Week in Review

This week at school pretty much picked up where things left off before Christmas break - that is, with me working even fewer hours than normal. The tenth graders in my supervisor's class are off doing their month-long work experiences at various local firms. Since he has to circulate and see how they're doing, all his classes are cancelled, including two I usually teach. And a few other teachers told me early on that I didn't need to come this week, as they would be doing organizational things with their classes in preparation for the end of the semester (the semester ends the first week of February). All in all, my re-entry was pretty smooth.

In order to spend time doing something other than twiddling my thumbs, I:

- Cleaned my room, which had collected a lot of debris during my sister's visit, and went through various piles of paper and re-piled them (but some of the piles are in folders now, equaling progress).

- Re-read the awful chick-lit books my sister had brought with her and left with me, including two books by the author of the Shopaholic series and two "culinary thrillers," in which a caterer solves mysteries and works through what is probably the least realistic portrayal of battered wife trauma ever while concocting new recipes.

- Visited the English used bookstore where I'm working on becoming a regular and, after hearing the owner's opinions on literary theory and science fiction, somehow left with two books that are apparently classifiable as "feminist science fiction."

- Went to see The Queen, making that the third movie I've seen in theaters within two months - for me, a binge (the second, after the James Bond movie, was Little Miss Sunshine, which Annie and I saw when she was here, and which I liked a lot, despite some sappy moments). I thought there were some weak moments in this movie as well - I don't want to talk about it too much if people haven't seem it yet (although - spoiler alert - Diana dies). In general, the writing sometimes fell into stiff historical fiction mode, where a character has to deliver awkward expository material that the people he's talking to would know, but the audience doesn't. What makes such dialog doubly awkward here is that even youngsters like me remember at least a vague outline of the major events in the movie. At any rate, though, the acting was really good, and Helen Mirren was brilliant, as usual.