Rhythms

Settling into a new school year has been a bit slow, but I think I'm starting to feel the rhythm.  I just submitted my midterm grades for the first quarter, which means the school year is an eighth of the way finished already, so it's about time I start feeling settled! 

 It's been a strange transition from teaching in Chicago to teaching in Portland.  I'm learning that I developed some bad teaching habits in Chicago (putting off grading until the last minute, for one) which I'm trying to break.  With only four classes to plan for and teach, I definitely have more time to think and reflect, which is going to be really helpful in my habit-breaking.  It also has a negative affect on me, though.  I'm so used to having a huge class load to plan for and teach (13 in Chicago...yeah, that's not a typo, THIRTEEN), that I keep feeling like I'm forgetting something, or missing something massively important.  I'm not though...usually. 

As far as our normal (non-school) lives, we're settling in there too.  Dan's been getting nearly 40 hours a week working at the store, but a lot of those hours are on the weekends.  We're trying to make the most of the time we both have off work.  Yesterday afternoon we actually had free time that coincided.  We were able to go for a drive around town and explore different neighborhoods we hadn't seen before.  We also got a bit excited talking about buying a house, haha.  NOT for quite a while, we know, but it's fun to think about nonetheless.  Especially because poor Futty-cat has started to get a bit strange cooped up in this box.  In Chicago we were able to take her out and explore outside a little bit.  Here, being a much larger apartment complex, she's stuck inside and has very limited views of the great outdoors.  She's started to "run laps" where she jumps onto the built-in bookshelves in the bedroom then streaks across the apartment to the top of the toilet in the bathroom.  She repeats this circuit about 10 times before settling on chasing her tail...seriously.  She's crazy.  But, I guess she has her own rhythm now too, just a very different drum.