Fall break

Fall break starts today: an odd, but much-appreciated, four-day weekend, and the weather concurred: breezy and cold today--leaves flying everywhere. We're not going anywhere special, but I totally plan to sleep late every day.

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One of my students used the word narcissistically in a poem yesterday: it just looked wrong. Spelled wrong. Too many s's. We were looking at some poems on her laptop, and she backspaced the -ally off the word: narcissistic. Which is a word, of course, and which, oddly, looks fine. Later (tonight) I looked it up in the dictionary, and the book opened to monorchid. Which I should have figured out, because I do know what orchis means in Greek.

No, I'm not telling you. Go look it up. In an actual dictionary. With pages. And let me know what word catches your attention along the way.

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Oh--and another student (different class) this week used the word filching in a poem to describe the grasping gesture made by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Which prompted another student to ask if she knew that it referred to a sexual practice. Of course he meant felching. Ahem. And we moved quickly on.

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In last night's "common hour," we had a hatha yoga instructor who lead us through stretching, breath exercises, a few specific positions, and a guided meditation. I felt absolutely wonderful walking home after. Told Randy that we need to find a yoga class.

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Local temps dropped below 30 last night. I was delighted to see this morning that the pineapple sage was still intact. It's covered with buds: they dip in a kind of tight braid, and then lift as the larger buds open: tubular red blossoms, extraordinarily sweet (yes, you can eat them). I'm hoping that we can avoid frost damage for a couple more weeks; it's a race every fall to see whether this plant will have time to bloom.

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Oh--just noticed that Ben Grossberg has a poem on Verse Daily today: "Stepping on the Dog." Which I just mentioned to Randy, who quipped: "I knew that dog wasn't right."

Ha.