I'm not dead yet!

Just entrenched in the school-year-end psychosis that goes along with excessive grading and excessive hours spent at school in said grading.  So I shall forthwith entertain you (or bore you) with bullets of life since I failed to complete NaPoWriMo:

• I failed to complete NaPoWriMo.  But I'm not beating myself up over it.  The fact that I made it as far as I did lets me know I can actually do it for real next year.
• I have to move out of my classroom at the end of the school year!  Gah!  I've been in this room for 10 years and have, obviously, accumulated 10 years worth of both treasure and crap.  While I welcome the opportunity to purge, I am frustrated at the district's expectation that we will have grades in the day after finals schedule (the day after graduation duty) and have all of our classrooms packed and ready to be emptied the day after that!  We're requesting that they give us the weekend to finish up.  Contrary to popular belief, we do give finals during finals week (shocking, I know), so the notion that we're "not doing anything" and can just pack during school hours, using students as free slave labor, is not one that works for me. 
• The district also swears that they'll have our "new" portables in place and ready to go in time for us to move in before school actually starts in August.  Forgive me for saying I'm skeptical, given their track record over the past decade.  (Lord, help us.)
• I will write my thesis and have it finished during the first month of summer.
• After returning last night from a thirteen-hour grading day at school, I had to spend the next three hours monitoring an impromptu party (flash mob style) at a vacant house across the street from me.  Police were involved (finally).  They finally shut off the big searchlight, which was glaring almost directly into my window, at 3 a.m.  Needless to say, church attendance did not happen today. 
• Visited a junior high in San Diego area last week to see their failure-is-not-an-option model of student accountability.  Food for thought. 
• I've been looking through a lot of photos today, putting together an album for a niece who is graduation from junior high.  What a trip down memory lane!  The things that stand out most to me:  (a) I used to be thinner, a lot thinner;  even when I was fat, I was still thinner than now.  God!  (b) My yard used to be pretty, with a backyard lawn that wasn't patchy, and with semi-tended flowers in both the front and back yards;  now...aw, hell.  Where did I used to find the time and energy?  I'm not that old.  (c) I used to take a lot of pictures;  now I only take them on special occasions;  I miss capturing art like that. 
• I'm so angry about the BP oil spill in LA that my own bp goes up when I read about it or see horrendous pictures of it.  I might have to (re)join the NRDC or something.  I feel furious and powerless. 
• Is it just me, or have there been lots of odd celebrity deaths lately? 

And on that note, I'll stop whining.  I think I'll get this blog back to a more regular pace when summer starts.  Till then, I'm still checking in and reading everyone else's blogs at least once every week or two.  Prayers for survival and health and effectiveness always appreciated! 

I'm trying to figure out...

...why my motivation to communicate has taken a leave of absence. It couldn't possibly be that I need more time to marinate and for intake -- that's all I've done for the past several decades. How does one develop regularity, discipline, balance? I've let many things slip by without comment -- the anniversary of Madeleine's death, my own first blogiversary, the start of a new school year, my wonderful new students and their quirks and stories, POM's sister and her health saga, the missed opportunity for a blogger meet-up (hard when you're not being much of a blogger), the reappearance of some old friends (circa high school), this crazy-daisy election, progress on these adorable kittens. Guess I won't want for topics in the year to come.

I've missed it. I've missed you all.

Madame X and LittleKitty (who hates the kittens, btw), grading, of course

The whole gang

Looking for escape (and being cruelly outsmarted by the basket!)

Hey! We're hungry in here! Mamahhhhhhhhhhh!

Sheesh

How was that for a hiatus? Sorry to all, and I will do some sort of update soon -- bullet points, most likely, but at least it'll be something! I've got to get my discipline back!

In any case, we are kitten mommies and I just had to share to photo with you! BoldKitty has had five little sweeties! Yay! More later, I promise! I hope everyone on teh nets is doing fine. I've missed y'all.

Academic Excursion

Over the doorway at the Clark Library.

The painted Steinway in the great room.

People in the great room. (For scale, the two middle persons are both over six feet tall. This is a large room)

I just finished writing and submitting a paper on this poem. We got to touch this 1730s first edition. Way cool.

Heaven will look a little something like this (with an added comfy sofa and/or window seat).

The exterior of the Clark.

(I'll post more from the series on Flickr.)

