Fifteen pound book

So, I decided I really needed to start thinking about Principles I, seeing as in three weeks or so I will be teaching it. I have the "topics that must be covered" (this is one of those gen-ed classes, and it's also a "hurdle" class for the other classes in the department).

So I started the first chapter, got most of a lecture done on that. Hauled the book home to read more.

I think this is a more-recent edition the book that, several years ago, when we were "vetting" books for the new class, I took it home to look at it and dropped it on my toe, and figured that I had broken my toe. (I just taped the toe to the one next to it until it stopped hurting; I didn't have the time or energy to go to Urgent Care and then pay a bunch of money for someone to tape my toes together and tell me to be careful about what shoes I wore for a while).

Yeah, the book feels like it weighs fifteen pounds.

I think this is one of the more-compelling arguments for e-books. I don't particularly NEED a Kindle, and I sure as shooting wouldn't throw out my entire library just to replace it with digital versions of the books (for one thing, I suspect many of the books I own don't exist in digital form, even once you get past the "what if you drop the Kindle and it breaks?" or "Do you REALLY own the digital version of a book?" questions)

Part of it is that it's a giant hardback book. And part of it is that it's full of illustrations. But it's also just really DENSE. I think they used special high-density paper or something. (The soils textbook I use is the same size, maybe somewhat thinner, and it doesn't weigh anywhere near as much).

I tried to read ahead and knit on the sleeve for Potter.

I didn't get very far. It's hard to read this book and knit, because it uses that accursed shiny paper (I suppose, the better to get the illustration ink to work). Which means it's hard to position it anywhere that's not right up close to my face and be able to read it without a glare from the light.

So I finally gave up on knitting, right after attaching the new ball of yarn (10" of sleeve from what was left from the first ball - so that means the back, both fronts, and about 1/2 of a sleeve from one ball of yarn).

After getting kind of tired of holding up the heavy textbook I switched over to reading another book, one I bought to help me review some of the details of genetics and cell biology. It's called "The Manga Guide to Cellular Biology" (or something very close to that. There's a whole series of these; I first bought the one for Calculus, thinking I could maybe, finally, get a little bit of calculus to make a dent on my brain. (I don't know what it is. I understand the purposes of derivatives and of integration, but I couldn't do either operation to save my life. And this is after taking calculus twice - I earned a 3 on the AP calculus exam, enough to get me out of basic calculus, but I re-took it in college because I thought I didn't know enough. And then in grad school I spent part of one summer reading a calculus text and taking extensive notes...and still, it escapes me. And part of it is stubbornness, but part of it is also a weird fascination: is this REALLY where the limit of my intelligence/ability to learn lies? Why do the calculations of derivatives and integrals remain such a black box to me?)

***

I'm really trying to have sympathy for all of y'all on the East Coast who are hot right now. But seeing as we're closing in on, I think, 25 days in a row where it's been 95 or above, it's not rained in two months, and we've been asked to conserve water (and yet, my "perfect" neighbor down the street had the sprinkler out on her lawn this morning as I left the house... if she gripes at me about my lawn being "ugly" she will get a piece of my mind)...well, I admit I'm having a little trouble.

I know, I know: a lot of people up north don't have air conditioning and that makes it crazy awful. But still. I'm beyond ready for this heat to be done with.