Category Archives: blather

August 27, 2014 · 9:36 am

As summer winds down….

I’m grateful to be able to experience the end of this long, hot summer on my own terms rather than having to drive 40 miles to roast in a sweltering classroom. This summer has been consistently warmer and persistent, in comparison to other years, and I can just imagine what the misery would be in my old classroom now that the shade trees are gone.

But I’m not there. Nonetheless, water scarcity, smoky skies and short tempers characterize the end of summer. The summer party crowd drives frenetically to reach their preferred cooling off sites. When I’m driving around town, I’m seeing more aggressive punching of accelerators, more frequent weaving in-and-out of traffic, more edgy, frayed moods.

Even the creatures feel it. Little finches, chickadees, and bushtits swarm the feeders. The fledgling crow gang stalks the backyard in the early mornings, swaggering with their new-found flight and foraging skills. Their scrub jay counterparts screech obscenities at them, and both groups have developed a new fascination with the wandering neighbor hen. Flies plague the horses even inside the arena, and Mocha is irritable and jumpy, pushing against her boundaries.

Soon the rains will come. Soon. Until then, everything paces and waits, irritable with too much heat and dust and summer light. Eventually rains and gray clouds will once again enfold the city, the bugs will die off, and the brown will turn to faint green, as leaves change to bright reds and yellows.

It’s just a matter of time.

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August 24, 2014 · 9:04 pm

A productive weekend

As summer of 2014 winds down, we’re engaged in activities both seasonal and for the future. I finished preserving the bulk of the Gravenstein crop with five and a half more quarts of apple juice, leaving us with plenty of juice, applesauce, and a small amount of apple butter. Plus numerous crisps and a couple of apple pies.

The Blue Lakes have been poking along but they aren’t heavy producers this year. We’re getting good tomatoes, enough to justify making a taco salad tomorrow.

We’ve got our own firewood stacked and stored, but yesterday we helped a friend haul and stack three cords of his winter wood, with three more to go. It was delivered to one area easy for the delivery guys to reach, then needed to be transported by pickup to the storage shed. We’ve been nibbling at it all summer, and yesterday was the last transport day. Then it became stacking.

Today, we worked on a new skill–driving the truck with the horse trailer. This was my second time out, and I’m pleased to announce that I’m now approaching the speed limit on the back roads. No horse in the trailer yet, but DH and I cruised the backroads around the barn practicing.

DH is also preparing for the annual deck treatment. Today he trimmed vegetation around the deck.

Crickets are chirping out back. Last night I thought I heard an owl calling back there–not a hoot owl or a great horned, but perhaps a barn owl. Definitely not a screech owl. There’s a cool touch in the evening breeze, damp with the promise of forthcoming fall.

On the one hand, it feels weird not to be contemplating the beginning of the school year. On the other, I just don’t miss it. I’ve missed being able to enjoy my fall, and now I can again. Things sound sufficiently ugly with Common Core issues and the like that I am glad I’m not around for this year of turmoil. But I think good thoughts for my friends who start work tomorrow, and miss them.

Winter is coming. I’m thinking of snow. Time to get fit for skiing.

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July 3, 2014 · 8:16 pm

The tiresome sexualization of female equestrians ( a mild rant, of sorts)

It happened again. Rarely happens when I’m wearing jeans and packers to ride Western, but if I go out and about in my English riding attire, either before or after a riding session, I run into some man who starts leering at me, in different stages of politeness. This time was at a fruit stand, with my husband. I heard the guy commenting–“hey, she’s got spurs on.” Then he started ogling me, even with the husband right there. He kept talking to his female companion, but kept snatching glances even as I kept talking to my husband about what fruit we wanted to buy for the next few days.

Then he asked me if I actually was a horse person or if I was just wearing those clothes. Needless to say, I was taken aback, and weighing two possibilities. The other car at the fruit stand was a trendy Fiat Smart Car with California plates. The odds were very good that this was a very urban Southern Californian who didn’t get the idea that people really do go around in barn clothes because, after all, this is Tourist Season and all. But the look in his eye was just a little different. I know that look. He was being very polite about it, but nonetheless, I was getting The Look, and matched with it, The Fantasy, which spills on over into a general dismissive attitude toward horsewomen (in particular) and their desire to be around horses and work with horses. We can’t have a nonsexual interest in horses. You know, that assumption is really, really tiresome. Stupid. And incorrect.

