Long day, late dinner. The sun was well down by the time I checked the weather -- and there it was, first frost advisory of the season, a few days ahead of schedule ( Read more... )

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By late September the garden always looks fatigued, as well it might: brown cornstalks and ratty marigolds, bolted lettuce and exhausted cucumber vines, slumped potato flowers and drooping shallot greens, beige bean pods hanging at the top of the trellis among the thinning leaves. But there are still patches of green and occasional flashes of red ( Read more... )

Today I stayed late chatting with one of last year's students who stopped by to say hi and ended up hanging out for an hour processing and planning for the very full week ahead. "I should let you get some work done," she said. "This is my work," I reminded her, and she ducked her head and grinned ( Read more... )

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Today at school I said no to -- I was going to say "a lot of things," but in fact only three. Still: more than zero. It's the beginning of the school year, which means that on top of my own teaching and other work I am receiving a great many requests for my time and expertise. And some of these requests I have been able to say yes to with happiness ( Read more... )

We spent half the day in the nearest metropolis: population 10,000-big enough to have a Target, a decent Chinese restaurant, and a movie theater with more than one screen. I found a headlamp for my bike and bought a pair of argyle-patterned shoelaces for an older pair of Chucks and lingered over pens and post-it notes while she picked up mysterious ( Read more... )

Four years ago I voted by absentee ballot so I could phonebank with my union. This year I didn't have the luxury of taking a day off.

So this morning I woke up in the dim early-morning light, put on my bathrobe, fed the cats, put a CD in like I do most every morning.I got a part to play
Toast and eggs for breakfast, like most mornings, with a glass ( Read more... )

The past two and a half weeks have been a blur of getting other people to work on the house - updating the wiring and plumbing, refinishing floors, painting the exterior - and of working on it myself: stripping old shellac off the window woodwork; re-staining the woodwork and adding a couple coats of spar varnish; buying and installing new light ( Read more... )

By nine o'clock at night it's cold out - not the laughing sunny-afternoon cold of scurrying, coatless, the short distance from warm office to warm student center, but serious zero-degree cold. In the library, I pull up my socks over the hems of my long underwear; relace my boots; wrap my scarf around my neck and chin, make sure there's no gap ( Read more... )