:TESTO:Hot honey water, fresh off the fire,      sitting in the wind until the water's just right
for frisky brewing-beasties      to take a dip in the bath
and make babies        and wind of their own
and a little bit of magic. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:The snow isn't awful down here by the harbor, but apparently it's deeper and colder outside the city's center. 78 districts are closed or delayed by now, and mine's not one. Liz's school is closed, but mine's not. Yet. Maybe.

This is the third best thing about being a teacher -- I get to be excited about snow days!

My plans are laid for tomorrow, of course, and I've been getting up early all weekend, so I'm going to bed soon in any case. None the less...
:ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:The finding-roommates process is slow. I've had two and a half nibbles so far, and it looks like none of them are going to bite. This is especially a shame on the last one -- a gal named Magda, who works two blocks from my house and doesn't own a car, and graduated from Oberlin in 2000, and lived and ate in Harkness, and was *responsible for starting OSCA's chocolate milk relationship with the Hartzler's dairy*. However, she has a 60-pound shepherd-mutt, and a queen-sized mattress, neither of which (especially the latter) will work well with our narrow twisty stairs. She's going to be talking to an engineer (her brother) about windows and pulleys and such, but she's doubtful the dog will like being dumbwaitered. Pity. The search goes on...

Craigslist is wonderful, though. Dead easy to make postings and get responses, and a very direct way to find people who know what they want.


And winter is finally manifesting, although teachers and students lament a heavy snow on a Saturday -- wasted, for purposes of cancelled school. (a Monday snow-day is best, for sakes of planning and uninterrupted (though truncated) weeks. (The snow essentially ends tonight, but perhaps the snowploughs will be lazy and Monday's roads will still be a mess... one can hope).

And my sister is visiting, arriving early this afternoon, just before the snow. She and I will sib about (which is what one does, when one is sibling), and possibly engage in Top Secret Endeavors That Cannot Yet Be Discussed Due to Who Might Be Listening. We might cook dinner, too, or play in the snow, or go to an art museum.

I'm looking forward to it -- my housemates are out of the house for the weekend, which removes obligations for group socialization -- it'll be an unstructured, just-the-two-of-us kind of thing.

This has become a jumping-around, getting-my-thoughts-together kind of post, and now I've got to grade. Not only the work of my own students, but also the work I've been assigning to my absented colleague's kids -- in a surprise move, they actually *did* what I gave them on Friday! (the rate of work had reduced to a trickle over the past two weeks, but they must have had a strong and solid sub, or the ominous word "Quiz" kicked their pants into gear.) And nobody else is going to do it, unless maybe I offload it onto Nat, my current housemate who may well be taking over for the runaway teacher (he's been offered the job, and nobody else has applied).

To the Gradebookmobile!


Lastly, a note on "Fog", two posts down -- that's a non-fiction account of my walk to work, one recent foggy Friday morning.
I love it when the world goes all magical and squishy. :ENDTESTO: