Spooky Season

I missed last week's update. Monday and Tuesday after my trip to Helen was Fall Break at Oglethorpe. Unfortunately, I had jury duty on the Monday. I had to get up even earlier than usual in order to ride MARTA to Decatur before 8 am. Then I sat around most of the day, waiting for 60 of us to be questioned. I finished a book and started another. I went to a Mexican restaurant a block away for lunch with three other people during our break and the server messed up the order so two of us didn't get our food in time to eat it. We carried it back to the courthouse and I ate mine sitting on the floor outside the courtroom. Anyway, after all that I wasn't selected for the trial.

Waiting in the orientation room at the courthouse.

Tuesday I stayed home and did some grading and other school work with breaks for meals and to read books. It was nice to have a little time for doing "nothing."

The rest of the week was quite a blur, with the second General Chemistry exam on Thursday evening. I had a bit of a meltdown when the copier refused to scan my stack of exams. 

On Saturday I attended the Atlanta Gladiators home opener. It was a warm evening. They had a live band playing outside the arena that I enjoyed. The crowd was surprisingly small (maybe half capacity?) but energetic. Since I am now classified as a season ticket holder, I was able to stand in a long line for the special giveaway: I received a blanket, an aluminum tumbler, and a coupon for a cookie. I was also invited to sign the special dasher board. Then I waited in an even longer line to pick up my pre-ordered Gladiators cap. 

New hat!

Last Sunday I had brunch on Zoom with J & J. I made Dutch baby bunny and it actually turned out well. In the afternoon, I took MARTA downtown and met Katy at her hotel. She was in town for an infectious disease conference. We had beer at Skol Brewing (Viking theme, a Minnesota Viking fan club event had just ended) and then dinner at Alma Cocina.

Beer at Skol Brewing.

Dinner at Alma Cocina.

The rest of the week was pretty ordinary. I went to board games Monday evening, cribbage club on Tuesday, Wednesday I went home and forced myself to stay awake until I had finished the book for Thursday's book club meeting. I really liked the book, but Wednesday I did not feel well at all and I kept dozing off while sitting on the sofa holding the book. Regardless, it was a good book club meeting on Thursday; everyone loved the book (it was Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury). Friday I came home and watched TV and did some knitting. It is starting to look like something.

Knitting progress.

Yesterday all I did was grade student papers at home while doing laundry and cooking crock pot ribs. I also got more reading and knitting done. 

Today, I met CH at Stone Mountain Park and we hiked the trail up to the top. It was a cloudy day, but we could still see the Atlanta skyline as well as some other city skylines (we argued about which cities they were - I think Cumberland/Vinings and Sandy Springs/Dunwoody) and a number of other mountains. The trail up is strenuous: bare rock most of the time and occasionally steep. Lots of people on the trail. At the summit it was windy. The walk back down took half the time.

Selfie at the summit of Stone Mountain.

Atlanta skyline.

After our hike, we drove into Stone Mountain Village for brunch at the Sweet Potato Cafe, which was tiny and adorable. The food was great! I had a not-very-adventurous breakfast plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and a sweet potato biscuit. Then we walked a block or so over to Outrun Brewing, which I had visited once before. We had a couple of beers each there. Then we drove back to the park and I drove us around the mountain. We visited the Memorial lawn, with the view of the infamous Confederate carving on the side of the mountain.

Difficult to make out in my photo, but that's Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson on horseback in the carving.

The mountain is certainly something amazing. Just a big stone lump there surrounded by forest. I climbed Arabia Mountain to the south last spring and it is exactly the same kind of thing. The Park is huge, with lots of shops, restaurants, and activities. Someday I should go back when the weather is nicer to play mini-golf, ride the train, and whatever else. There are also lots more trails that are free, and I have the annual parking pass so I can go anytime I want (regular parking is $20 a day). Our last stop, as the rain started sprinkling, was at the Carillon on the lakeshore. I will have to find out when it gets played and go back to hear it. It has 732 bells and was made by Coca-Cola for the 1964 Worlds Fair, then donated to the park.

The Coca-Cola Carillon.

Midterm Week

This was midterm week and I was very tired. It seemed like every minute I wasn't actually in class, I had students in my office. That caused some very late nights at school. Monday and Wednesday I stayed until 7 pm or later. 

Tuesday I went to cribbage and had a better, though not great, week. Coming home I was stopped again by the paving crew for an hour on I-285. Luckily my GPS routed me around some of that or who knows how long I would have been stuck out there.

Thursday I parked at Chamblee Station and rode MARTA to West Lake, then walked about a mile to Westview Cemetery for Atlanta History Center's Party With the Past. We were allowed to wander around inside the mausoleum, and there was a history talk inside the chapel. There was a bar and some swag (I got a lapel pin and some brochures). I would like to go back for the longer tour of the cemetery and see more of it in the daylight. Around 8 pm, it started to rain, so I hung around waiting for that to pass before hiking back to MARTA. I still got pretty wet, including the book I had with me. I got home after 10 pm.

Before the rain, outside the mausoleum.

Friday I took MARTA to the first symphony concert of my subscription season. I enjoyed this concert very much. It started with a Bach cantata (#150) featuring the chamber choir, then a Grieg piece (Concerto in A minor) for piano and orchestra with a visiting Russian pianist (Pavel Kolesnikov) who wore a white suit with shiny black shoes and was very expressive with his arms while he played. The last piece was Symphony No 4 in E minor by Brahms. Another late night as I didn't get home until about 11 pm.

