A Semester's Worth of Posts in Three Paragraphs

Well, I've managed not to blog for a whole semester. I've been busy writing my critical essay. I think it came out okay, though of course, I never really will be satisfied with it. Writing. You know how it is.

One thing I think I did succeed at very well this term is getting that annoying monkey off my back, the one gibbering in my ear about whether fantasy can be literature. And my conclusion after reading half a library's worth of essays and novels that either speak to or exemplify the topic, is that of course it can.

Once, a squirrel started hanging out on our back porch. At first, I thought he was adorable, the way he would taunt the cats through the screen door. I started putting out peanut butter for him and nuts and seeds. He became even friendlier. Eventually he started napping stretched out on the railing and if I would get crackers out of the cupboard, he'd move toward the door assuming that I was going to give him some. He got so brave in his pleas for snacks that he would come right to the screen door and stand inches from our biggest tom, who sat just inside the screen, his tail lashing madly back and forth. I began to fear the squirrel would dart inside when I opened the door. I imagined utter chaos erupting as he dashed inside and all five of our cats ran after him, upending furniture and knocking breakable items to the floor in their excitement. I tried to scare the squirrel away by yelling at him, but he would only take a few steps back and then edge closer again, his eyes on my box of Wheat Thins. Eventually, I threw a glass of water in his face, right through the screen. He didn't even flinch as the water whooshed over him. Of course not, I thought. Water is no threat to a squirrel.

The long essay

The third semester of the MFA program includes writing a long essay. Apparently, early on this essay had to be 30 pages long. Now it's been reduced to 15-20 pages. I've heard various theories about the reasoning behind this. The most pragmatic is that an essay of 15-20 pages could be published. I have no idea if this is true, since I don't really read essays on any sort of regular basis, except in books. I don't really know how manuscript pages convert to book pages, but some of the essays I've read in books are certainly longer than 15 pages. I guess all this is moot though, since I don't expect tat I will try to get my essay published. But maybe I will. You never know.

I'm sitting in Espresso Royale right now, preparing to work on my essay or my book. I thought I'd take advantage of the wifi and do a blog entry. Marc is downstairs at the Labyrinth. We had lunch at the Red Hawk because I begged and said we needed to get out more.

As far as I can tell, this essay is meant to be about a personal experience of literature as it intersects with our lives and writing. It's odd. I didn't expect to learn anything about myself and my writing in the preparation of this essay. But as it turns out, even I didn't understand why I write what I do. And maybe I will never fully understand. But in trying to sort out what I should say to people about why some fantasy is literature, why it's important, why they should reconsider its validity, I've discovered some clear connections between my own spiritual longing and what i write. I've also identified the ways in which fantasy has shaped my life, the presence of fantasy in my life from a very young age. I think I've even come up with a fairly strong case for fantasy being the American/Western/industrialized equivalent of magical realsim in the motivation behind it and the purpose it serves for both the writer and the reader. Now of course, not all fantasy falls into this category. I'm leaning toward drawing the conclusion that it's mostly fantasy written in first person, and mostly by women or people of color or other people who have for some reason experienced oppression. I'm leaning toward saying that where the "magic" in magical resalism arises out of the cultural norms of societies heavily influenced by organized religion, the magic in the kind of fantasy I am referring to, the kind I write, arises out of the lack of such cultural beliefs. It arises out of a longing for the existence of some great power for good, something that could rescue us all, no matter what. It arises out of the fear that such a being or force does not exist, or perhaps out of the refusal to accept what seems obvious to our logical minds. We are alone, trapped in prisons of flesh, unable to control anything outside ourselves and actually not even our own physical bodies and often even our own thoughts, unable to count on anyone's help, always wondering if we will be let down, abandoned, disappointed, doomed. It arises as a response to the knowledge that death is inevitable, yet seems impossible to even contemplate. How could we simply cease to exist? It's the original human question about the meaning of life, re-framed by science and technology and the recent change in cultural standards.

Fantasy, well-written, character-driven fantasy, allows us to suspend our disbelief and belong to a world where there is a great force for good, where the impossible can be hoped for, where, though we are all in great danger, there is something that could save us, no matter what.

OK. I've pretty much written a book here. I'll stop now and get to work.

Apparently I've been tagged

Now, I had no idea what Stephanie was talking about when I read her comment. I've been tagged as a meme. WTF? First of all, I had to refresh my memory on this whole "meme" thing. I couldn't even figure out how to pronounce it. Like 'meem' or like 'mimi'? Well, the audio portion of the online dictionary says 'meem' but a friend tells me it's meh-meh. Who knows?

