This morning, the last full of day of winter break, I went for a hike up Burnett's Creek. About half way I stopped off at The Trails, a big red barn looking building that serves brunch on Sundays. Most of my cohort that I started the program with was getting breakfast and I joined them. The woods along the creek were quiet, and because of the rain yesterday, it took some energy to trudge through the thin layer of ice that covered the still thick snow. This break has been eventful, finally arriving back into town last Thursday night after a week of unexpected travel. Last semester was miserably busy, and as I put the finishing touches on my schedule this evening, I'm afraid that I've set myself up again for the same kind of rigor. Hopefully it won't be as bad, not having to do nearly as much prep for teaching as I did last semester. I'm taking post-modern rhetoric and empirical research methods in writing, two courses that are required for my degree, and teaching second language pronunciation. I'm also teaching two courses, a composition course and a speech/pronunciation course, the same courses I taught last semester. In a perfect world I would only be taking two courses but I could not resist finally getting an opportunity to take an actual "teaching pronunciation" class. At long last I will get my hands on some theory and research on one of my favorite subjects. I think of you everyday. O! I had a thread to pull but I spent the entire day working on school things, and have used up all my writing energy. Ah well. Something about old friends calling me on the phone over the weekend, and investing energy into people who aren't actually here. From Hilare Belloc's poem "Jim",

Always to keep hold of Nurse,
For fear of meeting something worse.

My apologies for the incoherence. I'll try and come back and finish this post later. In the meantime I'm going to bed. Goodnight. (postscript: nope, not coming back to finish this post. onward...)