Found the tiny door outside Symphony Hall.

Saturday I got up early and rode MARTA to Midtown, then walked to Piedmont Park for Atlanta Pride Festival. I was there when the festival officially opened at 10 am, so I had an hour to wander around the booths and collect swag. I got some reusable bags, silicone bracelets, other trinkets, and informational brochures. I also got a temporary tattoo. From 11 am to 2 pm I volunteered at the Sunday Assembly table, which was fun. After that, I hiked back to MARTA and took the train to Oakhurst, then walked to K's house for Porchfest. I missed the concert in her yard, unfortunately. The woman was just packing up when I arrived. But I met K's other friends and her new kitten, and then we all walked down the road to another band and listened to them for almost an hour. A few of us stayed for dinner at the Imperial Cafe, which - like everything else - was packed with Porchfest visitors. But I met Kat, who plays street hockey and guides kayak groups. Maybe we'll all go kayaking on the river sometime soon. Again I didn't get home until after 10 pm.

Sunday Assembly table.

At Porchfest.

Sunday I drove to Helen to meet C and her family for lunch. I got there about 10:30 am and wandered around while I waited for them. We had a fun time. First, lunch at a German restaurant (I had schnitzel), then beer in the beer garden, then apple strudel at a bakery. We went in to some shops, including a candy shop where I bought a small amount of peanut brittle, and a toy shop where I bought some things for the nieces and nephews. We had another beer at a different place and dinner in a riverside steak and seafood restaurant. Then I drove home.

Chattahoochee River in Helen.

I don't feel that I've been home much this week. I only made a little progress on the cape, but with all the MARTA rides, I have read a lot of pages.

A little progress on the cape.

And Now It's October

Another busy week, full of classes and students, getting things done just in time.

Monday evening I was able to come home at a reasonable time and attend the POGIL book club on Zoom. We are reading The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching by Jonathan Zimmerman. For the first meeting, we discussed the first two chapters, but I had not finished yet so I felt a bit out of the loop. I have been reading this book in bed at night and falling asleep after two or three pages, so it's slow going. The book is interesting, I am just too tired to read much. I am supposed to read the next three chapters by the end of October; I hope I can do that. I learned that "recitation" used to actually be students reciting their texts from memory (sounds awful). The focus of the book is on the way professors have resisted professionalizing their craft for at least the past three hundred years. They/we have always insisted that teaching is an individual, personal art and not something that can be measured or improved scientifically. Intellectual freedom has been used as a shield to prevent anyone telling professors how to teach. There has also been some interesting history about when professors' jobs made the switch from prioritizing teaching (in Germany, students paid fees directly to the instructor, so there was an incentive to have the most popular classes, for example) to prioritizing scholarship (in the U.S. and elsewhere, a prevailing belief was that good researchers, productive scholars, should somehow automatically be good teachers).

Tuesday I played cribbage. I won three games this time. I'm hoping for better luck in October.

Wednesday I went to the monthly board game meetup at Red's. I was the first person there, and only three other people showed up. I was able to play Thebes with the first person, and when she had to leave, the other two and I played Scout. 

Thursday evening my sci-fi book club met to discuss Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. I thought the book was fine, but not particularly great. The magic system was interesting: based on Breath, a kind of life force that can be accumulated by taking other people's from them. Breath can be used to animate objects and it imparts some extra sensory information to its holders. There are also the Returned - people who have died and returned to life - who are considered gods, but must be "fed" Breath at least once a week. I was irritated by one of the other members who talked too much, in my opinion. It didn't help that Sanderson is one of his favorite authors, so he had a lot to say. For October we are reading Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and I'm looking forward to it because I haven't read it before.

Friday I actually came home at a reasonable time and was able to relax after dinner. I finished weaving in ends for my On the Spice Market shawl while watching the first episode of The Lazarus Project on Netflix. Friends  J & J recommended it to me. I enjoyed it enough to watch two more episodes on Saturday evening, while beginning the next knitting project, Olivia's Cape. I planned this and bought yarn for it back in January, during the week of "start all the things"!

Finished and blocked shawl.

Starting the cape.

On Saturday, I went for a three mile walk on Path 400 with Sunday Assembly. It was seasonably cool in the morning; I wore jeans. It turned out to be only two of us this month, but the walk was still nice. We traveled the newly opened section between Old Ivy Park and Loridans Park, including the spur down to Mountain Way Common, which is where I went by mistake last month and got shouted at by the construction workers. 

On Path 400.

After the walk, I went to Atlanta Photography Group (a little gallery in a mall on Piedmont Avenue) to pick up my cousin's photo. He had entered it in a show in August and asked me to collect it for him when he wasn't able to come to Atlanta this week. 

At the Atlanta Photography Group gallery.

Today I have been working on school stuff mostly. I made soup in the crockpot and did some house cleaning tasks. In the afternoon I went to the Fall Festival hosted by my realtor (actually her realty group). It was in a posh neighborhood in Roswell. Supposed to be outdoors, everyone stayed inside because there was drizzly rain all afternoon today. I stayed a couple of hours, ate some treats and talked to people, especially my actual realtor, Casey and her friends. I forgot my phone in the car, so I didn't take any photos of the cute Halloween-themed cookies or the many Halloween decorations around the house and yard, unfortunately. After I'd had enough socializing, I came home and worked some more.