Sunday Brunch and Walk

Another blustery day had the branches wailing and little Penny, unused to the commotion, was darting around from window to window, guarding the household from sheets of eucalyptus bark and gnarled branches dotted with preliminary buds. The wind knocked out power lines which closed down our usual cafe, and so we skipped brunch and had a nice walk in Mountain View Cemetery, scaling the hill to the great stone piles of Millionaire's Row, which we still call Numenor between the two of us, given the rather crumbling plutocratic grandeur on display. We had the summit mostly to ourselves, and the wind was less violent up top than we expected and the heart-warm sunlight more than compensated for the cold. We got home and ordered pizza and watched Bring It On for the first time in a decade. It was fun, and it turns out I still know all the words. After a rocky start to the term, feeling a bit more raw even than usual right after Mom's unexpected death, it has turned out that both the communities of my two classrooms are enthusiastic and lovely and my love of the material has helped me push past the worst of my frustrations and made the classes feel pretty successful so far. Here's hoping that continues on this upcoming week. In the Introduction to Critical Theory we are talking Marx and in Patriarchy in Greek and Roman Antiquity we'll be talking the sophist Gorgias' "Encomium to Helen" and a little Thucydides. Preparations are underway, and with this week behind me, hard to believe tho' it is when everything feels to still be getting underway like this, the term will already be a quarter of the way through...