Boo!

Exam week was not all I had hoped for here. I played not a single game with our students. Instead of going through 11 bags of popcorn in the circus style popcorn machine like we did last semester, we went through 4 (and most of that batch is sitting there, stale, in the machine. It was a week of long meetings, tons of snow, and alternating extremes of maddeningly boring spells mixed with serious job responsibilities. Eek! The college closes down on Wednesday for the holiday break, and I seem to be the only one here for these first two days of the week. The rest of my department is full time staff, and they have each accumulated copious amounts of vacation time. I, part time peon that I am, accumulate none. Two long, boring days are in store for me.

On a different note, I reread Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy in the last several months (it's long and I'm busy!). It's my third time reading the fictional biography of Michelangelo. I found new things during this reading and was able to correct things I just plain remembered wrong, and I discovered that I still enjoy it and find it to be insightfully and engrossingly written. It's well worth reading every 7 or 8 years!

On the other hand, I started (and am about half way finished) with another novel. I had lent a book to a student of mine, and she returned the favor. I'm now reading The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury. I wish I could say that I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying having something to read, but the novel is so poorly and awkwardly written, it's actually a bit painful. I try to console myself with the idea that "at least it's an interesting story," but I'm just kidding myself. It's predictable in that I'm not surprised by anything that I think I'm supposed to be surprised by. But I'll keep reading it because I tend to finish books I start and because, even though I'm reading it half braindead, I still don't have to go back and reread the parts I was totally braindead while reading. I'm not expecting greatness in the second half, but I suppose anything is possible.

I know I'm just fooling myself again.