So here's the definition: n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

In other words, this is someone's fancy way of getting us all involved in a chain letter. Or a chain blogging event. By telling us that we're transferring a unit of cultural information. I find it difficult to buy into. And who says I have six quirky behaviors anyway?

Oh, all right. Here you go. (huge sigh)

1. When left to my own devices, I never eat a proper meal. Instead I collect about three items from the cupboards and refrigerator and eat them sequentially. On rare occasions, I will actually put something on a plate. This seems to be my best form of eating because I lose weight (just enough) when I do this for long enough and gain weight when I eat actual meals.

2. I love writing. If allowed, I will not only spend all day either writing, thinking about writing or talking about writing, I will dream about my characters. Of course, I am not really allowed to do this. Job. Husband. Friends. Cats. heh.

3. I have a crazy imagination. In a normal conversation, I will suddenly get an idea for a story and launch into a "I was just thinking, what if...?" Some people don't react well to this. My husband looks at me like I'm an alien, especially when I ask these questions about news items. Me: What if he just admitted that he likes men? What do you think would happen? Him: He won't. He's a Republican. Me: I know, but what if he did? Him: He won't. Me; I know, but do you think it would be a big deal if he did? I mean, if he can meet men in a public restroom, then I don't see how it could be that bad. Does he think he can just hide in the stall and no one will recognize him? Him: (you-are-an-alien-stop-it-right-now look)I have no idea.

4. I have no sense of thirst. I sometimes forget to drink anything for days, until I am literally light-headed. I try to get myself to drink without a sense of thirst, but my abject failure at this proves to me the real reason why we have a sense of thirst in the first place. I don't know what happened to mine. It's just gone.

5. I am the world's worst procrastinator. Except for Mindie Kniss. She's worse than me. But she doesn't think of it as procrastinating. She just thinks of it as living. Which makes me worse, I think. I feel horribly anxious about it. I even feel anxious about Mindie's procrastiinatory behavior. I feel better having discovered that Annie Dillard is a pretty good procrastinator herself. (This sounds like something a homeopath could use to figure out a remedy for this quirk. You know, worse when thinking about Mindie's procrastination. Better when thinking about Annie Dillard. Any takers?)

6. If I could eat only one food for the rest of my life, it would be chocolate cake with frosting. As luck would have it, I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic and I'm allergic to wheat. I never, ever get to eat chocolate cake. I mean, I could. But it would make me feel terrible. Stupid biology.

Now I'm supposed to tag six people. I don't actually know that many bloggers. So I'll have to say Felicity and Mindie. And then I'll have to tell them. But now I need to stop procrastinating, go to the kitchen and eat three foods and then get some work done.

Your Friend, the Swirling Vortex of Doom

Craft talk by Pete Fromm.

Pete fromm tells us in his craft talk that he keeps seeing stories in which the writer takes his characters only to the edge of trouble and then lets them off the hook. Pete says he writes to get to the place where things are terribly wrong. I really appreciated the fact that he used student writing before and afters to demonstarte how the scene becomes more interesting if we don't evade danger to easily.

As happens often during residencies, while Pete was talking, I saw a possibility for a swirling vortex of doom for the main character of my novel. (Yes, residencies are the riskiest times for my characters!) Pete had discussed various reasons why writers might stop short--they like their characters too much, they don't want to go through the tough emotions of writing these scenes. But I saw a different kind of issue with going into the vortex. How would I get her out? And even if I did get her out, would the reader's view of her be changed so much that she would be irredeemable? Wanting to know the answer, I came back to my room at the end of the day to write toward the vortex.

The Habit of Art

This morning's first craft talk was by Claire Davis. Here's my review.

You have to make a habit of art. No, you have to make a habit of art. That's what Professor Greg ( ) told Claire Davis's college writing class. Do you understand? he would ask them, getting frustrated when they barely paid attention, did the minimum work for the assignments or when half of them didn't bother to show up. Of course, they'd say. But we didn't, Claire tells us.

She has written the talk in the same way that she writes her fiction, revealing reality to us as if we've never actually experienced it for ourselves. And we realize as she's speaking that maybe we haven't. In a breathy voice that is almost sing-song, Ms. Davis takes us on a sensory experience of words. The word is smarter than we are, she quotes ( ).

Habit, she tells us, has some unpleasant connotations. Let us make it a ritual, whatever ritual it is that gets us to sit down with pen and paper or computer screen and keyboard and put words down, make images into words, tell a story.

