some random stuff

* Thunder last night. You'd think we'd have got rain but nooooooo, that came this morning. (The custodian came when I was in mid class to mop up the leaks in the hallway and set out the fleet of buckets and trash cans we use. Yay, going with the cheapest bid for building this place!)

* I will say the heavy rain we had makes me happy; less chance of the borderline-juvenile-delinquents down the street setting anything on fire with the fireworks they've been setting off every night for a week or so now. 

* I started the decreases for the armholes on the back of the Belvedere cardigan last night. I feel like I'm getting somewhere on this, finally. I may see how much more I can finish tonight and/or see if I can find another needle of the right size and cast on the front for invigilating knitting tomorrow.

* I'm thinking this will be my drag-along big project for the short break I get the end of this month - if I work really fast and well, I could get buttons for it from Sewing Studio (which has really nice dressmaker buttons) when I'm up in Illinois.

*Three more weeks of summer classes. Unbelievable. This one FLEW by. But it was fun; by and large the students have been good, have been interested, have asked a lot of good questions in class. I feel more energized than I did at the end of the spring and far, far less burnt out. (Why can't all our students be like the summer students? I don't get it. I suppose it's a motivation thing - you either really have to love going to college, or really want to get done and earn your degree, in order to go to school in the summer. I did summer school myself; got a lot of my 'cognate classes' (like physics and basic geology) out of the way and graduated a year early)

This also tells me that the malaise I felt at the end of spring wasn't me getting burnt out or losing my teaching mojo; it was just a critical mass of uninterested students getting me down.

* I made cheesy tomatoes last night with the first big garden tomato I harvested. It's pretty simple but I like it: put a little good olive oil in the bottom of a glass dish, cut the tomato (you can peel it if you want) into 1/2" to 1/4" slices, lay them out on the olive oil. Sprinkle more oil on top and whatever seasoning you want. (I use something called Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle. Yes, it has salt in it, but not a lot, and anyway, my blood pressure has really been good these past few weeks). Bake for 10 to fifteen minutes at 350 degrees. At the very end, sprinkle with cheese. (I used "pizza cheese" but you could also use cheddar or colby-jack or whatever....if you varied the seasonings it could be mock-Italian like I made it, or southwesterny (oregano and cumin or chili powder) or whatever you wanted...nutmeg and Swiss cheese might be good also.). Put back in until the cheese melts.

I find cooked tomato dishes like this one are more to my taste (and more to the happiness of my digestion) than just eating them raw out of the garden like most people do.