Blog The Halls With Boughs of Folly

I handed in the second of my two final papers yesterday: "Are You In Or Are You Out: Clubhouses and Belonging in Mormonism and Brigham City." The day before that I sent off "Some Notes on Mormon Autuerism in 2007." Hot stuff, I tell you. Actually, there's a small chunk of both papers that was recycled from something I wrote last semester but, hey, other than that they're both pretty original.

As I write this, my students are all downstairs participating in our annual Kwanzaa celebration. I wriggled out of it last year and I hope to do the same this year. It just seems ludicrous for me, the whitest man on the planet, to take part in a celebration created by and for people of African heritage. I'm happy to attend any other celebration we have here at the school but Kwanzaa just makes me feel stupid. So instead I am answering the phones and monitoring a potential student who is taking his entrance exam.

Christmas shopping: done
Present wrapping: done
Papers for school: done
Maryn's birthday: done
9 year anniversary: we're going out tomorrow to celebrate

All in all, I am prepared to have a long, luxurious, responsibility-free vacation. I'm not due back here until January 2 and classes at Wayne don't start until after that. (When exactly, I'm not sure. Guess I should find that out.)

Over the break I want to do a few things:

I'd like to translate a page a day of Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal. I need to get serious about being able to pass the translation test when it comes around. Regular practice ought to help.

I'd like to carve a few new linoleum blocks. Just for fun. Because I like it and because I miss doing artistic things sometimes.

I'd like to take the girls to the Detroit Institute of the Arts. It's the 5th largest art museum in the country and just recently finished a multi-million dollar, several-years-in-the-making renovation and I'm excited to see it. The girls and I have gone there in the past and they loved it.

I'd like to go on a Christmas day drive with the ladies in the afternoon. We did it last year and it was really nice.

I'd like to go see Beowulf in IMAX 3-D with my brother-in-law, Ben. I mean, it's swords and dragons and monsters in IMAX 3-D. What more do you need?

I'd like to read some non-school related stuff. I read the first chapter of The Thirteenth Tale, a book my mother-in-law, Linda, lent (?) me last night and it seems interesting. I also have a copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell sitting on my shelf that I'm itching to take a crack at. It's big -- seven or eight hundred pages -- so we'll see what actually happens.

I'd like to blog every day -- you know, blogging Christmas -- but that won't happen. We don't have the Internet at home and so this blog probably won't be updated until after the New Year. Kinda lame, I know, but I figure if I've got better things to do than write it, you have better things to do than read it.

Anyway, I think I hear the celebration winding down so maybe I'll be out of here sooner than I thought. Yay for me.

Happy holidays everyone.