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Last Thursday kept both Ryan and myself home, despite both of our anxious staring out the window, wanting, needing to get up to the Twin Cities for our respective duties. A snowstorm, complete with thunder and lightning, descended upon our shivery state, the sort that one might deem a "blizzard," but then realizes that might be a bit much, or maybe it's not, especially when the university closes at 4:40, an event only seen perhaps once in a student's career on campus, and your best friend later writes to you of how she watched cars slide off the interstate on her way home from work (at 12:30, as her work closed its doors as well). It was the sort of evening that, when it was all over, neighbors with snowblowers helped each other out--I took ours up and down the sidewalk, singing, bundled up, doing the slippery dance on each square of soggy concrete, while our next door neighbors' more powerful snowblower took care of our too-long drive and Ryan shoveled the plow's leavings at the end of the drive.

I've been quietly catching up with the semester. This weekend was spent indoors, celebrating the birthday of my husband's mother, eating Italian in and watching the dogs romp in the snow. I read, a lot. Some for school. Most not.

I did read Bill Holm's Playing the Black Piano and selected four poems to highlight here. I'm very interested in his book Box Elder Bug Variations, partly because I am interested in doing my own entomological poetry (see Beekeeping; there are two others thus far that will eventually find homes, I hope, and I like them both a little better than the one that is published--this is often the way, I believe), partly because it was born of an assignment he gave to his class, but mostly because I'm interested in how poets can riff on a theme--and this, partly, is because of my own Alzheimer's variations, but also because I'm intrigued about how one subject can produce continual contemplation and inspiration. Ah, this book seems to be loaded with expectation, for me.

March already and so much to do: the honey brown has been neglected, we have a trip to Michigan to plot out, Ryan is turning thirty (!), my students will hand in final drafts of their first big paper on the same day (or the day after; I gave them the option when I discovered the prof was going to assign that exam on the fated 3/10, the day I inked in as their due date) as their midterm, and if I really want to submit a chapbook draft to Finishing Line Press, they have a contest deadline of March 30. I don't feel ready for any of it, but that seems to be fairly typical for me--always scrambling to catch up. It's a full life, and for that, I am happy.