Friday, October 19, 2012

Friendly Respite

It's been a grading heavy week, and I am still stacks and stacks behind. But yesterday I had the reward of meeting SwallowingSoul for coffee, and, this weekend, Rebecca will stop over for an evening with one of her little lovelies.

On top of all of this, tonight is family movie night: pizza, snuggles, and a low-quality dog movie are typical fare. And a cool gin and tonic with extra lime for me, of course.

There will have to be work done this weekend, but these little respites are golden.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Riding the Train

I am on the train today. I know that I have written before about how much I enjoy trains, and today I'm doing it again. I'm on my way to a conference in Southern California. Some of my colleagues left last night to drive down, but I didn't want to spend three nights away from the kids, so I'm riding down on the train today, and will catch a ride home with my colleague when the conference ends on Friday. Any excuse to take the train.

The ride will be about six hours. I brought a lot of papers to grade, but guess what? The train car rocks too much for me to grade. Isn't that terrible? I guess I will just have to grade later. But it seems that I can type, and I'm sure I can also read, so I still plan to be productive.

I can also look out the window. Not only am I on a train, but I am on the Pacific Surfliner. I live near the ocean, so I see it on a regularbasis, but today I hope to see a lot more of it. So far, though, I'm mostly seeing fog. But now that the sun is coming up, perhaps some of the marine layer will burn off and I'll have some nice views.

Right now, I am passing through ranch land and am seeing cows, horses, barns, etc. It's lovely.