New Year

 

As I usually do, I wrapped up New Year's Eve reading a collection I made of my favorite haiku (and watching "More American Graffiti"). I arranged them seasonally (in proper haiku fashion), from New Year to New Year:

    "Let myself go to bed.

     New Year's Day

     is only a matter for tomorrow."

     - Buson

A lovely holiday season, spent with family and friends. I now have about a month before I start teaching again, and am working on getting more sleep, and getting as much done as I can on the rough draft of Benjamin January # 20 (!), "The Nubian's Curse." Rough draft is always exhausting, involving as it does stopping every ten words to look up when the word "opthamologist" was first used, and what divorce law was in Mississippi in 1840. I feel like I'm constantly apologizing for not posting more frequently, but it's always a struggle - do I sleep, or post? In a week or two I have to start putting together materials for Spring Semester (always provided my class fills, and I don't get bumped by one of the tenured instructors whose class DIDN'T fill.)

But the book is fun (for me, anyway - I love haunted-house stories and I always welcome the chance to work with the Paris cast), and I've found some very fine research materials. (Boy, did Joyce Broussard do her homework writing "Stepping Lively in Place" about free single women - white and black - in Natchez in the early 1800s!). 

And, I look forward to running around the halls in a Time Lord costume at the Gallifrey One Dr. Who convention (Feb. 17-19 at the LAX Marriott). 

Everyone take care.



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