today I am grateful for

1) family
2) friends (particularly those who want to eat sushi with me!)
3) the ability to read
4) having enough money to buy the occasional thing of sushi, or good book
5) a heated apartment
6) a friend's dog
7) my knitting, and the ability to do so
8) being healthy
9) loving my job
10) being able to sleep in tomorrow morning!

Ten Authors

Out of left field, a list of 10 authors whose work I will buy without even reading a review or back cover... presented in no particular order.

1) Neil Gaiman: my loyalty to Sandman and, more recently, The Graveyard Book, is such that I will read anything else he writes. I will also watch any movie that has any relationship to him
2) Patricia McKillip: I can't remember the last non-brilliant book she wrote. Alphabet of Thorn and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld still top my read-again-when-sick-or-sad list.
3) Robin McKinley: I wish we could clone her to get more books out of her brain. Sunshine was brilliant. I still hand The Hero and the Crown to teenagers every year.
4) J. D. Robb: note that I do NOT read Nora Roberts on a regular basis. However, I can't get enough of the tales about Eve Dallas and her unit. I read the entire series this summer. Good thing the woman is so prolific!
5) Donald Kingsbury: I believe he's only written three novels, but two of them are still sentimental favorites of mine: Geta (Courtship Rites in the USA) and The Moon Goddess and the Son
6) Barry Hughart: I don't know what happened to him after Bridge of Birds and its two sequels, but I'll buy his books if he ever gets back into publishing.
7) Lois McMaster Bujold: I named one of my kids after a character of hers. My husband and I bonded, while dating, over our love of her novels. Once again, I wish we could clone her to get more volumes out of her. Start with either Komarr or Curse of Chalion if you haven't read her already.
8) Connie Willis: I hear we're finally getting the next of her time-travel books out in the winter. To Say Nothing of the Dog is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm eagerly awaiting the next one.
9) Sherri S. Tepper: I have a love-hate relationship with a lot of her books. They aren't easy reading, and some of them make no logical sense (Six Moon Dance, I am looking at you here) but the writing and the themes are so compelling that they stay with me. My favorites are Raising the Stones and Northshore/Southshore.
10) Terry Pratchett: He says that he is almost done with publishing as his illness gets worse. I will treasure any last volumes he can churn out before the inevitable end. Start with Guards! Guards! but read everything of his.

This isn't like New Year's...

OK, I lasted for 2 days.

In my (feeble) defense, yesterday stank like a week-old carp. By the time I came home (11:15pm) I was too exhausted to think about anything other than bed.

I carry my knitting bag around with me but haven't touched the needles in almost a week.

Argh...

Well, I'm exhausted and coughing; both my kids seem to be sick, too.

I have a huge pile of tests to grade and no time to knit.

Bleah? Yeah. Fortunately there's always silly math poetry:

A dozen, a gross, and a score
plus three times the square root of four
divided by seven
plus five times eleven
is nine squared and not a bit more.
- Jon Saxton

30 posts in 30 days? Hah!

Every year I vaguely yearn to participate in Write a Novel in a Month... but until I quit teaching, that will not be happening. (End of volleyball season. Fall term final exams. Grade and comments for 68 students. And that's just the first three weeks...)

So instead, I'm trying to jump on the bandwagon with this Post to Your Blog Every Day for a Month thing. Glad I read about it today instead of tomorrow.

Possibly I will even download photos from the camera at some point!