Stuff and Things

I have just tried to remove 80+ pounds of large white dogness from my computer cords for about the fifteenth time today.  Chewie doesn't seem to approve of the computer or any of its attachments.  He looks up at me in sleepy bewilderment when I start trying to move him...and then he just ignores me. If I persist, he gets extremely indignant, walks away...and then is right back on top of everything less than ten minutes later.

I ordered a new lens for my Nikon, and now I'm waiting (not-so-patiently) for it to arrive.  It should give me wide-angle focus without the fisheye distortion, and I want to go out and take some pictures with it.  It's a used Nikkor 18-55, and I got a very good price on it I think.  I'm very hopeful about what it will let me do.  I'd like to go out shooting sometime soon, but I need a place to go.  It would be nice to be able to click my heels three times and be back in Brazil or somewhere similarly fabulous, but I will probably have to satisfy myself with local scenery.  Maybe it's time to go see Graceland or something...

Today was a day of laundry and reading, two things that have gone hand-in-hand for me forever it seems.  I used to take my textbooks to the laundry mat when I was in college and get massive amounts of homework done while I waited for whatever was spinning to stop spinning or fluffing to be fluffed.  Of all the household chores, I guess I like laundry the most because it's the least intrusive.  Then, too, there is the pleasant and comforting set of tactile things that comes with doing laundry, the smell of clean clothing, the warmth of a load of towels just removed from the dryer.  It's not bad.

I'm reading Skippy Dies on the recommendation of a former student.  There are moments in it that make me terribly sad for the main character, and well, for everybody in it, really.  Some of it is quite funny, but since it takes place in a school setting, a lot of it is just a little too familiar.  The characters are not caricatures; it's nothing that overt.  I guess school is school wherever you go, whether it's real or fictional, and the same types of people and situations sort of crop up in them.  I can say without question that unless there is a bright happy ending in store, I am going to have to read something totally escapist next.  And no more school as subject matter, I think, until my own real one returns.

Speaking of school, it's almost time for AP scores to be back.  I have already heard from one student.  The rest remain a mystery.  I'll just have to wait until Friday to find out.  It all seems a bit unreal this year for some reason.  I am usually sort of obsessed with the scores, but this year, while I care about them greatly and would like to see them, I just am not as worked up about it as I have been previously.  Maybe it's the way the year ended.  Maybe it's not having been to the Reading this year. I don't know.  I'm sure the reality of it will come crashing back down on me when I get the scores.

Well, my book and my washer are calling to me, so...