School's Starting

I played my last hand of cards for 10 weeks this afternoon.  I'm changing my Pilates schedule next week.  The courses I chose are beginning; my free time is now full of pdf's downloaded to The Box.

10 weeks seems like forever, but it's really only until the middle of April.  There's a week of vacation in mid-March (coinciding with the Tucson Festival of Books, in case you are planning a trip), but I said good-bye to the Happy Ladies who would be returning to their northern full-time homes when their snowbirding season ended, well before April.

Time has a way of smooshing itself together into a lump when you're retired and have no kids at home.  School reimposes a sense of order.  It also keeps me from reading for pleasure until I've finished my assignment.  TBG is a good scold ("Did you do your homework this week?") and the material is engaging, but Boccacio is not James Patterson.  He requires a bit more thought and concentration.  I'm racing through the last of the library books before I go cold turkey.

I'm ahead on my assigned reading, and will try to get further along before the first class next Tuesday.  I'm still debating the virtues of downloading the pdf's vs reading them on the iPad.  How many trees must die for my education?  Doesn't the research ("the research" is a close cousin of "they say") show that I'll retain more if I hold a paper rather than swipe pixels? 

These are the quandaries of my life, it seems.