Friday, I went to the Shakespeare Tavern with some students to watch Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was really good; I'd never seen it performed before. It isn't one of Shakespeare's most popular plays; there are several problems with it (mainly the ending) that leave you going "Huh?" at the end. At any rate, it was a moderately pleasant thing to do on a Friday night.

Saturday night was Daylight Saving's Time (the good one). That extra hour of sleep was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, my classes turned in their second set of papers on Friday, so I've got paper-grading to do that the extra hour from DST won't compensate for.

Well, two-thirds of the semester is over, and Christmas is so close I can almost taste it. This is the first Christmas in about four years that we'll be back in our old house (the one we grew up in). Last year, I hosted it at my apartment, and the two years before that, we had it in Iowa. It'll be good to be back.

Last Friday, I got to teach a class on C. S. Lewis. The professor who normally teaches it was at a conference that weekend, so he let me teach that session. I got to discuss Prince Caspian with a bunch of interested, motivated students. It was great! When I began preparing for this class, I realized I had much more material than I thought I would have. I could have spent a week talking about that book! This surprised me, because it isn't nearly as interesting (theologically speaking) as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or some of the other books in the series.

And speaking of LWW, the movie is coming out in a couple of months, and the new extended trailer was just released. To coincide, everybody's writing books about C. S. Lewis. I saw my old college professor (in whose C. S. Lewis class I was a student) just got his book Inside Narnia published, and the professor here (in whose C. S. Lewis class I substituted last Friday) has a book on Lewis coming out in a few weeks. (He's really excited; Borders ordered 3,000 copies.)

In other news, I noticed that my apartment lease was up last August 12. I hadn't heard anything from them, so it slipped my mind. I've been paying my monthly rental fees on time, I just didn't remember that my lease was up. I called their office and told them about it, and they said they'd send a new lease over in the next couple of days. "Thank you," I said. "I just like everything up front and legal." "We do to," they said.

I've started saving for retirement. I've set up my Tax-Sheltered Annuity plan with my employer, and they are taking an additional 10% out of each month's check (gross) to invest for me.

I feel good about this. Ever since I first learned about the magic of Compound Interest, I've always been pushing to get past that line where my money could work for me instead of against me. It's been hard, though. In the info packets from these retirement companies, they always show how you can retire a millionaire if you start investing so much starting at age 22. I don't know about you, but at 22 I had no job, no prospects for a job, and most of my friends were in debt up to their eyeballs from school loans.

We'll see if I still feel this good about it when I get my newly-reduced paycheck at the end of this month.

Ugh. Wednesday afternoon I attended a faculty meeting that was so boring, I actually chewed my tie in exasperation. (And it was a *silk* tie!)

Wednesday morning I woke up with a headache and stomach-ache, so I skipped breakfast, ate a Tums, and took a couple of Advil. My stomach wasn't feeling much better by lunch, so I just drank a glass of water and skipped food. I was feeling worse as the day wore on, so I dismissed my last class after I took role.

That evening, I started shaking with chills. My fever was 100.6, so I just crawled into bed and dozed fitfully on and off all night. Thursday morning, the fever broke, and when I got up, it was down to 99.1. I was weak, but I had to take care of some stuff at the office, so I ate breakfast and got dressed. Returning home from the office about noon, the sky was overcast, so I had my lights on. Being more than a little out of it, I forgot to turn them off.

Today, my battery was dead. I tried calling all my friends for help, but they were out of town for Fall Break. Most of the ones left here have cell phones that aren't local to the area, and I only had 4 minutes left on my calling card after talking long-distance to my parents about my sickness the previous two days.

I finally got a jump from a couple of friends, though. Let's see if I can enjoy the next few days of break.

I vacuumed out my car yesterday for the first time since . . . 2001 or so. I managed to bend the plug on my parents' vacuum cleaner in the process. (Shh . . . they're away on vacation and don't know I was using it.) Some of the stuff was so ground-in, the vacuum wouldn't pick it up. Oh, well, I do what I can with what I have to work with.

I woke up this morning with a headache and a stomach ache. I've had a lot of stress the last couple of days, and I'm *really* ready for Fall Break to start. I just wish I could cancel the last couple of classes today, go home, and lie in bed sucking my thumb.

A couple of students had a close friend die in an auto accident back home. One of them flew home, the other came by my office this evening to talk about it. The one that flew home is skipping the next week of classes -- midterm week -- and the rest of the semester isn't looking too good for her. This is sad, because she's a really good student, and on top of her best friend dying, her classes may go poorly. The one that didn't fly home isn't much better off -- she's got a packed week, with midterms, and singing in chapel, and preparing for choir tour next week over fall break -- and she's completely unable to focus for her upcoming tests.

I felt rather helpless. I just sat and listened, and told her a little about the ones close to me that died when I was in college. I prayed for her before she left, and I believe that helped.

I took this quiz over at QuizFarm.com. The first two are definitely right, but I don't consider myself much of a fundie. I guess Evangelicalism overlaps with Fundamentalism on a number of points. I find it interesting that I scored as more Catholic than Reformed -- maybe that's just my rampant Armenianism reflexively opposing every whiff of Reformed doctrine.

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 100% Charismatic/Pentecostal 71% Fundamentalist 68% Neo orthodox 64% Emergent/Postmodern 61% Roman Catholic 46% Reformed Evangelical 43% Classical Liberal 36% Modern Liberal 0% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

I just got my new copy of my employer's Group Life / Accidental Death and Dismemberment policy. It's pretty dry reading, and more than a little morbid -- much like a desiccated body, forgotten in some arid tomb. I just have one thing to say: the words "Accelerated Death" should never be coupled with the word "Benefit."

But you never know what's going to happen. Take last Saturday, for instance. My tire picked up a nail, and before I realized it, I had a flat. This kept me from visiting my friends in Athens, whom I had been looking forward to visiting. Moreover, there were no tire stores open Saturday after five, nor on Sunday, so I had to wait until this afternoon before I could go get it a new tire. My dad helped me out, so that kept it from being worse, but it still wasn't pleasant.

On the bright side, I got two new tires for $100, and that's the first money I've put into my car (apart from oil changes) since I moved up here last year. That's pretty good for an 11-year-old car.