(Thank you Sigmund….NOT!)

So a woman wearing dusty breeches and faded t-shirt with dirty and scuffed tall black boots with stained spurs clearly must be walking around with intent to arouse rather than using plain practical English riding attire for efficiency and comfort, if you follow that particular line of reasoning. I’ve seen normally rational males start gibbering and slathering just a little bit when I talk about riding in English gear and carrying a crop (okay, I’ve also encountered that from a non-horsey lesbian, too).

It’s stupid. It’s irrational. It’s annoying. I don’t put that stuff on to arouse. I put that stuff on because, quite frankly, when I want to school my horse in English tack, I’ve found that tall boots just plain work better with English stirrup leathers. Pinched skin on calves ain’t no fun, really (plus I’m not really fond of purple-blue spots on my legs), and on a hot day my secondhand field boots are much cooler than half-chaps. It’s much easier to change clothes at home than at the barn. Jeans tend to scuff up the leather on my saddle. Therefore, I wear breeches and boots when I ride English, with whatever layer of top works best for the season, and I run errands wearing barn gear rather than waste gas by going home to change.

Sigh. This is just a part of the whole women and horses thing, though. No one really talks about men and horses having some sort of weird relationship. But females and horses? Ooh, must be sexual. Grrr.

One of the other arguments for female attraction to equines is just as annoying and circles back to sexuality. Some proponents knowingly natter that girls like horses because they enjoy the power to direct and control a large animal like a horse with an agency they lack in the rest of their lives. Poke at that one too deeply, and it comes back to sexuality, both with what that argument says about the daily lives of women and with the manner in which the woman’s dominance of a horse is portrayed.

But neither the sexual nor the dominance arguments entirely explain how men and boys can develop the same type of deep attachments to the horse life. Heck, anyone who reads the plethora of horse fiction out there starting with the early 20th century would know better. Will James didn’t hold up dominance or sexuality as motivations for connecting with horses when he wrote his stories about the ranch horses he worked with. Walter Farley wasn’t writing about dominance and sexuality. Neither was Mary O’Hara, nor does Natalie Keller Reinert, or a number of other folks who write insightful fiction and nonfiction about the relationships between people and horses.

Certainly the ability to direct a powerful horse is an issue. But I would argue that this is just a symptom of a deeper level of something else. As any horse person will tell you, the true reward in working with a horse is the ability to develop a deep-level nonverbal ability to communicate. Smart horses learn to communicate with humans on human terms while humans learn to communicate with horses on horse terms. More than most dogs, horse-human communication spans the range of communicative senses in ways and depths that we don’t necessarily use with other animals (we’re not in control of our scent communication like other species and we don’t seem to be able to read their scent messages). However sight, sound, touch, and proprioception play huge roles in horse-human communication, both in the saddle and on the ground. A large part of schooling horses is about refining cues and communication between horse and human, until they become one being in motion, able to shift directions with a turn of the human’s head, speed up or slow down based on where the human weight goes, or (for the horse) become entirely dependent on human visual perception and signalling about the correct place to take off for a complex and difficult jumping line.

In essence, that’s a whole-body experience. Horse and human in tune with each other is about grace, beauty and communication in coordination with each other. If there’s anything sexual about that, it’s that the horse-human link at its most insightful can rival the relationship between a long-term bonded couple.

Not that this is what those who make the cracks about women and horses, or who leer at a woman turned out in English riding gear who’s clearly using it have in mind. They’re just focusing on pale shadows of a reality they don’t quite understand.

And it’s damned tiresome to deal with. So no, buddy, I’m not dressing to fulfill your fantasies. I’m dressing for practicalities, and if I seem remote, snippy, and a bit like your image of querulous locals, well, it’s because I’m kind of tired of being looked at in that manner. Making loud comments about my spurs and boots doesn’t really endear you to me. Knock it off, and grow up. Instead of commenting about my clothes and asking me if I really am an equestrian, ask me where there’s a place to ride around the area. Ask me about horses. Just leave the clothing and the sexualization out of it, okay?

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June 9, 2014 · 9:28 am

Ah. June. And my last week.

We had a little bit of sun this morning before the clouds blew in. I ran around watering everything outside, and will soon be watering the houseplants. Meanwhile, despite the coolness of the morning, I’ve got the house open and I’m enjoying the weather. Summer, Oregon-style.

