Bonne anne, mes amis!

Well, it's offical...2005. I changed my wall calendar a few minutes ago. Now I'm sitting in my room (with an internet connection, because Andrew at SBC rocks my world) and am getting ready to do the work I've been avoiding since LAST Thursday afternoon. The Thursday that was in 2004. Wow. I think Anathema is right, we need 2 weeks of vacation--one to unwind and one to get your work done. I don't feel ready to go back to work.

I only finished two books over this vacation, and I'm trying to figure out why so few. I mean, I spent a LOT of time reading, and yet...only two. Granted, neither book was terribly interesting, so boredom might have been a factor. I just started the book Ancestors of Avalon, which is a spin-off of The Mists of Avalon, although not written by Bradley because she's, you know, dead. So far, I'm not really thrilled with it. Nothing I read lately seems to thrill me. And it's not like I'm reading the same type of stuff; my reading pallete has expanded recently. Perhaps because I'm not getting stimulated by the texts at work; how much young adult fiction can a person read, I ask you? Once in awhile, it's all good, but by this time my freshmen year, I had already read Jane Eyre and Romeo and Juliet. My students? Short stories and two YA novels of not much excitement. We have to teach them what they'll read, because getting them reading is what's most important, but isn't school about expanding your horizons, doing things that are a little uncomfortable and growing on account of it? I think I might torture my seniors with Hamlet because I think they'll like it. If only I can get them to understand the language. I'm going to have to back track and figure that out. Shakespeare is an acquired taste (as most of you know); once you get it, it's really easy to do another play, but getting it is the problem. I figure 90% of 'em have done R&J as freshmen or sophomores, so this shouldn't be COMPLETELY foreign. I dunno, what do you all think? I'm taking suggestions.

Wow, this post got to be a lot longer than I had planned on. I sure hope a few people read it all the way through. Not that I blog for the attention (totally) but it's nice to know that something you've written has been acknowledged.

Hope the first weekend of '05 goes swimmingly for all.