped it: I received an email from my brother, my sister, and my father.

4/6: mixed genres

My brother called last night, but I didn't get to talk with him much because I was in the middle of doing some work for classes that couldn't be put off. So I spent some of my lunchtime today listening to his podcasts instead.

He has a site called Mixed Genres--a phrase that was used with some frequency in my family as we were growing up. When we were young, "mixed genres" wasn't usually considered a good thing--my parents would invoke the phrase as a way to describe aesthetic confusion. But as we got into high school and college, and as post-modernism became more prevalent, the idea of mixing genres (of creating aesthetic confusion of sorts) seemed kind of fun and we would joke about the term. My brother's podcasts put a different spin on the idea: he juxtaposes various performances and events he's recently attended in order to see what underlying threads-of-thought might be running through them.

In any case, I enjoyed spending some time with my brother's mixed-genre comments today.

4/5: same wind

After we filled out our tax forms this morning and took a walk along the ridge after lunch, Chris got into his truck to head back to Nebraska for the rest of the semester. It was windy as we walked and then packed his truck; he remarked that it's the same wind that's blowing in Nebraska and all along his route. Later this afternoon the cats and I sat on the porch as I drank my tea, and the wind roared around us. The same wind that's surrounding Chris as he's driving north.

4/4: another one-a-day plan

In addition to posting my one good thing per day I'm trying to do one bureaucratic task per day. I'm not sure that I'll ever finish all my tasks at that rate, but it is helping me stay a little bit saner. And if I happen to do more than one of the tasks on my master list in a day, it feels like I'm actually getting ahead. Today's bureaucratic task was doing the paperwork to get reimbursed for some fairly hefty teaching & professional expenses. It's like a double good thing: I get something off my list, and at the end of the week I'll get some extra money in my pocket.

4/3: good book-ends

The middle part of my day was not so great (and that is truly an understatement). But this morning on the way to work I noticed the crimson clover growing along the roadside, and on campus the azaleas and weeping cherry trees were blooming. This evening at home I opened an envelope in the mail pile and found inside a photograph of some angel figurines; their sweetness and serenity are certainly appreciated.

4/2: further "adventures" averted

I've written a few times about my dental adventures, and I thought they were finally at an end in January. But I've been having some pain and soreness in my jaw lately, and I've been dreading having it checked out--mostly because I didn't want to be told that I have a whole new procedure ahead of me. Today I went for my check-up and cleaning, so I had to tell the dentist about the situation. And--blissfully--he made a fairly quick adjustment to my crown, and maybe that'll do the trick. It feels better already. Wouldn't it be great if the problem were that easily solved?

4/1: christmas continues

At Christmastime, my brother was in the midst of settling into a new home and a new job in a new-to-him part of the country, so he put gift-buying on hold until things had calmed down somewhat. Now we're the beneficiaries of his delayed gift-giving. In March (when I was visiting Chris in Nebraska) he sent us some pistachio and rose-water cupcakes as a present, and today I returned home to find an opera (Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten) on DVD from him. I think I like having Christmas pop up at unexpected times during the year.