WELL, the news from San Francisco is that the semester ended a week ago. I finished my grading and got on with it to DC to see sister, brother-in-law and niece. It was lovely! Good weather, not too humid for DC and was relatively active with niece Beatrix; painting, swimming, playing, reading, talking about kitty kats (we bonded over this) and eating cake. Bonus material included walking the dogs in rock creek park, seeing roommate Chris and Sam who also happened to be in DC, visiting some memorials in the rain with them, seeing a different part of the city (Columbia Heights) where Sam's mom lives, going to the Sackler to see some old Buddhist art, watching parts of the Giro D'Italia, having lunch with my long lost cousin annnnnnd that's all I'm going to mention. Huh. Which I always thought should be spelled "Hunh."

Oh, and I finished LOST along with everybody else. Here is a good source of interpretations of the final episode and season. My favorites are towards the bottom, one by a person talking about past lives and realization, thereby avoiding limiting terms like "purgatory" and the Christian interpretations that follow from it (Dude, the Dharma project was the name of the scientific group on the island that dominated 4 of the 6 seasons). The other helpful interpretation was by a writer on the show, and she specifically references and explains some of the larger forces working on the island, such as Locke and the MiB's role throughout. Yes I totally escaped into this show, away from a particularly stressful semester. It happens. But wow, I feel lucky to have been able to watch the show as it developed. Watching it alone on DVD just would not be the same experience of letting it sit and reading about it along with everybody else.

Now I'm back here, doing a few odds and ends before I leave on Wednesday for another 10 day meditation course, which I have to admit I'm not looking forward to but after the first three days I'll settle into it. Many projects to get back into that got pushed out during the semester. My creative writing class was great this Spring but the other class, rhetoric and persuasion, was seriously one of the worst experiences I've had teaching. Nice students generally but just a really bad mix, mostly male and had a lot of too cool for school-ness happening. At the end of the day the quality of the work was good: we got where I wanted us to go but it wasn't easy. Anyway, teaching. The summer semester starts in the three weeks. Hope all is well. The music blog continues to be posted to so, there. I will write when I get back.

One more thing, neither here nor there, I think this is one of my favorite songs: "Daughter of a Child" from the album Mu-ziq vs. The Auteurs. It's kind of old (1994) and I don't know why I love it so, but well. The whole album it's pretty great.