Find the community of like-minded souls, artists, creative people and discuss things with them. Connect with the most primeval source of inspiration: the world. But maybe, she tells us, it's not any of these things that is what is meant by the habit of art. Maybe it is being fully present, in the moment, experiencing life, noticing the way the world smells and sounds and tastes and feels and how every color is absorbed into our eyes and passes into our minds. Be in the moment. Maybe that's what the habit of art is--living fully.

She suggests that we must get past the distractions that call to us in a world where our attention is being pulled in dozens of different directions every minute of every day. They are excuses. We all have them. But the writing is the thing.

She describes going out into her garden and absorbing it with her senses. While she speaks I am there, where roses grow around her door and because she doesn't have the heart to trim the vines, she has to duck as she goes out of the house and her screen door never completely closes. I am there with the green and green and silver of the leaves. I am standing in her back yard looking out past a field of grass toward the mountains. I am breathing the air of a place I've never been, never seen.

I know exactly what she means when she says, "What if this experience is here all the time, not just at that one moment? What if we just don't notice?" She compares the experience of imagining deeply to Zen. The habit of art is an evolutionary necessity, she tells us, and I believe her as if this message is written into my genetic code. You will never imagine deeply enough, she says, if you only see the surface of things.

I don't remember having gotten teary at a craft talk before. But, well... I know exactly what she means.

Schmooz and Cruise

We arrived at te residency yesterday. The whole Fab Four arrived together since Deb flew in at 7:30 yesterday morning and came over to Abby's sister's house to sleep, and then Linda came to pick the three of us up in the afternoon.

We arrived at our room which is just down the hall from where we were last year, unpacked and went grocery shopping. Then we had dinner together, each of us eating different stuff.

Deb and I are in the same workshop and we had arranged for everyone in our workshop to meet up in advance. There was already a social hour planned for all students and faculty, so we just met there early. I think it was a good idea. Now we are more relaxed together.

After we'd been there a while, all the other people in the program started showing up. I introduced Molly to everyone and I introduced David Long to two new guys in our workshop. (Molly and David are our workshop leaders.)

[Hahahaha. I can hear one of my roommates snoring through the wall. (I won't name names. She might kill me. )]

And finally, I talked to Pete. We talked for a while.

I felt very social, but I think it's because I had a purpose. My purpose (self-defined) was to make sure the new people got to meet everyone.

I saw Felicity and Mindie, and as it turns out they are in te same room only a couple of doors down from us.

This is going to be a good residency. I can tell already.

Today we start lectures. Linda said there wasn't that muc going on today, but I have to teach with Julie Rember at 4:00, so it's going to seem like a lot to me until that happens.

I don't know what's on the schedule. I think I want to corner --well, not corner, but yeah, find and convince to chat--Claire Davis. I wanted to talk to her last time. There was kind of a faux pas last time in that after my worshop session with her, I was talking about it in the lunch line and it turned out she was sitting right near where we were. I actually wasn't saying anything about what I thought. I had just said, "You should have eard my husband wen I told him. He said, "What a lot of horseshit." And at that exact moment, she and I looked right at each other. I was planning to go talk to her and clear the air, but she had to leave early and before I could find her, she was gone. So, I want to do it now and maybe she and I can come to a meeting of the minds.

My romom is all arranged and I have some books on my shelf: Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, and Robert Holdstock, right next to a cookbook about meat. (That's a present for Marc.)

Portland

I arrived in Portland yesterday. It's cool here, in the 60s. It's very interesting because I'm getting alittle familiar with the airport and I know what certain streets look like now. Also, I am enjoying the smells of Portland for the first time.

Yesterday I ate a peach and almost started crying It was so amazing. I had forgotten wat a peach really tasted like. The memory was still there, of course, but it had gotten all vague.

Abby is still sleeping. She really should get up so we can go and do something fun. Go out out to breafast. That's what we should do. We stayed up last night reading our writing to each other. Abby has some great poems.

OK< I'm going to try to get her up.

Tomorrow is the fist day of residency, although it doesn't start until evening.

Off Again

I'll be going back to Oregon on Tuesday for my third residency. As usual, I am both looking forward to it and vaguely dreading it. I really don't like the traveling part of it, trying to make sure I have everything I need, managing my luggage, flying, being away from Marc and my cats. But I love seeing my friends, going to classes, being immersed in the creative atmosphere, getting to talk to other writers.

Usually, just before I go, I wish I could cancel it, get out of it somehow. Then after I get there, I almost immediately stop thinking about it and have a great time. Fortunately.

