Through a journal, darkly.

Saturday = Cleaning Day
[info]athenaltena
Remind me not to wait 3 weeks to do my laundry again. The basket was overflowing and it took forever, and I think I got several days' worth of exercise going up and down the stairs. I changed the sheets on my bed too and washed the old ones since I'm probably getting up to the point where I'd have to do that.

In comparison, was talking to Krys last week and he admitted that he hasn't changed his sheets in a while (and he sweats a long more than I do) but then again his room is a certified disaster area. I was there last week and he told me that he'd been wondering what the nasty smell hanging around was until he found the milk that he'd meant to throw out because it had gone sour but instead had forgotten about and left on the counter. Yeah. I'm not the tidiest person but I'm nowhere near his level.

I also did the bi-weekly cleaning of the apartment. Seeing as I have allergies I have to be especially careful about the dust, so I made sure to get into places like that. Also, I kept thinking that in Western Mass the cats have a lot of hair that gets everywhere, but here I keep finding clumps of Jen and Nadia's hair. Their hair is a lot longer than mine so I know it's not me, but it was amusing when I kept finding bits of it.

I also rearranged some things in my room, but only slightly. I was mainly trying to move the desk over a bit and get the printer off the desk since it's a space hog. Both worked, I'm glad to say.

I also sent off my voter registration information today so I can vote in the December 8th election. At this point I'm leaning towards our current Attorney General Martha Coakley for Sen. Kennedy's former seat, and she's the candidate I know the most about (not to mention that she's the one trying to get rid of DOMA by suing the Fed on behalf of the Commonwealth, so she gets major major brownie points in my book). I'm not above being swayed, but the other two guys haven't given me any good reasons to change my position as of yet.

Surrender Dorothy
[info]handworn
A muzzy wake-up this morning. About 8:15. Got to bed about 1 p.m. after an evening at Frank's, and then Maggie was telling me to wake up 'cause she needed me to take Isaac to school (to be there after nine). By the way, she said, the winds blew one of the windows we just replaced out of its frame last night.

Okay.

She left for Candidacy Committee. I figured I could doze a bit, and amazingly, I could. It all worked out. I did not over-doze. Amazingly, I also did not feel exhausted. I got Isaac to daycare at Saint James on time, and lay back down a bit.

Then, I was bringing up the window from the grass. Despite a forty-foot drop it had not shattered, and I futzed away at reinstalling it. Discovered I needed supplies. Went off to get 'em, and do other errands, and pick up a package at the post office (a replica of a 1939 Werber A-2 Army Air Corps flight jacket...never mind, it's a jackethead thing). Came back to discover a UPS package slip on the front door, which turned out not in fact to say that I needed to hang around all day Monday waiting for 'em, but that, how predictable, they'd put my package in our barbecue.

The upshot of all which was, after several dozen Life Circumstances-- after I picked up Isaac at daycare, and Maggie got back and Ben was dropped off from playdate and Maggie did the dishes while I did the grocery shopping and put them away while Maggie read stories and kept them company--

Maggie and I had just a grand, grand evening.

How? Watching part of The Wizard of Oz, which DVD was in the package in the barbecue, and which is part of my Wiki assignment of the Top Ten Grossing Movies of 1939, for library school at Drexel, and which neither of us have seen in a solid ten years, minimum. Just about every moment was a reminder of who we were. I mean that both personally and nationally, and before Maggie headed off to bed we had some very nice kisses.

Oh, yes. This has been probably the best single evening of the past year.

icons ➝ supernatural
[info]introject wrote in [info]unequally
[01-80] SUPERNATURAL (35 - 5x03 & 65 - 5x08)
TOTAL: 80 ICONS

Please credit [info]introject @ [info]unequally if you use.
Feedback & comments are . :')
RESOURCES / TAG LIST.
JOIN/WATCH [info]unequally for more layouts & graphics!


Some people never learn
[info]athenaltena
Today when I got off the T I was wondering why a WBZ truck was over by Northeastern, but I figured it had something to do with that school.

Well, I was watching WBZ tonight and it turns out that they were there because someone caught an operator using his cell phone while driving the T. The same thing happened last spring with a different guy and 50 people were injured when he slammed into another train, causing about 9 million dollars in damages. I remember hearing about it then and shaking my head at the stupidity.