BoldKitty Conquers the Tree!

Yes, I am a tigress, stalking great tree prey!

Her action shot! (No, her tail is not bent away from the camera. That actually is the size of her tail. It's about six inches long with a crick in it.)

Her album cover pose.

LB Photowalk

It got nailed.

Tree and sunburst on shoreline

Public service announcement

Sky blue telescope

(Click to embiggen; to the right of the former Spruce Goose dome

you'll see faintly the three red smokestacks of the Queen Mary.)

Beachy lunarscape

This isn't your average Charlie Brown kite-eating tree.

Juxtaposed anachronism

My favorite kind of grass! I want this in my lawn!

Trodden (hydrangea detritus on cobblestone path)

New addition?

She was hungry and she wouldn't take no for an answer, even in the face of two rather hostile resident felines. We're calling her something akin to BoldKitty, because she is. I'm happy to report she's gaining weight. We're taking her to the vet on Friday for a thorough checking. As you can see, she's made herself perfectly at home in our home.

Through a cloth brightly

The light this week has been captivating.

Sailcloth clouds

Playing catch-up

Well, I fell behind again. I blame school entirely. This session has seen a rather unwieldy reading load, and now papers are coming due. I did a presentation on Huck Finn this week, which ended up being really kickass, so that was fun; but I have a paper on Pope due Friday and one on Huck due Tuesday. Add to that my attempts to determine what exactly I'll be doing my thesis on, and top it with relatives from out of town, and you have my excuse for falling behind in posting. Heh. But it has been fun.

We're going on Friday to both the Clark and Huntington Libraries, to the former to see original manuscripts (Pope, Swift, etc.) and to the latter for tea. I'm pretty excited! I hear they do a great tea. And I'm looking forward to the company and conversation that will complement this event. I've only been to the Huntington once and never to the Clark. I'm sure I'll post about it after the fact.

The Day's Excitements (Tuesday)

• We had an earthquake -- originally reported as a 5.8 but revised downward to 5.4. I was in a nice, new building on rollers, and it didn't get too bad there. None of us even left the building. No damage in our area or our house, though I couldn't make a cell phone call for about half an hour afterwards. I found that rather disturbing, because isn't that the reason most of us say we have cell phones -- for emergencies?! Sheesh. Anyway, a small mirror fell off the wall at the house of the friend whose dogs we're feeding this week. That was all. Just a reminder that yes, indeed, one day we will fall off into the ocean and so we had better be prepared. It was rather fun hearing Kay Hutton, supremely competent earthquake goddess of Caltech, again after a hiatus. I hope the next ones will continue to be these little pressure relievers. (Let it be so, lord!)
• One note of hilarity -- in the building where all of my classes are held, the director of our program came running out into the hallway during the actual event and, in his inimitable British accent (tinged, apparently, with African and German notes), started shouting (for comic relief), "We're all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!" And when the occupants of that building (a considerably older specimen) had amassed in the courtyard, he proceeded to bellow, "It's every man for himself!" It's a good thing to be able to laugh where an earthquake is concerned.
• My little bunny buddy visited me as I was catching up on reading Alexander Pope at an outdoor table after lunch. He wasn't a yard away from me. He is not a tame bunny, by any stretch of the imagination, but he posed for my pictures and held eye contact with me for a bit before hopping his cottontail bunny butt across the walk and into the ivy. It was a small gift.

Highlights from the week's highlight

I can't resist posting more photos from our blogger meet-up Bolsa Chica nature-fest! Most of these have been cropped and enlarged for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy these even slightly as much as I do.

This is one of the fuzzy-poof baby terns.

One of the smoothhound sharks we saw in the estuary

A cute little piper couple, out on a hot dinner date

Look at the beak on this guy! Size does matter, apparently.

OMG, OMG, OMG! I actually got a mostly unblurry shot of them skimming!

These guys send me into waves of awe. (Click to embiggen this one.)

Watery pastoral

Tern in flight

Moi (hiding behind camera) and my friend and blogger buddy, Linda,

standing on the boardwalk, reflected in the estuary

Consider this our official blogger meet-up photo. :-)

Disturbance. Suspense. Potential.

(Click to embiggen.)

Wildlife!

It was only my second ever blogger meet-up. I was so giddy! I was especially excited because she is the first blogger I ever emailed offblog and the first to whom I became unanonymous. (Is that a word?)

