J.C. took the above photo on the first day of the term, a little over two months ago.
Back then, the house was clean, and I was all gung-ho to start teaching again. Now the house is a ridiculous mess and I have two bags of fiction portfolios to grade. After I finish those, I have a few letters of recommendation to write, and then I can call it quits on this teaching thing until the beginning of January.
What all has transpired in the last few months? Not all that much, it seems.
I've read more student work than anything else, but I did find some time to read the following books this term:
Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth
Invite by Glen Pourciau
American Youth by Phil LaMarche
The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art by Greg Bottoms &
Kissed By by Alexandra Chasin
I don't have anything intelligent to say about the above other than that they were all pretty great. I was happy to have them to turn to on my bedside table each night.
I'm pretty sure Greg Bottoms has a new book out, and I need to order it. Some other books I will be ordering along with it:
In the Devil's Territory by Kyle Minor &
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball
There are probably more, but I know I want those two and the Bottoms book for sure.*
I started out the term pretty strong, writing-wise, but I got a little overwhelmed by other kinds of work about a month ago and so haven't written all that much since then. I'm ready to get back to it. I wrote a story about Sarah Palin a couple months ago that I'm going to turn into a choose-your-own-adventure story. And I did quite a bit of work on a robot story that I want to finish up.
J.C.'s been bugging me to join Facebook, and so I'm probably going to do it sometime soon. Hopefully it doesn't keep me from getting any work done on that robot story.
But first, before I do anything else, I'm going to clean the house today. I'm actually kind of excited about it. I love cleaning the house.
*If anybody has any book recommendations for me, leave them. I'm anticipating a kind of monster book order.