It’s also helpful that I’ve gotten the office and bedroom cleaned out and organized into what should be its final form until we move to Farpoint. It’s now a working home office. I’m going to miss it, and will do my best to structure the Farpoint office to be very similar.

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I was able to find a good setting for my Welches plate.

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So now I have an image of what and where I’m going to be working.

The garden is also doing well. We’ve been harvesting green onions; in fact I had to advise the hubby that we need to save some green onions to grow into big onions (I have about 25 more sets to plant as we use up the greenies, so no big deal). The sugar pod peas should be producing their first crop, and the apple trees have maintained a good crop of apples despite the June drop. What remains is turning into good big apples, though apparently I didn’t clear the grass around the Gravenstein trunk soon enough to keep the scab away. Oh well.

The cabbages, cauliflower, and broccoli are growing quite happily. So are the green beans. The tomatoes are starting to flower.  It’s looking like we will have a lovely harvest this year, if everything proceeds as it should. I may even get ambitious next week and put in some starts for fall and overwintering crops.

And today is my last Monday at work. The last Monday I need to look at work e-mail. The last Monday where I look at the time and realize that I need to get moving, because the clock is ticking toward the moment when I have to get my butt to the car because I’m on a schedule.

Soon….soon…soon.

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June 8, 2014 · 6:50 pm

Ambitious day today

Most of it was housework and housecleaning. I thoroughly dunged out the dust bunnies in the bedroom, doing a deep cleaning, and sorted my summer clothes into the drawers and closet. Had to change my shirt after, it was so dusty. But the room is clean!

Then I hung covers over three of the four skylights. I love the skylights, but not when the sun is at this angle.

After that, I buckled down and did the Big Reorganization and Muckout of my office. I’ve brought home most of the big office supply stuff from work, so all of the little filing things I’ve purchased over the years to manage paper and office supplies at work came home. I also brought my office chair home. I’d bought it five years ago, when the work chair hurt my back, and budgets were so tight that I didn’t even bother asking for a new one. It works so much better than the one I’d bought for home at the same time. I am quite happy with that.

I also brought home all my filing trays. I collect filing trays like a crazy woman, and most of these trays go back to my first home office setups over twenty years ago. The wire bookshelf I bought to hold my binders and worksheets, I’ve converted into a set of supply and filing shelves.

Finally, I moved chairs and backstock books around. I have to figure something out for books, but not the basement here. Basement in Enterprise, yes, once we’ve finished remodeling.

Ultimately, I got rid of almost all the piles of paper and junk. There are clutter catchers which should help keep paper and clutter sorted, and now that I won’t be driving two hours a day, I should be able to stay on top of keeping the work space within a reasonable state of order (I am glad my aide S. probably isn’t reading this; she’d be howling with laughter. She’s spent ten years keeping after me as well as the kids). However, I don’t really have any excuses. I should have time.

I also found a safe place to display my Welches plate.

But still, I’m coming hard up against the reality that man, I have a lot of gewgaws I need to dispose of. I’m just not sure where…yet. Or else I will have revolving displays. That means a much better job of storing stuff needs to happen.

For now, the office and bedroom are clean. And I am gonna go shower, because that’s enough retirement/prep for total freelance life nesting for now.

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March 25, 2014 · 9:36 pm

She’s making jewelry now….revisited

Portlandia–She’s Making Jewelry Now

I finally got around to sorting the remnants of the paperwork from my jewelry-making business of the mid 90s-2002. The big plastic box that held all that stuff when I finally decided that I was done with jewelry making needs to be used for other things, and it’s been well over ten years since I last sold any jewelry on a regular basis. The past few years, I’ve either traded small pieces at music festivals for things I wanted, or given the remainders as gifts to friends and colleagues. But I’ve not made any new pieces, much less even thought about selling the jewelry.

I did make some nice-looking stuff. Amongst the paperwork were pictures of some of my designs. For being just a bead-stringer, I did do some interesting designs that I’ve not really seen done by others. Not top-of-the-line award-winning, by any means (though one piece did win at an art show in Sandy), but midline pretty stuff in nice color combinations. That was the market I aimed for–the person who wanted reasonably priced nice stone beadwork but didn’t want to spend a fortune on pretty rocks.

I sold jewelry at neighborhood shops and craft fairs. Designed some sf and fantasy work to sell at various science fiction conventions, including a Worldcon (LoneStarCon 2), I think at least one Westercon, and some small local cons. Had a website at Bigstep for a year or so. But my bread and butter came from selling on eBay and Amazon auctions, early on in their tenure.

