Almost Ready

Classes start tomorrow and I'm almost ready. I still have some prep to do for my afternoon class, but I think my morning class is all set. I'm pretty psyched for both classes, Calculus III and Introduction to Chaos and Fractals. I've taught them both a bunch of times before, I like the material, and I think I have a good group of students in both classes.

Saturday, instead of preparing for classes or working on some of the many writing projects I'm supposed to be doing, I did a bunch of cooking. I tried out a new recipe: pasta with a celery and leek sauce. Sounds kinda weird, but it was actually quite tasty. And aside from the mild tedium of chopping lots and lots of celery, the recipe is quite easy. I also made a warm spinach salad, which has become a standard of mine. Both were tasty. And, I made some brownies (from a mix, but still quite good), and some vanilla ice cream in our ice cream maker. It was nice to have a home-cooked feast, of sorts, before the term gets too crazy.

In other news, it was warm today: mid 30's. And the next few days it could get into the mid 40's. This means that lots of snow will melt and things will be very slushy. Yesterday, in addition to cooking I dug out Doreen's car, which was under a lot of snow. The car started, but alas, the fan belt has snapped. So it looks like we'll be car pooling tomorrow. But given that COA is supposedly the greenest college in the world, I guess I'm supposed to be car pooling. At least this blog uses recycled electrons.

Time to do a little bit more thinking about my Chaos and Fractals class and then get some sleep. A big day tomorrow: the first day of classes always takes a lot of energy.