it’s an interesting environment, most of the students who come for help are not native English speakers and there are, let’s say, a few cultural differences. like the student I helped the other night who’d been assigned to write about humor and used the “that’s how you get jewelry” joke as an example.

still no hard freeze here in Tennessee, a few of my late planting of potatoes are still alive. looked out back just now and saw two fat does, if it wasn’t a work day I probably would have dropped one of them right here in the tract-house suburbs. nobody hears one shot.

As I’m at work, my wife got to watch Dancing with the Stars on the big HD screen tonight.

whenever my lovely wife says that – for example, when I had the poker and switched it to C-SPAN for the State Dinner on the South Lawn with the PM of India (INSTEAD of the just climaxing Dancing with the Stars show) – I always say “and it’s a short drive”, which almost always draws an expletive from her.

The ignorance of the meaning of “public option” is, unfortunately, a function of the news media’s maddening tendency to regurgitate bureaucrats’ and politicians’ misleading lingo rather than do their job of translating it into straightforward English. I’ve been fighting that battle for decades, and it still drives me nuts.

Michael G’s weather report for this part of the world was accurate. Warm but not hot. Unfortunately it’s very dry and windy today, so we’re all afraid it’s going to start more fires and the air is full of black dirt which is ash mixed with loose topsoil from the fire areas. I used the outdoor stairs a while ago and my hands were black from the railing.