God, I love ice. Ice as in skating rinks, I mean . . . I just got back from Buhr, again; I managed to get there about 25 minutes before they closed (I've been working long days and by the time we finish dinner and I digest my food a bit, most of the hour and forty-five minute open skate is over), which was just long enough to work up a sweat. And revel in the sound and feel of blades crunching against the surface of the rink. It's like flying, it really is; and it never fails to make me feel wonderful.

I bought my rink pass the other day, figuring that I only need to go twelve times before it's paid for itself. I've gone three times already, so maybe it will indeed turn out to be a good deal, financially. Many years it doesn't - but the advantage of having a pass is that I never have to consider whether, on any individual occasion, it's worth it to spend the entry fee. Would I have paid $5 tonight for the privilege of skating for 25 minutes? Maybe not. But it's worth paying $55 for the freedom of being able to go whenever I can, whenever I want . . .

I wish I was still playing hockey. One of the attractions of teaching completely online is that I can carve out time at otherwise untenable hours to do things like that; if I were going to be here all winter, I would play hockey, because without the pressure of preparing things for a specific hour on a specific day (as one must do when teaching f2f) I would be able to get to the rink in the mornings and still make it to campus later in the day. But given that our lives are so up in the air at the moment, I can't think about that . . . yet I will probably never have another semester when it's even a possibility. ** sigh ** Oh, well, you can't have everything . . .

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In other news, Emma has decided to go back to Community High. She has had enough of Pioneer, and I don't blame her. She wrote a letter to the principal at Community, detailing her reasons for wanting to return (despite the fact that she doesn't quite meet the criteria), and the principal wrote back, saying ok, and adding, "Your letter was so well written that I expect you to get As in all your English classes from now on." I feel very ambivalent about this. The girl is nothing if not extremely articulate, which is good . . . but on the other hand, she could be a lot better on her follow-through. It's one thing to wow them with rhetoric, and quite another to make good on your promises. I wish she was held more accountable; but part of my distress stems from the fact that she often wows me with her rhetoric, so I get taken in as much as everyone else. Grr.

That's about all the news from here. The semester is winding down, which is nice; we're into the heavy grading phase, which isn't as intense as meeting classes, I find. It looks like I'll be able to wrap my classes up early, in fact, which will give me lots of time to knit socks. For Christmas, I've decided to take socks down to the Uncles, Aunt Betty, and Emil's father (all of whom will probably be quite baffled to get Christmas gifts). That's eight socks. I better get busy . . .