Looking back over the papers brought back memories. Auction descriptions evoked images of the necklaces and earrings I designed. I was surprised by how quickly I remembered a particular piece by just looking at the description. I did have a handful of dedicated and regular clients who didn’t just look for my auctions, they contacted me separately for design work. There were days when I was either at the computer writing or in the basement designing, and summers became about making jewelry for the big fall sales online, while winter and spring focused on the writing. I got a flow going, but….

It was never a big source of money. My skill level was too low, for one–I didn’t do metal work, just simple bead stringing design. The materials I used were not the most expensive quality beads. As beading became a more popular hobby, more people figured out how to make their own earrings, creating designs pretty similar to what I could do.

But that didn’t really push me out of jewelry. What did it was two-fold–the need for me to bring in more money to the household, but even more than that, 9/11 put paid to my jewelry selling. Up until that morning, I was poised for my best sales year ever.

And then it happened. My online business withered away that fall, between 9/11 and anthrax scares. Other commitments cut into what I could do at bazaars and craft fairs. The 2002 online sales scene was just a shadow of what it could have been…and I had been accepted into a teaching program.

Shades of Portlandia.

Will I do it again? Probably not at that intensity…but I might make a few pieces here and there. Just no more earring marathons. There is a certain calming rhythm about laying out a piece on the bead board and putting together the shapes and colors.

But I sure as heck won’t count on it for much.

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March 18, 2014 · 8:57 am

Ouch. A grumble.

I’m a hurtin’ cowgirl this morning. No, I’ve not fallen or anything like that–rather, the family history of aches and pains is catching up with me. The rheumatiz. The arthritis. Overuse syndromes. Tendonitis. Yuck.

There are various causes for the aches and pains. Not fibromyalgia; already ruled out. Myofascial pain syndrome was diagnosed years ago, during another winter of aches like this past one. A past inflamed bursa in one foot now flares up when I’ve been on my feet too long at work. Then there are different overuse syndromes in places ranging from thumbs to shoulders to knees, etc, etc, etc.

No advice needed regarding managing it, please. I’ve been through this dance for many years and I have the management kind of figured out. I can’t take NSAIDS due to the effect on my gut and it’s not bad enough for steroids or other arthritis meds. Acupuncture helps with immediate trauma but not the long-term stuff. I already get body work done, and I’m not willing to spend lots of $$ chasing probable remedies.

Part of the problem is a cascade of fatigue-pain-backing off from stretching/workouts that help manage the pain and fatigue. When I’m tired, I have to back off from doing my stretches (which keep the pain at bay). I end up doing stuff that triggers the overuse syndromes otherwise, and sometimes it happens anyway. The pain keeps me from stretching, and it interferes with sleep. Nasty cycle.

The 80 mile daily round-trip commute doesn’t help things, either. This is the second year that I’ve developed tendonitis in my thumbs that we can attribute to the daily drive. The immediate trigger was something else, but the driving doesn’t help. Ah well, after June 13 it won’t be an issue.

Meanwhile, this spring break, I plan to get back into stretching and working out. I’ll have time to rest, as well as work on the writing and other stuff that needs to get done. Take the time to get this stuff under control and prepare for the last long slog.

I can do this. But man, it sure does ache.

 

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March 13, 2014 · 11:05 pm

Of Writing, Teaching, and An Announcement (at the end)

TL:DR–announcement at the end. I’m evil that way.

So I’m kind of behind on what my writing schedule says I should be doing by now. Some of that has been due to things like, oh, um, work life, other writing projects, reinventing the work life, um, horse rehab life, ski life or rather the lack thereof, real estate craziness, um, reinventing work life yet again, and, and, and…

But most of the delays have been due to the plain and simple fact that I really don’t know what to do with Netwalk’s Children yet. I’m still figuring out why that is, but to a certain degree, the issue comes down to the reality that this book is a crucial point in the Netwalk Sequence. This book hands over the major part of the Sequence to the next generation; from Melanie and Marty to Bess and Alex, Sophie and Don. Plus friends and relatives.

