Not much to report, really . . . we're pretty much cruising along here on calm seas, which is a nice, refreshing, welcome change of pace.

I spent far too much time in Ann Arbor this weekend, picking up stuff from the house. It feels like it's time to get the place emptied out; it's starting to feel like Miss Havisham's residence - it's clear nobody's living there, but yet it looks semi-inhabited. I know they say that a house should have furniture in it, but then again, maybe we can get everything out, paint, and sell this one on the idea that it's clean and ready to move into. So on Saturday I went down rather late in the day, had lunch with Brenda, and got the futon and entertainment center out of the living room, and the bed (well, the mattress at least) out of the upstairs bedroom. I consoled myself with the thought that, if the house doesn't sell, we can move some furniture back for the summer . . . I borrowed K&R's van, which I had to pick up in Brighton.

Then on Sunday afternoon, late, Emil and I took some of the furniture over to Charlie's apartment (where he and his new roomie moved it upstairs), then returned the van to Brighton. And went back to the house to pick up some computer display cards. It was almost 9:00 before we got home; I was dismayed because I had much, much work to do.

So yesterday I pretty well knuckled down and sat, fingers to keyboard, for the whole day. And today I'm fried, predictably . . .

I'm on campus for my office hour, but I'm thinking maybe I'll go home, take a quick trip around the golf course, and reassemble the futon, which is going to live in the basement. We picked up a cheapo DVD player this weekend, too, and it needs to be hooked up to the basement TV. That room is becoming a bona fide family room, and I feel some urgency about this: Emma has started to make friends in earnest up here, and I want there to be a place at our house for them to hang out.

It's as if a switch flipped for her, or something: She seems to have broken up with her Ann Arbor boyfriend and developed a social circle here almost simultaneously. In general, I think the move has been a good thing for her; she's going to school and hanging out with other LCC students, and she seems to be doing well so far. If we were in A2 and she was commuting up here with me, the school thing would be a lot more dicey, I think. And I'm hoping that the friends she's making here are a little more serious about school than the previous crowd was. Too soon to tell about that, but so far things look promising. And I do think that the relative lack of pressure here is helping her, too.

Hard to say what's going on with Charlie. He has signed up for classes but I don't think he's really going to go through with them. He convinced a friend from Ann Arbor to move up here with him, and I'm hoping that the two of them will make friends here and get a bit more adjusted. Of course, Charlie painted his kitchen table blue with a maize block M in the middle, so I'm not terribly optimistic . . . I think the minute his lease is up, he's outta here. But at least he came. (I worry about that kid. I wish he'd grab hold of something.)

In other news, I've been skiing as much as I can, and knitting as much as I can. It's seeming to me as if my life here is taking very much the shape that it had when we lived here before, which is not surprising and also not bad. I'm enjoying the fact that generally things here seem slower, cheaper, easier. I'm taking two classes this semester - German and MS Access - and I find the combination of teaching classes and taking classes to be absolutely wonderful. I love to learn new things, and I find classes to be very convenient: Someone else has sliced up the content into manageable chunks and put me on a timetable, which makes learning very easy.

So if we go along as we're going, things look good until summer . . . I'm already pre-cranked up about the lack of adequate swimming facilities and the lack of a Summer Festival . . . but if we still have the Ann Arbor house then, perhaps I'll just summer there . . .