The guy they caught this time was driving the same train I use to get home every day. Said guy is now suspended and will very likely get his ass fired, since even having a phone on your person as a T employee while you're on duty gets you suspended, and using it is pretty much a guarantee that you get thrown out.

I'm just glad they caught this guy before something happened. This one happens to hit pretty close to home for me since I ride that damn train every day, and as annoying as my classmates texting in class is no one's life is at risk. Jeez Louise.
Tags: , ,

Layout 035 : Black Cat
[info]wingweaver22 wrote in [info]fruitstyle

Download & Instructions )

A Softer World: 500
[info]softerworldfeed

back
buy this print digg facebook reddit stumbleupon
next

iPhone or Droid
[info]xkcd_rss
It may be a fundamentally empty experience, but holy crap the Droid's 265 ppi screen is amazing.

Random thing from apartment life
[info]athenaltena
A conversation that Nadia and I had a little while ago:

Me: If I had a nickel for every time I said "what the hell are they doing?" in regards to the upstairs neighbors I'd be rich.
Nadia: Well, you're a college student, so maybe not "rich" so much as "caught up on your bills."
Me: True that.

In all seriousness, I must utter that phrase at least once a day because of those people and the strange noises, thumps and other odd things that we hear from up there. I think they had a basketball up there the other day and were dribbling it.

And I can smell them smoking because the smoke is wafting down (and I'm pretty sure smoking is against the lease), but I bought an air freshener the other day that's supposed to help get rid of tobacco smoke on my end. Annoying enough, it mainly gets into my closet because the walls are thinner there so my clothes smell like tobacco smoke. I'm an asthmatic. So yeah. *sprays air freshener in there again*

They seem to have taken my warning about the music to heart though, and they haven't done it since.

A VERY SEKRIT PASSPHRASE
[info]officialgaiman
posted by Neil
There were 38 independent bookshops around the land who had Graveyard Book parties. The people at Harpers somehow got it down to 11, and they sent them to me to judge the winner. The winner gets me for a signing in December. I watched the 11 videos/descriptions/ photos. I watched them again. I watched them yet again, this time with Lorraine, my assistant, watching too and saying helpful things like, "They are all so good. Whoo. Don't know how you'll make a decision. Look at that! They're line dancing to Monster Mash! And that Death is on stilts, isn't he. Is that a horse? A horse in a store? These are amazing." The fourth time, Woodsman Hans wandered in from the deep woods (where he is making a pond) and watched them too.

Then I made my decision. I called Elyse Marshall at Harpers and told her. "Ah," she said. "I'll have to check with the lawyers to find out if you can do that."

So we wait.

...

I posted the Amanda Palmer current East Coast tour dates here last night. http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/upcoming-shows for venues and details.

Today it occurred to me that in the past when I've had friends on tour, I've often done special "Neil sent me" things, where people who come from this blog get some special free thing, which a) is nice for the people who get the free thing and b) tells the person on tour that people are really coming from the blog. I did it with Thea Gilmore (who is starting a new UK tour next week. People in the UK, go and see live Thea Gilmore, for she is wonderful: http://www.theagilmore.net for dates and venues.) I've done it for The Magnetic Fields, who, incidentally, have a new album coming out on Jan 26th. And then there's the Green Goddess restaurant in New Orleans, where you can mention the "Mezze of Destruction" to tell them you came from here and get sent something wonderful to eat or drink. (It changes, depending on what chef Chris DeBarr feels like making.)

I should do it for Amanda. I called her up and told her.

She called me back. "Beth and I have put our heads together and come up with a code phrase for people from your blog," she said. "So they say it and get a special free thing from the merch table."

"Fire away," I said.

"We think they should come over to the merch table and point to this poster...




...and say 'That chick in the yellow corset crowdsurfing looks kind of hot. I wonder if she's dating anyone?' And then they get something for free."

I said I thought that was a very bad idea, because people might say that anyway, and it was an awful lot for people to remember. And what if they sold out of that poster early that night?

I said, "What about any variant of 'Neil sent me from his blog?'"

"Absolutely not," she said. "That's boring."

I told her to leave it with me.

And then I stared at this screen glumly, with nothing happening in my head, and real work I should be doing starting to nip at my heels. So I turned to the Oracular Orb of truth at http://www.neilgaiman.com/oracle/ and I clicked on the orb and shook it.


Here is Doug Jones and some strange man it said.

