Music Is My Life. And Reading. And School. And Life is My Life Too.

God, my head is so...stuffed. I didn't think I could be doing so many things at once but still finding time to read for three hours on a given day at Starbucks.

I'm really beginning to like my "quiet time" there. I think I like it because of the music. I heard Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" and I automatically thought of Lauren and driving at dusk on Prince Avenue and her looking at me and saying "This song reminds me of Ben."

Teaching is going well, and by teaching I mean actual teaching. And by well I mean tolerable. Half the time I don't make sense and I feel so disorganized I could wish my stupid observation notebooks (lovingly Moleskine, of course) would swallow me whole. I've been teaching some classes off and on for the past week, but today I was...well, like my teacher said I really need to start writing a game plan. A step-by-step of what I want to do, what questions I want to ask, everything. It would help a lot, that's for sure. You'd think I'd know this by now, after teaching this past summer. I had that all written down...so why should this be any different?

And speaking of this summer, I can't wait for it to get here. I'm excited because it's fun and it's wonderful and it's hard running around with sleep in my eyes but I love it too much not to go back. I can't being to describe how many hours I should have been getting but instead I would wake up too-early to work on a class I always arrived late for. And the phone calls. Priceless.

But my life here is consisting of covering myself with music and books. Onto my third book in three weeks, a New Year's resolution that is bound to fail sooner rather than later. John Legend has been keeping me company as of late, and so has The Shins.

Also, I'm slightly loopy off cold medicine, for nearly 70% of all surfaces in a classroom (no matter where you are in the world) is covered with the flu virus at the end of any given day. The only job I can think of that deals with this many germs is a hospital. Or maybe someone that studies germs. But then those people deserve what happens to them, don't they? Who wants to work with germs anyway? That wouldn't be interesting dinner conversation, I can assure you.

"...and he said "I think someone shit on the coats'!"
(laughter all around)
"So, Bob, what is it you do again?"
"Oh! I study germs! Would you like to hear about this latest strand we've discovered of mad cow disease?"

Yeah. Right.