Quiet times

I'm enjoying the last moments of a week of calm before heading into four weeks of classes on Monday. I said in an earlier blog that the summer session was five weeks, which was scary enough-- but I found out a couple of days ago--when I sat down to create my syllabus against the school calendar—that it’s actually only four weeks. Ack!

So, no stress here. I’m just charged with putting on a writing class for 22 students, and doing it in 4 weeks. That's all.

Plus I’ll be taking my own “Hawthorne and Melville” class. The professor teaching it is my advisor, and she has an eminently sensible homework policy. Specifically, she’s one of those who believes that you can’t really do long papers in a short period of time. So, I’m hoping the workload won’t be horrible, although I’m pretty sure the reading load will be quite intense. No Moby Dick, thank goodness, but Melville’s short novels and Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables are on the list, along with a bunch of short stories. In four weeks!

Enough whining. So, about the jar at the top. It’s my ticket stub jar—an ordinary Mason jar into which I put all of the ticket stubs from films I’ve gone to. I’ve kept it up for several years—lots of fun.

Last night we went and saw The Da Vinci Code. Not an award contender, but a fun actiony sort of flick. Good summertime amusement. And Tom Hank’s hair wasn’t that bad at all. I can see why the Catholic Church pitched such a fit about the film-- it includes a fairly sympathetic look at Pagan history and traditions. Anyone who watches the film will come to learn that the pentacle is not a symbol of Devil worship, which is a reason enough to like the movie.

The other thing of interest that’s happened this week had to do with Ernie. We’d had spaghetti for dinner one night, and when Bill went to give Ernie his bedtime Rimadyl, he called me into the kitchen, saying, “He’s got a piece of spaghetti stuck on his chin—could you get it off?” (Note that Bill, the fearsome woodsman and hunter, was afraid to try and take the piece of spaghetti off the 13-lb ancient poodle’s chin. But never mind that.)

So, I bent down and took his muzzle and went to pull it off, but it was really hard and odd. And I realized it was his tooth. Ack!

Bill and I got all icky-nervous at that, but Ernie was acting like, “Whatever,” and didn’t seem to be in any pain, so we all went to bed.

The next morning, it was still there—the lower left canine, hanging at a crazy, sabertoothy angle. But by the time Bill left for work, it was gone. I later found the tooth in the living room. Ick.

Anyway, I took Ernie to the vet and they said that, yup, he’d broken the tooth. (Ya think?) Problem is, it wasn’t a clean break. There’s a bit of tooth and the whole root still in there. But the vet is reluctant to go in after it, given Ernie’s age. So, we’re watching him to see if anything more comes of it. So far, so good.

They think that when he tried to fly off the front porch (six or so weeks ago; see May 6 blog entry, "Dogs Who Fly--and the people who love them") and hit the concrete, he probably broke the tooth then, causing the root to die. Then at some point, whether he bumped the doorframe, bit a kibble, or whatever, it finally fractured through all the way and came out.

Anyway, that’s about as exciting as my life gets right now. Which is a good thing.