If you go to one of Amanda Palmer's shows on this tour, wander over to the Merch table, and say that you found about it from some strange man's blog. And something good will probably happen. (If they just stare at you, tell them it was me, and this blog. If they keep staring tell them that the chick in the yellow corset in the poster looks like she probably has a really nice boyfriend.)

....

This seemed like a very good cause to me:

Hi Neil,

I am a long-time fan, and have even met you backstage at a Tori show (though that was many years ago!). I am writing to ask a bit of a favor.

About 10 years ago, I appeared on 20/20 with Tori, speaking about sexual violence. Since then, I've stayed close with Tori whose been a mentor of the best kind. I also started a nonprofit, Pandora's Project, that provides support, information, and resources to rape and sexual abuse survivors and their supporters. We operate Pandora's Aquarium, an online support group with more than 20,000 registered members.

Recently, I was named a 2009 L'Oreal Woman of Worth for my volunteer work with Pandora's. I was chosen for this honor from more than 2,500 applicants.

Now, one of the ten 2009 Honorees will be selected as the national honoree through a public online vote. Her cause will get an additional $25,000, and a lot of media exposure. This is the first time L'Oreal has recognized a sexual violence organization, and becoming the national honoree would allow me to shine a spotlight on this issue that affects so many women and women.

Voting is easy - people just need to go to the url below, enter their email address in the box on the right, and click the "submit vote" button. Each email address is allowed one vote, and voting ends November 24.

http://www.womenofworth.com/Honorees/Honoree2009Detail.aspx?nomid=5657c940-425b-47a2-879d-ed3c2d82b56f

I am wondering if you might be willing to send people to this voting link via your (infinitely popular) twitter or blog. I understand if it's not something you can do, but my experience running a small-budget nonprofit tells me it's always wise to ask!

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Shannon Lambert


I'll plug it happily.

Your correspondent asks "Will you be reading the original version where the wolf actually is killed, and not the 'oh my goodness our kids can't hear about death' version in which they bring him to the zoo?"

I fear she's in error; in the original version, written by Prokofiev, Peter snares the wolf, then convinces the hunters NOT to kill it, but to take it to the zoo.


I've been researching, and that's what I found out too. Wikipedia has a list of changes made in various versions of the story (Disney, for example, had the wolf not eat the duck). But the wolf was always taken to the zoo...

Revolutionary Retrospective
[info]likethewave

    What is revolution but a spark in the heart of man that spreads like wild fire? The cleansing burn of all that has withered and died, and of all that shields such waste from less drastic forms of renewal?

    There comes a critical point of emergence from the chaotic vortext of past and future when one comes alive in the burning present, with no choice but to become the living urges that will no longer slumber beneath the crust of the apathetic status quo. There is no intellectual awareness of this primal push. It is only in retrospect that one can appreciate the meaning and effect of the moment in which the world came alive. It is only while walking amongst the brave new sprouts rising from the ashes of a burnt forest, or on the hard black surface of what was once molten lava that one can say, "It is here we had a revolution."

    Sure, there is work to be done long after the fire cools, generations of growth needed in order to begin to comprehend the structure of a new world that revealed itself in a moment- a moment that is remembered and renamed as revolutionary.


Radio! Books! Violin Lessons! Also, a haircut I do not mention anywhere in this blog!
[info]officialgaiman
posted by Neil
Went in to KNOW radio station in ST Paul today and recorded an introduction to the NPR MORNING EDITION "Open Mike" piece I've been recording on audiobooks, and heard the edit. Asked them to see if they could find a bit more time in the piece for Audible founder Don Katz, who did an amazing interview and was pared down to about a sentence in the current edit. It'll go out in the next ten days, and as soon as I know when it goes out I'll put it up here. I talk to David Sedaris, Martin Jarvis, Don Katz and veteran audio producer/director Rick Harris in it.

Also popped in to DreamHaven and signed a bunch of books. The piles of books have grown so high, and the administration was proving so hard for Greg now that he is a one-man operation that I'm no longer personalising books there. But lots of signed books now in for the Holidays at DreamHaven's Neilgaiman.net site.