Additionally, it becomes a turning point in the series arc, because Bess ultimately has to directly take on Gizmo. Not only does she defuse an immediate threat but she lays the foundation for further protection against the power that Gizmo represents. She becomes a foundational element in a human-digital fusion which has the potential to affect not just one world but many worlds. Bess transcends worlds…but as of yet, I’ve not gotten a full picture of what that looks like. I have imperfect realizations but they’re far from what I want. Yet.

I do have this image of a young woman with long dark hair, cinnamon skin, and high cheekbones gazing up as golden bytes flow over her, on a blue background. I have some idea of what that event is. But it keeps changing, even as I keep working and writing.

I’ve been ducking this story for nearly a year. There is a completed outline. It’s insufficiently reflective of current canon, and one reason is that I’ve spent the past year writing stories to flesh out the Sequence’s backstory. They’re available for free on the website under the Netwalk Foundations tab. I also have the illustrated trilogy, Dahlia, Winter Shadows, and Andrews Ranch. All but the last one are currently available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google Play. I’m working on Andrews Ranch right now and having a lot of fun with it.

The whole writing world hasn’t been just Netwalk Sequence, though. I’ve also rewritten a couple of stories and managed copy edits for a short story and a novella. I have two short stories coming out so far this year, one in the inaugural edition of Fantasy Scroll Magazine and the other in Trust and Treachery (Dark Quest Books, April). My novella, Seeking Shelter at the End of the World, comes out from eTreasures Publishing in June. I’ve not exactly been idle.

But I am feeling tired. I do have projects to write. It’s just…getting to them in the face of the Day Jobbe.

Which leads to…Life In General.

I signed the final paperwork today. I am not renewing my teaching contract. After ten years, I’m not going to be going back to school in August.

This isn’t really new news. I’ve mentioned this in comments, and emails, and etc. It’s more of a matter of being tired, and tired of driving 80 miles a day, and tired of having to break off from a story because the clock says it’s time, damn it, and tired of being tired. Teaching, even part-time, is a physically difficult job. You are on your feet constantly, usually on tile-covered cement slabs. As a middle school teacher, you deal daily with the drama and agonies of early adolescence, and have to do so with a measure of equanimity and unflappability.  February and March are their own peculiar hells, and I’ve been experiencing those hells in a rather excruciating slo-mo this year.

I’m done with formal k-12 teaching for the moment. I want to leave while there are moments I still enjoy and savor. But I need to go. There are too many days when I hurt. Too many days when I am angry about what modern education has become. My ten years of teaching manages to span the effect of No Child Left Behind, and the taste is bitter in my mouth. No, better to choose the time, and go when I feel best. This year is a good time, not just for me, but for my memories of the place I have worked in and loved so dearly. I can make good memories with leaving this year–so it is time.

Doesn’t mean I won’t be a teacher of some sort or another. Even thinking about possibilities of some sort of teaching work that doesn’t involve a daily commute perks me up. I like tutorial work, and I’m a darn good remedial writing teacher. Heck, I like teaching writing, period.

But it’s time for me to move on from the daily classroom grind. What that will look like in a couple of years, five more years, ten more years–who knows? I get ideas all the time.

Where I go from here, whether that becomes Portland, Enterprise, or somewhere else–who knows. It’s a new adventure. The Next Adventure.

Onward.

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February 16, 2014 · 8:37 am

Musings on a Sunday morning…writing, skiing, horse

I’ve not been blogging a lot lately. Some of that is due to life circumstances–busyness, active work on creating some new options, surviving at the day job, horse stuff–and some of that is due to actual writing.

Well, maybe not so much of that this month. But there have been revisions and wrangling with software for e-publishing things, as well as thinking and planning for marketing work. I also have two side nonfiction projects that are in a development stage–mostly memoirish things that require regular notetaking.

Winter has also been somewhat delayed until the past week. We went skiing yesterday, and for the first time, it actually looked like winter ski season at Timberline. The Cascade snowpack has been at 49% of what it should be; that should change significantly due to the storms of the past week and the upcoming storms next week. Yesterday’s ski session was good, but I’m definitely noticing a mental hangover from last year’s crash and the difficult time with boots. I’m skiing more cautiously and tentatively. I asked the husband about it and he noted the difference. However, with this last bout of snowfall, I think I can make it worth my while to now plan to get in at least one day of skiing during the week–just getting time on the slope will get me past this phase.

