a good omen, perhaps...

I'm frequently a little bit late in the mornings, which will sometimes result in a missed train, but it's rare to wind up accidentally on an EARLIER train. Somehow the drive this morning was just faster. I think the 6:15 train was a few minutes late too. Anyway, I'll get to the office almost 15 minutes early this morning, which is pretty cool. I enjoy my office-before-class time in the mornings... the more leisurely the better. Maybe this will be one of those days where everything goes right!

Ha!

I have plans to maybe grade some this morning. Maybe on the train... maybe at the office. I do want to get some of my music classes papers graded before tomorrow, though. They are WAY overdue. My modern physics class too... I haven't even THOUGHT about them. Sigh...

Much has been getting done around the house. Between the combined efforts of my wife and I, the living room and kitchen no longer look like a pig fraternity house (Swine Beta Kappa) and in the past few days the basement has been mostly framed and mostly sheetrocked, so we're excited about the progress there. Once the plumber gets the bathroom together down there, it's our job to tile, paint, and install the ceiling. Yay.

We sent the Boy to preschool yesterday, even though the Girl had off from real school. (Wife was doing taxes, I had some stuff to do, and it's already payed for... but yes, we still feel guilty when we do that.) The Girl walked around all day proclaiming her boredness. "Can't wait for summer" I said. The wife, responding to a comment from the Girl the day before, said... "Yeah, if she thinks she's NOT going to summer camp, she's crazy."

Given all the tax weirdness from the past year and the two states and unemployment checks and buying and selling houses, it was hard to know what to expect refund-wise, but it looks like all told we'll be getting more than $2500 back this year. My reaction to that is - "Oh good, we can pay off a chunk of this home equity loan." My wife's reaction... "Oh good, that will pay for our cruise this summer."

Interesting professional news - yesterday I responded to a "call for contributors" to a massive 3-volume textbook on the History of Science. They are looking for 4000-8000 word essays, which is something I could do easily on just about any topic in physics or astronomy. The text is aimed at HS/college, so I'm hoping that my 4 years of high school teaching will give me an edge. Anyway, it's an easy pub, so I hope I get the call. My CV could really use this.

Anyway... I'm at work now. Time to do something productive.

Dave

Postscript: Two assignment stacks graded in one hour. Amazing how I torture myself over a task that really isn't so bad once I sit down and DO IT.