Spent much of the rest of the day driving around, being a dad, taking a daughter and her friend to violin, all that normal sort of stuff, and listening to Martin Jarvis's Good Omens audiobook as I did so. I'm about half-way through it now. It makes me so happy, especially hearing Adam Young read in something sort of close to Martin's Just William voice. Weirdly, I found it easier to hear what I wrote and what Terry wrote than I could if I looked at the text (which I discovered a few years ago, when I proofread the Harper Collins edition). The text is a bit of a blur, after all these years, but listening I'd find myself going, "Me... Terry.... Me in first draft, Terry in second.... Terry in first draft, me in second.... My footnote to his bit.... His footnote to mine..." feeling vaguely like an archaeologist. Even spotted a couple of tiny continuity goofs we should have caught 21 years ago that I may call Terry about and correct in future editions.

(Edit to add, here's a link for iTunes for the Good Omens book that will, I am afraid, almost definitely only work in the US and territories that buy books from the US.)

I still haven't done the Big China Blog. Until I do, I should point you to Amanda's blog, at http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/240943999/east-infection-china-singapore, which has many photographs of our adventures, and of us, and lots of small anecdotes.

(She has an East Coast Tour on right now -
11.12 Portland, ME
11.13 Northampton, MA
11.14 Brooklyn, NY (SOLD OUT)
11.18 Philadelphia, PA
11.19 Falls Church, VA
11.20 Carrboro, NC
11.22 Knoxville, TN.
Go see her in concert. She's a wonder live. Tell her I said hi.)


Hi Neil,

I just read about your event in January, where in you will be narrating Peter and the Wolf. My husband and I are over joyed by this. We will hopefully be bringing our three girls up to see the performance. We did have one question though. Will you be reading the original version where the wolf actually is killed, and not the "oh my goodness our kids can't hear about death" version in which they bring him to the zoo? We are both, obviously, really hopeful that being you, and not afraid to scare children (thank you for that btw) will be speaking the true to the story version in which Peter shoots the wolf and then his dead body is paraded through the town as a trophy.

Thanks for your time,
~Cecily

PS- Do you know if there will be tickets for the event or the reception afterwards? It will be a long drive, and it would be nice to be prepared for either staking out seats all day or having tickets in hand. (We could not find any reservation information on the website)


I'd forgotten - or never knew - that there was an alternative version. The script I was sent is the Zoo version. I'll investigate...

And no, I do not know about tickets. I will find out.

Dear Neil,

Your Web Goblin offered to post photos of Coraline pumpkins, and when they were told this, my 8 and 11-year old daughters decided to make some. Here they are, along with 2 emoticon pumpkins and a turnip.

http://www.steampunkfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_01521-300x225.jpg

I used them to illustrate a ghost story: http://www.steampunkfamily.com/2009/10/philomenas-fright/

Three of the four of us were Coraline characters for Halloween. (The 11-year old went her own way as Susan Sto-Helit.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37435081@N03/4077708519/sizes/l/in/set-72157622616148613/

The Other Mother is the scariest thing I've ever been for Halloween. All the children (even the 4-year olds!) knew who I was, and I elicited much nervous laughter when I offered to sew buttons in their eyes.

Thank you for being VERY SCARY INDEED


I love how many families were Coraline families, this year.

If, like me, anybody else was intrigued by your mention of Kenneth Grahame's other works and wants to read them with a minimum of searching, they'll be happy to know both 'The Golden Age' and 'Dream Days' are available for free on the always invaluable Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/291
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/270

Thanks for mentioning them in the first place; I'm always interested in children's lit of that time that has managed to slip through my net.

- B. Bolander


What a good idea. Two very beautiful, gently funny books by the author of The Wind in the Willows. I really enjoyed them, but stylistically they are, well, out of fashion, and will not be everybody's cup of Edwardian tea. Here's a passage that describes the illustration I put up yesterday, as small children steal through the house on a midnight expedition to obtain biscuits (ie cookies, if you are American):

The Blue Room had in prehistoric times been added to by taking in a superfluous passage, and so not only had the advantage of two doors, but enabled us to get to the head of the stairs without passing the chamber wherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It was rarely occupied, except when a casual uncle came down for the night. We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright strip of moonlight on the floor, across which we must pass for our exit. On this our leading lady chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to study the hang of her new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she proceeded, after the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a minuet down the moonlit patch with an imaginary partner. This was too much for Edward's histrionic instincts, and after a moment's pause he drew his single-stick, and with flourishes meet for the occasion, strode onto the stage. A struggle ensued on approved lines, at the end of which Selina was stabbed slowly and with unction, and her corpse borne from the chamber by the ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed after in a clump, with capers and gesticulations of delight; the special charm of the performance lying in the necessity for its being carried out with the dumbest of dumb shows.