I'll be rooming with my usual roommates in the same dorm as last time. That should make it easier for me to settle in. It'll at least be familiar.

I'll be blogging the trip, as usual. Hopefully there won't be so many typos this time. I have a couple of new goals. We always have to do reviews of the classes we attended while at the residency. They're due within a week of the end of the residency, or we can turn them in before we leave. I've never had mine done in time to turn them in at the res, but I'm going to try to write about each thing I attend on the day I attend it. Maybe I'll do that here. I'm also going to try to make my reviews more formal and meaningful than I have in the past. I'm usually so tired by the time I write them that they are just a kind of fill in the blanks report of what the lecturer said. But I'm hoping that if I do them immediately after, and if I find some way to take better notes (and if I can actually read my handwriting--heh), hopefully I can write a good summary.

Every semester, a few well-written reviews make it onto the MFA website, a sort of advertisement for the program, and an endorsement of the student writer's work. Two of my roommates have had pieces up over the past two semesters. When I've seen theirs I've felt like a moron, because I can't imagine how they were able to focus enough to write such strong essays. So this time, I'm going to do it. I don't know how yet, but I'm going to.

The residency starts on the 19th, so I'll begin blogging after that. I'm co-teaching the reading for writers class again with Julie Rember. We're doing two sessions, but each one is only an hour this time. I'll write about those, but I expect it will go like it did last time.

More during the week.

Almost mid-term

Obviously, I haven't been writing as much here this semester as I did last semester. This has something to do with the fact that my parents got a computer virus and something to do with the fact that I got a biological virus. The first part of that is probably harder to understand than the second part.

In some ways, I write this blog so that my mom will get to read about what happens with my school work. I mean, I want other people to read it, too, but my mom saying, "You haven't written for a while," is what motivates me to write here, or at least, reminds me to write here. So when my parents' computer was in the tech hospital because of a virus, she couldn't read my blog and so she didn't remind me to write in it. And then I got the flu, as in the real FLU.(I thought it was just a myth, like Santa Claus, the boogeyman and the toothfairy. [Actually, the toothfairy is real. I got a note from her when I was a kid. Her name is Daisy.)

Anyway, both viruses are cured now, and here I am to give an update.

I've sent and gotten back two packets. I've been happy with the feedback I've gotten and nothing has been a terrible surprise. Mostly, the comments that have helped have just broadened my perspective. I'm getting more confidence in my writing now and this is probably part of why I'm writing more. Last semester, I didn't really write anything brand new. Well, OK, I wrote a tiny piece of chapter XX, but other than that, I mostly added to things I had already been working on. But so far this semester, I've written the better part of two new chapters and I have a lot of new ideas.

Since everything seems to be going well on the small scale and since I'm a worrier, I have started to worry about the book as a whole and whether, after all is said and done, it can really work. I think it can, but then I start to panic. Yet I tell myself that all I can do is finish writing it and see.

About a month ago, I passed the hundred page mark, which seems both good and bad. I've been writing for a long time to only just have passed the hundred page mark. But then, it's going faster now and I think I'm about a third finished, with a lot of work that is relatively polished. I'll have to speed things up and there's going to be that pesky essay semester starting in June, during which I'll have to work on my essay. This will distract me from writing the novel, I think. So... I guess I had better stop writing this blog for now and GET TO WORK.

:)

Nervousmess and excitement

Just a quick update on how things are going since I've been back.

Something happened to me at the residency. I didn't fully realize it until I got home and got rested, but I think all the things I had been studying over the course of the term clicked in my head. Well, probably not all of them, but some substantial new thing has happened for me. I can tell I understand a critical aspect of what makes writing good that I only vaguely had some external notion of before. It's almost like I had an epiphany, but I know it was really a synthesis of the semester's work and things I heard at the residency.

So I am more and more excited about that. Could I be a little more specific? Well, here it is. It's the difference between showing and telling. Everyone says it, but it's so vague what they say. It's like understanding quantum mechanics or something. You might know something about it, but the hows and whys of it are probably beyond you. It's kind of like that. Because really, writing is telling. It's using words to make a story. How much closer to telling can you get than that? So how can you show without telling while creating a story with words?

The best way I can find to explain the difference is to use the analogy of a photograph versus a film. When you describe something in a static way, you capture a photo. When you describe it in a dynamic way, one that uses words to do dual duty depicting things not as they are in a particular stopped moment of time, but as they are during a period of time, you capture a film with words.

