1. Today my work in the classroom took me back to my early days of teaching, back in 1977 and 1978 at Whitworth College and then back to 1981 and again in the middle 1980s when I was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Univ. of Oregon. Today also took me back to the two Jan terms I taught at Whitworth in '83 and '84. In these particular times, I taught one course per term and this spring quarter at LCC, for the first time in twenty-seven years, I am teaching one course, one section. It borders on exhilarating to be able to focus all my energy on one class of students, to be very well rested, to do nearly two hours of really good work and not have to repeat it, or try to repeat it. There's a lot I really enjoy about teaching in my retirement and what I've written here might be chief among them: I am doing some of my best work right now because I'm not, in any even remote way, overworked. I'm relaxed. I'm sharp. My mood is really positive and I can tell, as I survey my students' faces, that they can tell. I've been described, in the past, as the most jolly person/teacher some students have known -- and that's when I was teaching a full load. Yes. I was jolly with that full load. I never knew I could be even more jolly in the classroom. But, I am.
2. Marla came over to give my cheap used lawn mower with the wheel that falls off a look and one thing led to another and we went to Market of Choice together to shop for groceries and made a temporary swap: my mower for her weed whacker since I've decided the backyard grass is too tall and wet to mow and she needed a mower for a spring cutting of her lawn. This was a win-win in more ways than I can even count.
3. Hey! Remember that brown rice salad I made a couple of nights ago with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, almonds, parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil? I gave it another go this evening with couscous. It was blissful.
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