She wisely suggested we do something outdoors. It was an excellent suggestion, and there's so much to do here in SoCal that it would be a shame not to. Besides, we all know good and well that otherwise we'd just center everything around the event of eating. (Isn't that what all good former-Baptists do?)

We decided to go to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, which is a fabulous restoration project here in SoCal. POM and I had been several times in the past, and it was really cool, but it had been some time since we'd been back. Last year they did a huge expansion project, and the newspaper just published a story indicating that it had proven extremely successful and that the animal population was undergoing a huge explosion. Awesome! We were so there!

The newspaper story didn't lie; it was better than we had remembered it. The bird population had extremely multiplied. We saw more life in the water than ever before. This is an amazing project!

This egret was the first up-close wildlife we saw as we crossed the boardwalk. (We think it's a Great Egret, but we could be wrong.)

This is the nesting ground of the tern population. (I think most of these are Least Terns. Again, I could be wrong about that.) These guys were noisy noisy noisy! They're hilarious. They constantly talk to one another as they fish the waters, totally giving away any stealth they may have hoped for. They dive -- splat! -- into the water, sometimes unexpectedly, with great splashes. When they fish, they fly in loose groupings; when they fly up high, it's in pairs, in perfect precision, with acrobatic speed and liquid skill. Their babies are grey fuzzpoofs, most of whom are learning to fly just about now.

(How much more quintessential SoCal does it get?)

We saw so many different species -- small sharks, round stingrays, unknown fishes that jumped and rippled the waters, terns, black skimmers, pipers of various sorts, sparrows, brown pelicans, egrets, a blue heron, and others whose names we did not know. Several of these species are endangered or threatened.

The black skimmers proved to be our consensus favorite. They fly over the water, then swoop down directly above it, open their beaks, and literally skim the water open-mouthed for food, lining a trail behind them in the water's surface. It is amazing, quiet, beautiful -- it is mystical and holy somehow. When they fly in twos or threes, their calls to one another are deeper and more resonant than the raucous soprano terns. The skimmer's call calms, pacifies.

We spent the time strolling leisurely, snapping pictures, talking, ogling nature, and marveling at God's creativity and sense of humor. We mused about the various behaviors and thought-processes of the birds we beheld. (The egrets who kept their faces in the water for literally ten minutes at a time surely must be depressed and suicidal, we speculated. The fish who were brazen enough to jump in the faces of all these hunting birds must surely know they are too big to fit in the gullets of these bird breeds and so flaunt their freedom. The piper with the ridiculously lengthy beak flew away when we joked and commented on it, so we were sure he was sensitive and offended about our remarks on the size of his...appendage.) The plonking-diving-splashing terns never got old and never failed to elicit a laugh. The skimmers evoked either low exclamations of amazement or reverential silence.

Just as the sun sank below the horizon, we left in search of sustenance and further conversation, which we were successful in finding. By the way, those three shadows on the island there are me, Linda, and POM...and an apparently depressed egret, poor dear.

We're hoping for breakfast tomorrow before she leaves our sunny clime, and you can be sure you'll see additional pictures of this event soon. There's more where that came from!

P.S. Click to embiggen any of these to ridiculous sizes for more detail.

Like sails

Thoughtful and lively sun coverings at the student center study patio.

Join me...

...in a shriek at the horribleness of these frightening mannequins! I prefer the faceless, featureless, or even headless varieties to these freaky monstronsities! Yikes!

Humbled and Exalted

A friend was ordained Saturday. Before the ceremony, candidates prostrate themselves before the altar to demonstrate humility and unworthiness of the calling. I'm sure there's a lot more significance and symbolism than that, but this image of prostration always gets me.


I've been to a number of these ceremonies, both for the diaconate and the priesthood, even a consecration of a bishop, but I've never seen (or at least my faulty memory cannot recall seeing) the newly made priest stand beside the bishop and mimic his every move, sharing the consecrating of the elements for holy communion. I thought it was pretty cool.

Another innovation was that he returned to the altar after the service was over to bless his own family and congregants who wished it. I thought that was powerful, too.

Favored Glade

I look at this as I read my assignments each morning. The hummingbirds, fat bees, bunnies, squirrels, and even a woodpecker this week populate the air physically and aurally. I take a lot of stare-breaks from my reading.

I see the light