The first week of classes went well. My Thursday class is too big (43 students), but I had a hard time saying no to students who asked to get in after it had closed. It is a lower-division, 100-level course, and last semester it was mostly freshmen. This semester, there are only a handful of freshmen, and about an equal number of seniors, who had to get special approval to take it.

My day class was quite active in discussion yesterday. That was great! I hope they stay this engaged all semester.

The dogs have been a real handful today. There was a lot of noise coming from the living room this morning, so I went downstairs, and Sam had gotten a shoebox with my new shoes in it. He had taken all the tissue paper out, and was running all around with my shoes in his mouth. It was cute as he-l. He didn't damage them, and has not chewed up any shoes ever - but there's always a first time. Then, this morning, Bob tried to start Sophie's shots. (She had extensive blood tests at the holistic vet and the recommendation was for us to give her injections of adrenal cortex, like we did for Rudy.) But she became vicious, as she did when we tried to cut her nails. She isn't having any of that, I guess.

Classes start tomorrow! This has seemed like a fairly long break, so I guess I am ready. I'm getting inundated with requests to get into one of my classes - the online class in particular. I don't like turning students away, but I can't handle enormous classes, and in my experience, students who wait until the last minute usually are not great students. This is especially true in the online class.

It snowed today!

A friend has died. We worked together years ago when I first moved to the Capital District. We kept in touch over the years because we both were living in Castleton. He was a nice, warm, caring, funny person who loved animals, especially cats. I saw him shortly before Christmas and he seemed very ill, not himself at all. But I have a much better lasting image of him, when on his 40th birthday, all of his friends at work chipped in and sent him a Zing-A-Gram.

Yesterday, we took the train to NYC and saw The Woman in White on Broadway. We did not have high expectations, since we have the CD and neither of us was wild about the music - but the actual show was great! Afterwards, we intended to go out to dinner, and so we walked from the theatre toward the station. But it started to rain very hard - we got soaked, even with our umbrellas. It brought back a lot of long forgotten memories, of some of the trivial reasons why I was never very happy when I worked there (there were also a lot of not-so-trivial reasons that I have never forgotten). Anyway, we decided to take an earlier train home. It was snowing when we got back, and today is quite a cold day.

I watched the second half of this interesting program, Country Boys, on PBS last night. I missed the first half (I forgot it was on and watched the movie Crash instead) and I didn't catch Monday's episode either. But it is available on the Internet. It finishes tonight. I think I will buy the DVD to show excerpts in class.

Here's what we did this weekend:




Edna stays safely out of Sam's reach:




Sophie waits for Santa:




Our Sam:

My latest letter is in today's Olive Press.

Happy New Year!