I am in pretty good shape for the end of winter session and the beginning of the spring '13 semester. It's always bittersweet when a new semester is beginning. Yes, there is excitement, the promise of starting over. However, in the summer I am wistful over the dwindling of the garden and the closing of the pool.

The break between the fall and spring semesters is filled with holidays, and although it is much shorter than the summer, it is the time of year when I devote the most attention to writing, reading, cooking, watching movies, and household projects, because there is no yard work to compete. Planting something always wins over indoor pursuits!

It's a drag to have to earn a living, isn't it? Even when the job is well-suited and rewarding, and you've spent years preparing for the profession. Even when "it's not a bad way to make a living," as my father would say.

It is a pity that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz-mill, in order to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by the sweat of his brow." (The Writings of Mark Twain, v. 7, 1913).

Oh well.

So put away the Kindle, the frying pan, the sewing kit, the sketch pad, the roku remote for a while. Classrooms full of bright new Ashleys and Amandas, Jareds and Jeremys, Taylors and Tylers await.

Here is what the animals have been doing while I was attending to syllabi and blackboard pages: