Yessssssss! Another week come and gone; Thursday marks the official First Day of the Week on our academic calendar this semester (as we started on a Thursday), so it is now officially Week Nine. We have 16-week semesters (yes! impossibly long!!), but during Week Fifteen we don't have writing classes (the faculty are all reading portfolios then), and we only meet once during Week Sixteen, to hand back portfolios and give final grades.

So I only have five more weeks of that Tuesday morning 8:00 class!! Eureka!! (I've already proposed that during Week Sixteen we start at 9:30. I will likely still spend the night in Lansing - but I'll be able to get up at 8:30 in the morning instead of 7:00 . . . )

Thursday nights are generally very pleasurable for me because, despite it being a new week on the academic calendar, it's the end of the week in the real world. I do have to go to campus tomorrow - but I have no meetings, which means I can spend the day prepping for next week. And I have no classes, which means I can do nothing, nothing, NOTHING tonight. (Not that I usually do much at night. Usually, though, I think about what I should be doing, or at least stay in that state of heightened awareness that precedes teaching, so I'm not always very relaxed.)

This week I'm especially enjoying being at home because I spent two nights in Lansing - Monday, as usual, and last night, because I had a meeting until 7:30, and lots of papers to grade before my class today. Staying in Lansing gave me two more hours to work on those papers . . . and, er, meant I didn't have to get up to take Em to school today, so I got to sleep in . . . Restful as all that was, I still am glad to be home. Presently I'm sitting in the alcove upstairs, listening to the strains of Charlie's electric guitar doing battle with the VHS tape of violin masters Emil is watching . . . and wondering why I sleep better in this atmosphere than I do in the relative calm and quiet of Louise's living room . . . There really is no place like home, I guess!