Things that are making me happy

Things that are good include:

- Blogging and the connections it affords! Today I had a lovely walk in the rain - followed by a warm-us-up coffee - with Tiruncula and her dogs, who are visiting Home City. It was a short meet-up, but really just lovely. What an incredibly friendly and smart person - a pleasure to chat with. Yay for blogging and the way it gives us these moments with strangers we'd not otherwise have the opportunity to encounter.

- Today I hit the 1000-views-of-my-Blogger-profile mark. Wow.

- I am working! Writing! Marking! The writing is way more important, of course. I have returned to this fun and important (to me) paper after dropping it for too long when things became brain-sucking on the teaching side after Reading Week. They extended the deadline for the special journal issue, and I'm easily going to meet it. I'm at least three quarters of the way there (plus revision time). I can't get over my productivity in this new (to me) study. I've downloaded that egg timer thingy. I write and write. I feel like a scholar again!

- I am so pleased about my adaptability. If I am condemned to perpetual moving, I am also very lucky that I can settle in almost anywhere. My initial whininess about this new space I'm living in has passed - I feel, in less than 48 hours, completely at home here. Hooray!

- Oh, funny twists of fate. This morning after my walk and tea with Tiruncula I went to the uni library to chase down plagiarized sources from two student papers (grrr...what a waste of precious time). One of the books I looked at was so intriguing that I checked it out of the library. And by the time I got home I had decided that it is perfect for adoption in my first-year course next year, about which I was already starting to worry because teaching the Intro in my discipline is, well, challenging. So I've already ordered myself my own copy - it is just a fantastic collection. Imagine that - the slog of cheat-chasing turning out to be so productive!

- I rented Half Nelson last night. What a great film - I've been thinking about it all day. It was particularly satisfying to me because of my weirdly over-invested relationship with students; the teacher in it, played by Ryan Gosling, is also over-invested in a way. Granted, I'm not a crack addict like he is, and my students are not eighth-graders. But still. I liked seeing a non-sexualized representation of that teacher-student relationship right now, in the wake of my courses ending.

- Dudes, the new album by The Great Lake Swimmers, Ongiara. Oh my god. I have been listening to it, like, five times a day; just got it a few days ago after hearing one song and suspecting that the album was made for me. Seriously - it is killing me. So sososo gorgeous. If you're looking for new music and you lean, like me, toward alt country and various acoustic and neo-folky goodnesses, this'll be it for you. It has a Neil Young circa 1977 - Comes a Time - feel. But way more opaque. Very happy.