I never thought about this consciously until recently. I think sometimes I might have inadvertantly done this, but it was hit or miss. Now that I am aware of it, I have a lot more control. I also realized that one of the keys is to use very precise verbs. I had been an advocate of using adverbs and I couldn't understand why adverbs had to be used sparingly or not at all. But I now understand that single words have a lot of power. If you use weak or static verbs to tellyour story and add adjectives to get the nuance of meaning across, the nuances of your story become static. If you use active, precise verbs, the nuances of your story remain active, captured in the verbs. Compare "he ran" or "he strode" to "he walked quickly".

Of course, adverbs are a part of the language, but they need to be rarely used. They are scaffolding, not solid foundations.

So that's the exciting part. The nervousness comes from not knowing if I can get everything done on time. I have only three weeks each period instead of four like last time, so I really ahve to be on point all the time. And I'm having troulbe with reading. My reading speed is really down. I'm still trying to finish my first book this semester. But I'll make up for it by reading an essay for my seoncd work.

I find that I really want to impress Molly. I don't know why I should feel that way. But then, I wanted to impress Pete also. We'll see what happens.

Lost Weekend

I've been remiss. It's just been so hard to keep everything together and so I haven't been blogging. If I've learned one thing a bout my writing and what people think of it through this residency, it's that imagination in more important than knowledge. True, it's good that I can make pretty good sentences, but what affects people ,ost about my writing is the strangeness of it.Strangeness is the word that DL used in his critique.

So I have Molly Gloss as an advisor this time. I'm pretty excited to work with her. Today she and I are going to meet and talk about making maps.

I am going to have to work harder than I did last semester because I will only have three weeks in between packets instead of four. It looks like the summer semester is about three weeks longer than the winter one.

I have been thinking about writing again, though. Its really hard to write while here because so much is going on. Also, I haven't had as much energy as I did last time and I've been taking it easy. Last night I went to bed at 8 and slept in until 6 this morning. The previous two nights I had found myself falling asleep during the faculty readings, which really is too bad. I'm still sick and will have to go back to the doctor when I get home.

This residency has given me some new tools and some new insights into my own work. I have a more concrete idea of what I need to work on while getting the story down.

Yesterday I was inspired to write a poem in listening to Marvin Bell's lecture called Poetry A-Z. I think I will use it as my review of his talk.

This is all so vague, I know.

Remember the elevator story about David Long? Well, now I like him and he doesn't think I'm a weirdo anymore. Turns out he taght in the Poets in Schools program an was actually teaching in my high school during the time I was there. He taught one of my English teachers. So that was cool to find out. Small world.

Maybe I will get my wish to work with him after all. We'll see what happens.

Can I say here that I am grateful to the universe for my weird brain? Thanks whoever is responsible for my imagination, in spite of the fact that it allows me to imagine all sorts of paranoid crap sometimes. Without it, where would I be?

Thursday

Yes, my titles have become singularly uninventive. What's your point? :)

I can only write for a minute, because I need to get something ready for today. Yesterday was good. I found out some good news, bt I won't put it up here. It's just about my work being liked by certain faculty, but I don't want to broadcast it since you never know who might be reading.

My piece is going to be workshopped on Saurday or Sunday.

I had lunch with Pete. It was great. We talked about writing. What a concept. We also exchanged stories: I tol him that my mom was a fan of his. We had a whole conversation about it. I think I am going to buy his new book for my mom when it comes out. He told me it may be a while.

Everything is kind of a blur. I had better get going. I'll try to write more tomorrow. It's harder to have anecdotes here because the hallways are so much like the great white north that no one ventures out to meet up there. But I have seen Abby and Debi and Linda everyda and hung out.

Wednesday?

It's a good thinmg this residency doesnt feel as busy as the last one. I am pretty sick, and feel terrib le and ired. I have mo,ments when I feel ok, but mostly I feel slightly nauseous an achy.

I only went to four things esterday: the first craft talk, whih was Peter Sears about revisions. Then workshop, a talk by Hilda Raz, he editor of Prairie Schooner, and Marvin Bell's poetry reading at night He was with Glenn Moore (the best stand up bass player in America). It was really cool to hear Glenn play. Somehow I was not there for the poetry. I mean, I heard it, but I didnt feel it. Don't know why. Probably sickness.

I'm having lunch with Pete today.I'm looking forward to it. He's a good energy to be around.

