Well, I sort of feel as if life is on hold at the moment. The semester is winding down (so quickly, it seems!), and we're all more or less living with one ear to the ground, monitoring Emil's father's condition. So far, so good on that score: I talked to him this morning and he sounds hearty and healthy. He would like someone to come down to Youngstown and stay with him, but it will be a few weeks before that's even possible, so we're crossing our fingers and hoping the weather stays reasonable until at least then, so he can continue to get himself out & about . . .

In the meantime, I'm planning for next semester. I'm looking forward to teaching all my classes online, actually; although it wouldn't necessarily be my first choice, I do think it will have some advantages that I intend to exploit if I can. For one thing, I'll still have to be on campus most days, so I'm planning to drop Em off, then drive in immediately (as long as the weather is reasonable), and sit at my desk ticky-tickying for the majority of the day. But I also plan to go swimming at noon (which I can't do now because I teach at noon every day), and to take an exercise class so I get use of the equipment room. And I'm planning to travel with skis in the car . . .

I'm also pretty excited about how our courseware can facilitate online teaching. There's an RSS aggregator, so for class readings, I'm planning to get people to sign up for the same RSS feeds. I can think of many ways to deal with issues like determining the credibility of sources, determining the origin of news items, dealing with a single story from multiple sources, and so on . . .

Also, there are group features that will keep the reading load down for many students. I'm planning to have all four classes on the same web site; reading 88 posts on topics is going to get troublesome, so I'm planning to have students form reading/writing groups early on in the semester, and carry through with those groups (with some times when they can switch) for the whole semester. I think I have the logistics of this worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of thing you can really implement beforehand; I have to content myself with writing help text . . .

And, good news on the car front: We had torrential rains yesterday as I was driving home, so I got to experience my first Dicey Freeway Moment in the new Subaru. Wasn't much, really - but I plowed through a large puddle and realized that the Jetta would have hydroplaned, but the Subaru stayed steady as a rock. This made me enormously happy. It felt kind of extravagant to buy a new car last summer, so it was nice to think that yes, it does feel safer in bad conditions.

So things are about as good as they can be at the moment . . .