Thanks be to employers that gift me with faster, more reliable computers. It's really all I want for most of my day.
I also want a brain break. I'm hot in the middle of a stretch of every-minute-is-scripted-and-vital-to-getting-everything-done-in-a-matter-of-weeks. I'm doing a wee bit better this semester finding little chunks of break time and keeping those sacred and all the difference right there as far as fighting the mental fatigue. But still, some of the days-turned-weeks are still heavy.
Meanwhile...
- I renewed some amount of my voracious reading appetite over Fall Break thanks in no small measure to the What Should I Read Next podcast. It's like walking into a French pastry shop after you've been walking around Montmartre all morning and didn't realize how hungry you were. Then suddenly, you must have all of the pastries. Perhaps this isn't a familiar situation to many of us, but still, I have full confidence that this is the same emotional outpouring that I'm experiencing about books right now. A favorite book candy author of late is Sarah Addison Allen, who dabbles in just a skoshe of magical realism and the fantastic, a pastry-esque bite of it: quick reads & leave you wanting another one. (Confession: I've read several of her books and still had to just look up the author's name.)
- My baseball season combined both exultation and heart rending emotions. It was a fun year. Feel free to ask me about the post-season awards this year, but come prepared to that conversation with a beverage of choice and maybe a comfy pillow to sit upon. You'll be my captive audience for a while.
- We took the girls to the biggest, closest body of water that we could find in October for a couple of days. And it was frigid. And we still had lovely, lovely times, proving that YES, my children are growing up.
- Every couple of years, I remember that I have an electric tart warmer and pull it out for a day or two. Well. We're all delighted with the copious amount of smell goods of late.
- We spent weeks puttzing around on figuring exact figures for adding a 3rd bay onto the garage for storage and, frankly, aesthetics rather than finally getting that shed. Because while we're not at all hoarders of things in sheds, it's still convenient to have a place to put both a car and a push mower inside at the same time. Our mini garage doesn't fulfill that dream. But the projected cost of the 3rd bay kept ballooning, and now we are the tepid owners of a shed that is nominally the same tannish color as the house that is plainly visible from the street (kudos HOA...that doesn't look pretty dumb AT ALL!!!) and was stuck IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR BACKYARD FOR A WEEK before *they* figured that situation out. It's a mostly hate-hate situation between me and the shed. And then I still had to pay for this annoying thing. There's obviously a story here (a couple of them, in fact), but it's all about a S-H-E-D. I'll spare you the gory details.
- Also, I'm crafting a brand new course this semester that a) no one else teaches (i.e. I'm not terribly accountable to anyone at or above my pay grade) and b) is currently studying horror in literature. Gory details indeed...
- I don't really like or need 95% of what constitutes as Christmas and lo it is still coming. I shall soon hermit myself. (Maybe I'll blog more...?)
- I do like Thanksgiving. I want to keep this one.
I'm currently reading Buttermilk Graffiti by Edward Lee. IF you like food stuff and IF you like memoir writing, I encourage you to give this one a read. It's more anthropological than memoir, but there's a definite strand of that intertwined and, frankly, it's an interesting take on food origins. Let me know what you're reading; I'm primed for new suggestions!
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