I’ve been on an octopus deep dive lately. So far, I’ve read:
- Remarkably Bright Creatures (fiction)
- The Soul of an Octopus (nf)
- Other Minds (nf)
- The Mountain in the Sea (fiction)
And watched:
- Octopus!
My TBR and To-Be-Watched lists are long.

A few of my students spend significantly more time figuring out how not to do their work than they would have spent doing the work. And “the work” is useful, need-to-know stuff, not busywork. Ideally, college should result in more than learning how to cheat better.

Newest student excuse: no, I can’t show my document’s edit/version history as I pasted it into Docs from Pages. But here’s a screen recording I just happen to have of me writing the paper.

Such concern! The furrowed brow!

In addition to my other travel, I’ve got a kid marching with a drum & bugle corps this summer. DCI is a fascinating subculture where hardy young people spend June, July, and the first half of August traveling around the country competing in these absolutely amazing shows.

I realize it’s time to tidy my bookshelf. It’s time for lots of things now that my seasonal work as a college admissions reader has wrapped.

But the main thing I want to edit is from the 1st post in this thread. Unpopular option: I love. No. Unpopular opinion: winter is great! Writers … revise.

Update! I still love winter, but also it’s cold-cold here this week. I’m in flannel pjs and my fleece sleeping poncho (@ me if you must) under a sheet, electric blanket set to 14, quilt, extra fluffy blanket, and a very large dog.

Of course, I don’t love power outages and collisions and emergency vehicles unable to get through. But I do love winter weather.

Rather, I do not enjoy grading a large pile of tedious things. Short piles and interesting assignments are an entirely different situation. Anyway, the end of the semester is nearly here.