The good news is that the Dalbello boots and I are finally clicking. They’re a stiff and tough boot to break in, but breaking in is finally happening. One reason for my tentative skiing is that I’m learning these boots. They are a very sensitive and reactive boot, so I have to ski with a firmer touch. Yesterday’s deep Cascade concrete–heavy, wet snow piling up steadily–also called for a more upright, backward balance to keep my tips from digging in and tripping me, and it was the first time I’d skied this boot in these conditions. On the other hand, the conditions also led to a rather cool moment where I pointed my skis straight down an ungroomed slope (last 200 yards of the Mile, transiting over from Norman), rocked back a little bit, and just bounced down the slope as if I were sledding on the skis, no turns. The boots floated nicely with my feet, good and stable, with solid support. I maybe saw my tips every few bounces–about a good six inch depth in places. That was definitely a “whee!” moment.

The other thing I noticed yesterday was that there were definitely moments when, with less experience and a softer boot, I would have gone down. Nonetheless, I’m happy to figure out that these boots really do work, and what I need is just many days on them to get myself in tune with the Dalbellos. I think I have spring skiing plans….

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And then there was après-ski with Mocha. We have to scale back on our work–she’s tweaking something and coming up sore, as in okay at the start of the work but sore as we stop (all walk work, either long line or bareback, happens in long line mostly). I suspect it’s either the weight of the shoe, or breakover from the foot growth. I’ve also been using side reins set for a snug collected frame when ground driving, and I think that’s another factor. So we’re going to back off of the more collected and elaborate work, and go with looser side reins.

A greater concern is that I’ve been watching her hock movement as we ground drive, and I’m really not thrilled with what I am seeing. Much contemplation here.

Anyway, onward with the day.

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October 26, 2013 · 6:11 am

Crazy October

Wasn’t it just a few days ago that Mocha and I were at the horse show? It’s been close to a month now, and it seems like that whole time has just spun by.

Part of that has involved a welcome uptick in Day Jobbe activity–primarily extra duty diagnostic assessment at the high school. I’ve spotted former students, chatted with colleagues, and mentally noted some patterns that you don’t normally notice when you’re just testing your own caseload kids. Even before, when I had to do a flurry of testing, that involved younger kids with fairly similar backgrounds. At the high school, I’m seeing kids from different programs than mine, and the things I notice are interesting.

One pattern that I keep coming back to is that I am seeing how a lack of grammar knowledge is not just a composition issue but is also a comprehension issue. I’m chewing on that thought pretty heavily. Key element: it’s dang hard to pick out the main idea in a sentence or paragraph when a reader consistently confuses prepositional phrases describing the main idea with the main idea itself. Just sayin’.

Anyway, there’s some other stuff going on involving the Day Jobbe that I can’t talk about at the moment, and it’s tied into personal life stuff. Potential positives all around, but…can’t talk too much yet.

Writing is in a shambles at the moment. Between testing and wrestling with our new student database program to produce not just grades but IEPs for three students just before conferences, I’ve not had a lot of mental energy for writing. Some of the other stuff going on has interfered as well. It’s frustrating but very real. However, during conferences today I did get some words down. Not a lot, but…Becoming Solo really does need focus and attention. I have to do a LOT of writing, and soon, to meet deadline. But now that that first big set of IEPs is over except for paperwork corrections, and conferences are over and I’ve figured out the new gradebook (for now), things should stabilize. Maybe.

Conferences. Things started going south the day before when kids came up to me practically in tears because they were flunking my class. And these were my A students.

What the ?!#@?!?

I quickly figured out that the damn student management database software had blown up again. Luckily, a bit of wrestling with it straightened things out, and I learned a piece of valuable information. All I’ve gotta say, though, is that if a database designer DOESN’T MEAN to have the main page of a grade book to produce reliable grade calculations, then turn off the capacity to enter grades in that screen. Period. I know enough about databases to know it’s doable.

In any case, I fixed the gradebook, printed out progress reports, and started my parent meetings with abject, heartfelt apologies to student and parent; explained the circumstances, apologized again, and handed the corrected grade over. Several kids were facing grounding over that damn gradebook screwup, and I feel horrible about it.

As it were, I had one of my biggest turnouts ever for conferences. But it was tiring and difficult, with intense meeting time mixed with dead time (we were in the gym rather than in our rooms). But running to 8 pm on Thursday, then getting back up the Mountain for more meetings by 8 am was tiring. Still, I feel like it was a productive set of conferences.

But dang, I’m tired. And October is almost over. Where did it go?

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