You know the saying, “burning the candle at both ends?” Well, my candle has more than two ends, and I’ve been burning all of them – three ends, four ends. Maybe even five. To give you an idea, last Wednesday, I was up at 4:30 to finish marking up student essays, left for work at 6:15 am, and walked in my door at 10:15 pm, trudging up my stairs, wondering how I could possibly do it all again the next…
About six weeks ago, I found myself consistently, over the course of many days, bothered by a twingey ache in what felt like my lower left molar – tooth #18 for those of you who know a whole lot about teeth. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what triggered the pain. Sometimes it felt like just the air irritated it, and other times it seemed aggravated when I bit into something sweet, or something cold. It would calm down if I flossed…
Chicago, and indeed much of the country, is in the middle of what promises to be the longest cold-snap in more than fifty years – a remarkable feat, given the polar-vortexes (vortices?) that have gripped the city since 2014. If I were back at work, I would likely be bemoaning the 6am commute in sub-zero temperatures with even subber-zero wind chills, but instead, I’m spending many of my hours holed up, wrapped in blankets, listening to my furnace kick at…
First of all, Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Hanukkah. I hope you all had a holiday brimming with love and laughter and memories. We are now in the midst of one of my favorite times of year – the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. As the days bleed into one another, I regularly stay in my pajamas until 5pm or later, read entire books, and binge watch at least one full season of some smart show…
There are so many stories I want to write today, and that’s a good feeling. I’m finally feeling settled in my new home, and I’m in love with so many aspects of it – most notably the dishwasher, the washing machine and dryer, and the fact that my brother and sister in law live upstairs. Obviously, those are not in order of actual importance. It was a joyful Saturday morning this past weekend when, as the wind howled and sleet…
It’s November in Chicago. It’s November, but there are days it feels like it might as well be February. There’s a damp chill in the air, mornings are dark, and the sun dips below the gray horizon long before I’ve parked and clanked up the stairs to my condo. There is one, definitive, and irrefutable sign that it is not, in fact, February, and that is the omnipresence of the Hallmark Christmas movie. Over the past several years, I have…
Last week, there was a squirrel stuck in the courtyard outside my classroom. This is not the first time a squirrel has become stuck in the courtyard. It sounds cute, but it’s not. At first, yes, the squirrel was charming. He bounded from classroom to classroom, standing on his hind legs, wiggling his nose when I would peak my head out to talk to him. Then last Wednesday, during my third-period class, I looked over to find him clinging to…
I require my AP Lit and Comp students to read and regularly reference Laurence Perrine’s essay “The Nature of Proof in the Interpretation of Poetry.” In it, Perrine posits the theory that “a poem – in fact, any pattern of words – defines an area of meaning, no more.” The area of meaning defined by a particular pattern is therefore expanded or contracted based on the number and nature of the words in it. Perrine uses the example of a…
This past week was one of those weeks that shouldn’t have been difficult but was. I woke up on Monday morning with a sharp pain in my left eye which I first feared was an internal stye (to which I am, unfortunately, prone), but realized by the time I got to school that it was, in fact, a rapidly developing migraine. Those of you who suffer from migraines will know that it is not just a headache, but an entire…
I spent the greater part of yesterday with two of my good friends eating, drinking, browsing, and buying artisan crafts at the Renegade craft fair in Wicker Park. The fair is massive – stretching down Division Street from Damen nearly all the way to Ashland. The day was full of brief conversations with interesting people, as one might imagine you would engage in at a craft fair filled with talented artists from all over the U.S. selling products they believe…