Grind Away

Spring semester: day thirty-six

Today is March 6th. I know no less than five people born on this day, if not more. Apparently the beginning of June is a good time to, as the young folks say, get bizzay, because so many people have this birthdate -- including my oldest half-sister, who turns 21 today.

It is 6:04 AM as I write this, and upon getting up this morning (around 5:20ish) I realized that it was 55 degrees outside. During the first week of March, before the sun is up, in Kansas. This is, needless to say, highly irregular weather. While it is March, and the temperatures do tend to get gradually warmer from this point forward as spring and summer both approach, today's projected high is 74. And it'll be warmer than that in Wichita, almost guaranteed. That's more of a mid-to-late May high than a March high. Yesterday it was almost 70 here as well, if not breaching that 70-degree point in the afternoon. It was simply wonderful.

It won't last, though; the high on Thursday is supposed to be 41, which -- as I told my friend Jordan this morning on Facebook -- will barely give me enough time to break in my board shorts again.

As an aside, my board shorts are probably my favorite summer clothing item -- I bought them two years ago in Morgantown, when I was visiting and shopping with my best friend/sister Andrea at Gabes. Perhaps, when I'm visiting home again in a little more than a week and a half, I'll be able to find more.

It's not all upsides to this gorgeous, gorgeous weather, though -- because it's been very warm but also very windy, the pollen in the air has been stirred up like crazy and I have been experiencing some of the worst seasonal allergies I've had in years. I should keep tissues in a little holster on my belt, or something, because said allergies are that bad.

Today, it's back to the grind -- AWP has ended, and most (if not all) of us should be back on campus by now, having returned from Chicago. All of my normal classes are back in session, and it is two weeks of "the usual" before Spring Break starts. Technically, my Spring Break starts at 12:15 PM on Thursday, March 15, as I am done with everything at that point. I fly out of Wichita and arrive home to visit my parents/friends/family the next morning, and then come back on Wednesday the 21st -- which is just about halfway through my actual break. That will give me enough time once I return home to take care of any schoolwork/grading/what-have-you over the rest of my days off. I don't think I could've planned that better if I were trying. Like I mentioned in one of my previous posts, the month of March tends to go fast.

I didn't get a whole lot accomplished this weekend, or at least I didn't get as much accomplished as I would have liked to. Out of forty student papers, I graded about ten -- the rest will have to be graded during my office hours this week, which isn't really a problem as much as it is an inconvenience. I have to grade them as quickly and efficiently as possible not only so the students can get them back, but so that I can enter their midterm grades into the Banner system -- the official "midterm date" of the semester is tomorrow, though I can enter said grades at any time up until the day before I leave for West Virginia.

However, I did carefully revise one of my poems this weekend, and wrote another one yesterday that I'll be turning in to workshop tonight. Two very close friends have already read said poem (which in itself is really odd, since I don't tend to share my work if I can avoid it) and they both love it. I rather like it myself, actually, and I don't like a lot of my work. We'll see what the workshop thinks about it. I am also scheduled to be workshopped tonight, but depending on how long we take with the first poem before mine, who knows whether we'll get to me or not. It all depends on time.

Tomorrow I also have my normal editing class again, as well -- for the first time in three weeks. Two weeks ago, my car blew up and I had to miss it. Last week, it was canceled for AWP. None of us, I think, know exactly what we'll be doing in there tomorrow night, so I'm preparing myself by scanning through the book we're going to cover chapter-by-chapter in hopes that I can actually ready myself for what comes next.

On that note, folks, it's time for me to leave the house to start my week. Should be exciting.