Also on the schedule today, a craft talk by Ellen Bass. She is really great. She's talking about discovery. We are workshopping Linda's and Mindie's pieces in workshop today, cool because both of them are friends. Ten this afternoon, I may go to two graduate readings and a craft talk by Mary Helen Stefanick called The Secret of Once. Tonigt Pete Fromm and Valerie Miner are reading and Linda is introducing them.

The weather has apparently been crazy, but I have carefully avoided going outside or even looking outside or the most part. I only know by rumor and the sound of the wind howling through the wall when I'm in the bathroom in my room.

I'll be having breakfast with Abby again this morning. I really should spend some time now doing some reviews of classes so far, so I won't have so much work to do when I get home those first few days.

I don't know how, but Marc magically fixed my e. You probably won't remember, but last residency, I was sruggling with it. It works perfectly now and Marc clais never to have had a problem with it. I think he's just gifted. Actually, now that I think about the keyboard layout, maybe it was the h. But that seems to be working fine also.

Ah delirium. The cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

So far so good

Well, Ive been in Oregon for three days. The first day I spent at Abby's sister's house. It was great.We went to a cat sanctuary where Abby used to volunteer. I fell in love wth a cat who reminded me of Nefertum. He was very friendly. I would have triedf to convince Marc that we should adopt him if only hnly we lived closer to him. I would hate to make a cat fly for so long.

On Sunday, we met Linda who drove up from Bend. Fortunately she has a four wheel drive because we had to drive through the mountains in a snow storm. Many people were off the road, but we were like the eveready bunny.

Yesterday was te first day of classes. I co-taught a class yesterday and it went really well. MOre than twice the number of people that we had wanted signed up for it, so we had to modify it some. We didn't have time to do individual work on their own stuff, only on the stuff that w had prepared.

Food is not nearly as good as during the summer residency. Finally, last jight we went to the grocery store, so hopefully I am set.

WE all hae our own rooms and the hallways here are godforsakenly cold, unheated. This leads to some degree of isolation. I had hoped to be next door to jy summer roomates, but we're all on different floors. Abby and Linda have beautiful rooms with fireplaces, kitchenettes and ocean views. By the luck of the draw, Deb and I have normal rooms. But we've been getting together in Abby's room for meals and just to chat when we have time.

I started out this residency exausted and sick, and I am really tired nmow. Yesterday there were two clases besides ours, plus the readings at night. Workshops start today, so it's going to get busier. There was some really good writing submitted to workshop.

Pete Fromm talked about convertig a short story into a screenplay. A story of his has been made into a film, whih he wrote the screenplay for. We watched the film. It was good. (Could I be anymore profound?)

I just looked at the schedule and saw that I have myself doing nothing after lunch until 7:30. I think I'll come back and go to bed. I feel terrible But now I need to get ready to go out and have breakfast in Abby's room.

Spring 2008 residency

If you can call this spring... It's only just winter. At any rate, I'm leaving tomorrow for Portland to spend the night with Abby at her sister's house in Vancouver. She's going to pick me up at the airport and then we're going to rent a car so we can drive around Portland as we please. This will be great since I've never really been there.

Then on Sunday afternoon, we'll drop off the rental car and Linda, one of our other roommates from the summer residency, is going to pick us up on her way to Seaside. Our residency this time is on the coast instead of on campus. I think they do it this way because classes are in full swing and probably all the dorm rooms are occupied. So we get to go to a hotel on the beach.

Weather.com says it's going to be rainy there, though warmer than it is here. As long as I'm not cold, I don't mind.

I'm co-teaching a class on the first day of actual classes. I believe it's at 2:45 in the afternoon.

I'll try to blog in shorter but more regular chunks than I did in the summer. I expect it to be slower paced, because I've already decided that I'm not going to try to do as much as I did in the summer. While my roomies were sometimes sleeping in, I went to everything. I'm going to look at the schedule and decide what I will and won't go to ahead of time.

I will still get up at 5, but hopefully can get to bed a little earlier. I'd like to avoid repeating the blathering of nonsense I did on the last day of the summer residency when I was so sleep deprived I couldn't make a coherent sentence and had to set my alarm clock twenty-seven times, knowing each time that something was wrong, but unable to figure out what. In the end, my alarm didn't go off and I was late to meet my ride to the airport, babbled incoherently, and screamed at the top of my lungs because I couldn't find my suitcase which was behind my room door. Right where I put it the night before. Yes, all this is to be avoided, so this time, more sleep,a little more food, and less mayhem. No matter what John Rember says about how "you're only here for ten days--go to everything," don't listen to him. Really. Go to most things. Remember that ten days short of sleep and constantly running leads to madness. This is my current mantra.