Once out on the dark landing, the noise of the storm without told us that we had exaggerated the necessity for silence; so, grasping the tails of each other's nightgowns even as Alpine climbers rope themselves together in perilous places, we fared stoutly down the staircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier of the hall, to where a faint glimmer from the half-open door of the drawing-room beckoned to us like friendly hostel-lights. Entering, we found that our thriftless seniors had left the sound red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into a cheerful blaze; and biscuits—a plateful—smiled at us in an encouraging sort of way, together with the halves of a lemon, already once squeezed but still suckable. The biscuits were righteously shared, the lemon segments passed from mouth to mouth; and as we squatted round the fire, its genial warmth consoling our unclad limbs, we realised that so many nocturnal perils had not been braved in vain.

"It's a funny thing," said Edward, as we chatted, "how I hate this room in the daytime. It always means having your face washed, and your hair brushed, and talking silly company talk. But to-night it's really quite jolly. Looks different, somehow."

"I never can make out," I said, "what people come here to tea for. They can have their own tea at home if they like,—they're not poor people,—with jam and things, and drink out of their saucer, and suck their fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come here from a long way off, and sit up straight with their feet off the bars of their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of stuff every time."

Selina sniffed disdainfully. "You don't know anything about it," she said. "In society you have to call on each other. It's the proper thing to do."

"Pooh! YOU'RE not in society," said Edward, politely; "and, what's more, you never will be."

"Yes, I shall, some day," retorted Selina; "but I shan't ask you to come and see me, so there!"

"Wouldn't come if you did," growled Edward.

to man's blind indifference to his fellow man
[info]tears_of_nienna
Dropkick Murphys--The Green Fields of France

I always think I can get through this song, and then somewhere around the third verse I just inevitably dissolve into tears. By the last two lines--Oh Willy McBride, it all happened again / and again, and again, and again, and again--I'm just a mess.

I have a thing about World War I soldiers--if you've been poking around this journal long enough, you've probably heard me ramble about Owen and Sassoon, how much I love them and how much I want to believe that they loved each other. It's why the song gets to me. It's why I'm so very susceptible to the "comrades in arms" trope. It's...actually responsible for quite a lot of little things about my personality.

Last year I made a Remembrance Day post (it is here), and it pretty much summed up exactly how I feel about today.

Anyway. I had to make myself a poppy, since we don't really do that here. I feel oddly happy about having one to wear now.

A Softer World: 499
[info]softerworldfeed

back
buy this print digg facebook reddit stumbleupon
next

Happiness is...
[info]handworn
...writing to one of your professors about a recent assignment and reading this after her answer to the question:

"By the way, you had some of the best responses to these assignments in class."

The Murder Re-Enacted
[info]officialgaiman
posted by Neil
The Graveyard Book just won a literary award, which never gets old, and this one came with a medal, and also with a cheque. I thought, Hm. I have to get myself something with the cheque and I have to do it immediately, otherwise it will simply vanish into the day to day bank account of life, and I will never look at anything and go "Ah, that is the thing I got with my Graveyard Book Award."

So I bought this. It's "The Murder Re-Enacted":


It's an E. H. Shepard illustration (he's most famous for illustrating Winnie the Pooh) from Kenneth Grahame's book The Golden Age. Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind In The Willows, the story of Mole and Rat and Badger and of course, Mr Toad, also illustrated by Shepard.

I once read an essay by A.A. Milne telling people that, of course they knew Kenneth Grahame's work, he wrote The Golden Age and Dream Days, everybody had read them, but he also did this amazing book called The Wind in the Willows that nobody had ever heard of. And then Milne wrote a play called Toad of Toad Hall, which was a big hit and made The Wind in The Willows famous and read, and, eventually, one of the good classics (being a book that people continue to read and remember with pleasure), while The Golden Age and Dream Days, Grahame's beautiful, gentle tales of Victorian childhood, are long forgotten.

If there is a moral, or a lesson to be learned from all this, I do not know what it is.

Right. Off to K.N.O.W. St Paul to record the intro bits to my NPR piece on Audio Books, and I will play the Martin Jarvis-read GOOD OMENS on the car CD player all the way there.

