Sundays I “get together” with friends — since I am in Madison and most of them are in Boston, they get together, I tele-commute so to speak — and we spend about an hour doing “prompts.” There are three prompts (provided by two of the members), with ten minutes devoted to each prompt, and after thirty minutes of writing (with coffee breaks) we post our texts (stories, excerpts, whatever) for others to read/critique. This reminds me a bit of high school English; in Mrs. Kruger’s class we had 5-minute free-writing segments on a regular basis, and these then served as a foundation for the chapbooks we put together at the end of the year.
Most of us in said group form a subgroup within a larger community, B, and at B we have occasional artsy-competitions (writing, programming, music), and today was the final day for the most recent writing competition. At first I had no idea what to write (750-1250 word limit, dealing with food), but my recent bread baking lent me a concept, from which developed a science fiction oriented tale that grew and matured in my mind, but when I sat down at Fair Trade this afternoon to put pen to paper, or rather, fingers to keyboard, it went off in a different direction, and none of the sci-fi elements remain, and only a few of the thematic ones surface. I pillaged life experience, pain and tears, for a passage or two and stole from Wikipedia for another paragraph, and the end result is not as obtuse as some things I’ve written, but while it is nicely tied up and complete, it doesn’t feel like a real story to me.
My own procrastination is to blame, I admit.
The bread I made yesterday is delicious, which I’ll say even if I risk sounding pompous of full of myself by doing so.
The wheat bread is good, but not great. But the honey-mustard oatmeal. Oh my, what a sweet, textured, loaf it became. The beaten egg white brushed over the dough before baking acted as a glue for the oats sprinkled on top, but also helped the crust to become crispy and brown. The bread feels like a nutritious meal in your mouth.
The first day of classes passed without event. Nearly half the class if composed of former students of mine, all but one from last semester (one from a couple years ago). I have both Nancy’s and Felecia’s teaching materials to pillage, but in addition Carla gave me access to her Teach@UW materials, and Jim Steakley found the answer key and test bank for Der treffende Ausdruck, so although I’ll feel slightly guilty for not doing more work of my own, I have a complete and completely prepared course already available to me.
Last night I finished with “C” — tonight I started on “D” with a selection of Dar Williams songs. Someone recommended her to me back in 2001 or so, but I don’t think I’ve listened to most of the songs of hers that I have in my music directory.
Heroes returns to NBC this evening; I watched a bit of Jane Eyre of PBS last night while and after baking, but it didn’t captivate me. Jane and Rochester were well-cast, mind you, though the hair/wig for Rochester makes him look like the poor man’s Hugh Jackman. Jane’s eyebrows, though — extraordinary. The young Jane was played by the actress who played Lucy in the 2005 adaption of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe — she was, in many regards, the best part of the movie, and her early scenes in Jane Eyre, her presence … quite amazing, really.
