Ridiculously busy

Here I am again, after so long away.  I'm just so busy I don't feel retired any more.  I should not have signed up for four courses, twelve credit hours in all, if I didn't want to be busy.  I forgot what busy feels like.  Still, studying for exams and laboring over French compositions is a lot more fun than grading papers.  I keep telling myself that.  But I have too many favorite television shows and films to see and books to read!  Not to mention walks to take.

Exciting news:  Though today's high was 97, by Saturday only 77!!!  Now that's what I call news.  Is this the end of summer at last and the beginning of a new hiking/birdwatching season?

So far I've written two poems assigned and one I just had to write on my own to preserve a vivid experience while walking in the Sonoita Creek Riparian Preserve.  I found myself surrounded by giant cottonwood trees.  Sun, wind, and swiveling, clacking leaves caught me in a web of light and sound.  It felt almost electronic, the odd way the sound and light webbed around me.  It needed a poem.

I'm learning so many fascinating details about DNA replication that I might have to do a poem about that as well. . . maybe I'll call it "Mechanical Molecules."

Last weekend I saw nine films, eight of them in two days (Scottsdale Film Festival).  My head was so full I was afraid to tip it.  The one that really captured me was "A Time to Die."  Black & white, either Polish or Czech, I forget.  Old woman living alone in an enormous old house with a border collie named Philadelphia tries (and succeeds) to keep control of her life until she dies.  Vivid, moving, amusing, sad -- and without the dog it would never have worked.