Random Civil War interlude
[info]athenaltena
Besides NaNo, I've also been reading The Killer Angels for part of my Civil War class. That book actually inspired me to change one character in my story from an infantry officer to cavalry, and though my concept of the character has pretty much stayed the same besides that there are now elements of John Buford in there.

The Killer Angels is, by the way, an excellent book, and I can see why it's been praised as one of the best pieces of Civil War literature period. It has that quality of just scanning really well, and I've read over a hundred pages of it in one day without feeling like I've been forcing it. That's what I call good writing.
Tags: ,

Two-Party System
[info]xkcd_rss
I favor approval voting or IRV chiefly because they mean we might get to bring back The Bull Moose party.

NaNo Update the Second
[info]athenaltena
30,000, biotch.

*does the electric slide*

The 30,000th word was "exception", which I just felt like noting.

Cheerios, (thankfully averted) Flu and Veterans
[info]athenaltena
I've reverted to being six in an odd way. The other day I had a sudden craving for Honey Nut Cheerios, so I went out and bought some. I haven't had those things in years, but I've been eating them for breakfast and the occasional snack.

It also turns out that two of my friends might have H1N1, or as they so elegantly referred to it, "The Swine". After I heard this I had a very scary moment where I thought I might be falling ill due to having a bit of a temperature and spinning head which caused me to call out from my internship to avoid exposing anyone else, but as of several hours later and a nap I appear to be fine with no fever. That was certainly something that had me very worried, but it may have just been exhaustion and/or allergies acting up. Better safe than sorry, though I feel a bit silly. My ears still feel a bit warm, but that's more likely allergies than anything.

In fact, people are so worried about this that today we pretty much kicked a coughing person out of Diversity Services. Yeah. Technically Krys did it, but I helped, since he went up to this girl we both know and asked here why she was here if she was that sick while not-so-subtly implying that if we all got sick we'd blame her. He also brought up a good point when one of the staff members wondered why students in general are so reluctant to call out (and hence are being cited as major vectors for this disease), mainly that missing class is simply something they literally cannot afford. I once did the math out for how much an individual class costs per day in cold hard cash, and though I don't remember the exact number (200 something) it basically sums up to losing a couple hundred dollars for every class missed. You can see where the calculation goes on about risking exposing people versus getting your money's worth, and unfortunately college students tend to think with their wallets first in mind and their health second. Now granted, skipping class for stupid reasons is something else entirely, but we won't get into those people...

Day off tomorrow due to Veteran's Day, and I'm going to do at least a small thing to acknowledge the service men and women considering that both of my grandfathers fought in WWII and I can thank the GI Bill for a good amount of my own well being, but I haven't come up with anything else.

library school
[info]handworn
Writing this longhand in the middle of one of the classes. This is the Tuesday one-- Professional & Social Aspects of Information Services-- which is the one with dramatic conflict in the subject matter, like censorship, but with the very awkward professor, so it's like being taught by a forty-five-year-old Mary Katherine Gallagher in those old Saturday Night Live skits.

Anyway, I've been rethinking my take on online classes. The Monday night in-person class involves about half lecture and the rest of the three hours working on actual problems on the computer (it's held in a computer classroom) related to the lecture we just heard. Recently the classes and problems have been about searching on a database aggregating website called Dialog. We can get the teacher to come over and help; we can turn around and ask a neighbor, or talk a little, quietly. It's a nice and wonderfully educational time.

But this class-- though we ask questions and talk a bit-- amounts mainly to her going through a PowerPoint slide show while lecturing vaguely on what we see, then maybe showing a related website, then going through the readings we just did, and it happens just about every class that she runs out of things to talk about, looks kind of desperate, and asks for reactions, so that other people besides her are talking. For that, this particular evening, we had to read four long articles.

(Though someone did tell me this evening that they'd heard that there's less reading the farther through the program you are.)

Anyway. The third class, the online one, had a steep technological learning curve at first, but I've gotten the hang of it pretty well now, and I appreciate not having to show up once a week to be bored for three hours.

-------

One nice recent development-- on an entirely unrelated note-- has been that I've been asked to do a chess and checkers club at the "afterschool" of Benjamin's school, teaching it and playing it with any of the kids who wants. Benjamin, rather to my pleasure, has been almost bragging to his friends how his Dad was coming to do this. First one day after tomorrow, I think. I'm really looking forward to it.

Home