20151113.0624

Work continues, as ever it must. I am still working on grading, as should be no surprise; the end of the semester is coming, which means assignments are coming due and coming in, and each of them must be assessed. The process thereof is often unfortunately slow; reasons for the dragging on vary from simple fatigue to undesirability of the activity itself to attending to needs of family (for Ms. 8 still has her cold, and so she still needs the attention to get over it, which includes much snuggling on the dad-lap; it is evidently warm and cozy). It is in progress, though, which is to the good, and I did get several things done yesterday. Some job applications went out, which helps, and I did update the Fedwren Project a bit. (I also have interlibrary loan requests out for more materials to add to the work.) How much more I can get done today, I am unsure, but I will be working on things to try to push forward; there is still much, much to do. (I did not get the Tales after Tolkien Society piece done--or even well begun--and there remains the freelance writing to do.)

As the work continues, it does so amid increasingly cool weather. Temperatures around Sherwood Cottage continue to demonstrate that it is, in fact, autumn; there has been frost on windows, although it has not frozen here yet, and the highs do not reach "regular" room temperature. (The kind of normative assumptions that go into asserting what temperature a regular room ought to be had not occurred to me until just now, but there is a certain set of assumptions about comfort and propriety that seem to inform "room temperature," isn't there? Why 72 degrees Fahrenheit? Do I and others find it comfortable because it is or because we have been taught that it is? And for those who think it can only be the former: How much time do you spend naked, despite your natural state being in the nude? Unless your mother had a clothing store inside her uterus--which would make for a number of entirely impolitic jokes...) It is good weather for working; it does not distract so much with promises of outdoor splendor, particularly for such an indoorsman as I am.

The Mrs. and I have yet to turn on the furnace for the season, although we are using electric space heaters in our room and in Ms. 8's. We have yet to seal the windows (as much as the cats and Ms. 8's questing hands allow); the afternoons are cool, but opening the house to them is still worth doing. There will be months in which we cannot do such a thing, when we cannot freshen the air inside Sherwood Cottage, and so we are doing what we can to do so while we have it to do. That, too, is good for working, and since there is still so much of it to do, any aid in the doing suggests itself as welcome.