Still Riding

I used to do these weekend updates on a pretty regular basis.  I  don't remember why I stopped doing them.

Oh.  Yes I do.  I think it dates back to the only blog post I ever took down after posting.

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In Nashville for a wedding this weekend. . . the bride was a "Junior Bridesmaid" when we got married back in '96.  It doesn't seem possible that she was ever that little  . . . she has grown into a lovely young woman.  In other news, I'm now at the age where I'm using "young woman" to describe a twentysomething.

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Please, oh please, someone help my friends & associates remember the difference between "lose" and "loose."  My English Major is showing, but honestly, it drives me nuts.

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I bet I caused some pause this week when I was teaching Johnson's Rasselas.  There's a passage in the story where Rasselas and his sister are discussing the pleasures and perils of marriage and family life.  I blurted out, "isn't our need to 'pair off' kinda absurd?  Isn't it absurd to tie your happiness to the whims of another person??"  In response, I got some weird looks.  I tried to explain, as I continued to expound on Johnson's point that marriage is no sure road to perfect happiness, that to say it's absurd is not to say that it's wrong--just that it ought to make us laugh at ourselves at least a little.  "Because," I said, "if we don't laugh at our own folly, we'll cry!"  Well.  That got them to pay attention at least.

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The only other comment I'll make about teaching this past week:  Paradise Lost is a black hole, a vortex of such gravitational force that nothing can escape its orbit. 

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Finally marked The Queen Elizabeth with the proper school insignia.  Now there's no mistaking our cruise ship for any of the others in our little town.

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My mind is restless.  Not sure why that is, but it manifests in some interesting ways.  First, I can very easily get caught up in playing game after game of Wii Table Tennis (yeah, you heard me right).  Second, I'm afflicted with point-click-and-purchase-itis (a good time of year for it, but still).  Third, I'm anxious to finish the books I'm reading so I can get to other books.  Fourth, I'm anxiously planning for the next term's classes before I'm even finished with the classes from THIS term.  Fifth, my dreams have gotten most vivid, and have featured the same location for over a week now.  If only I could remember the details. 

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I brought the bike indoors, pulled out the trainer, and got in the saddle a couple of times this week.  So yes, I am still riding.  Both metaphorically and literally. 

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Just read this passage, and I think the student did a good job with (most of) it:

A person must comprehend that God has a plan that is larger than he is, and that this plan can only be defined as Providence; with this new term comes the weight of all of the world's joy and sorrow.

No surprise, I don't think, that this is written by an older ('non-traditional' is the term I think we use) student.  One has to live for a little while before one can really talk about even a fraction of the weight of the world's joy and sorrow. 

(Poor use of parenthetical statements, I know.)

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I am concerned that I come across like a complainer.  That isn't intentional:  I have learned that to have a "happy" life (in the way we usually mean it) isn't necessarily the same as having a "good" life.  And that to be overly focused on the former is (for me) a mistake.

(More parenthetical statements.  The sign of a distracted, restless mind, perhaps?)

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The end of the term is bittersweet.  There's probably a money quote about that somewhere in Rasselas.