October

It's hard to tell what month it is here in the tropics. October is much like September which is much like August. Sure, the rain lets up a bit and the temperature drops from the low 90's to the high 80's but that's about it. No annual color change is noticable in the foliage and leaves litter the ground only as much as they did in the preceding months. Nothing special.

Florida has two seasons, dry and rainy, and if anyone ever tells you, "Oh, it gets cold in Florida too," they're lying. Mid 40's is not cold especially when you grew up in a place where there was a real possibiliy of freezing to death if you were caught in a blizzard.

It's funny, I overheard a conversation where a mother was commenting on how cold it was at the college her son was attending...in the artic wilderness of North Carolina. Yeah, watch out for packs of marauding wolves coming down from the mountains around Chapel Hill.

I picked up Lord of the Flies from the library at school, you know, cause I work with 7th and 8th graders and I need some insight. I saw the movie a long time ago but I don't remember very much of it. The book's always better than the film anyway, well, almost always.

I'm also thinking about reading one of those vampire-love books the Twilight series I think it is. I'm really interested to see if they are well written or just gimmicky fluff written to enthrall middle school girls. (see Eragon and switch the word "girls" to "boys")

I have to go get dinner now. I really want to get working on my manuscript. It is killing me that I haven't been able to work on it lately. But when you have 160 middle school poems, memoirs and short stories to edit it doesn't leave time for much else.

New books read so far this year:

The Name of the Wind
The Lathe of Heaven
Dune Messiah
Lord of the Flies
Next, Ender's Game

-Adios

At Life's Grindstone

Well, here I am again, blogging.

Getting any writing done has been really tough. I'm trying to juggle family, writing workshop, mundane things that I have to do (i.e. lawn care, laundry, et.al.)and spending quality time with the family.

I was able to spend time with a lot of my family this weekend and it was great. It was just a really chill and relaxing time. Plus, it was a distraction from the Michigan game.

I have a lot of work to do this week. Each of my eighty students submitted two manuscripts to be graded. So, I have one hundred sixty poems, short stories, memoirs and who knows what else to grade this week. Ah, well, I wouldn't trade it for teaching Algebra again.

At any rate, I should go and...do something.

I hope to continue working on the new manuscript. I just have to start scheduling an hour or so every day. I'd much rather have two or three hours to work, but I just don't think I can swing it on my current schedule. One hour will have to suffice.

Until next time