Teacher: "Quick come up with an excuse other than 'I overslept.' "

Student: "Yes."

No more ESL teaching for the next month. I have about 15-20 hours a week of online teaching, as well as a few professional development things I need to do, but that still amounts to significantly less work than normal. I actually really enjoy teaching ESL, but it's also exhausting, so it's nice to take a break from it every six months or so.

I'm going to typeset Terminal Humming and give a copy again to a few folks to look over--at this point, many people have read it and given me advice about the poems and order, but now I need help catching really nitty-gritty things typos and word choice mix ups. Loose/lose, for example is one that I make constantly. Basically, I make the same annoying word choice errors that my students do--that's probably obvious to anyone who reads this blog regularly. I can catch 95% of those errors after very attentive proofreading, but the rest--no chance.

Editing manuscripts, grading, partying

I wrote this line from Dear [Blank] I Believe in Other Worlds when I had recently graduated from college and hadn't experienced bureaucracy nearly as much as I have now:

"remember you are here because you love what's subsumed in bureaucracy"

I made steak for Mark and I. I haven't eaten steak in ages. I'm currently obsessed with grilled vegetables (squash and red peppers are a must, but eggplant, tomatoes, and mushrooms work well too) layered with fresh ricotta, and a kind of basil-sun dried tomato pesto. Yum yum yum. And very good with a basic steak with a basic pan sauce (shallots, wine, aromatics, etc).