so far so endless

finals week has ended.

semi-frantic emails from my students about their grades have begun.

I am still in the middle of the last bits of grading. relax, students. there is pretty much nothing you can do about your grade at this point.

this is the pile of borrowed books I want to read in the next month or so. it's about 60/40 academic/non-academic, I think. the Gilbert is one I read about during the most recent tournament of books: The Signature of All Things. the Gibson is one I may have read already (his books have a dejà vu about them, more often than not, weirdly), but I wasn't sure. it was the only Gibson the library had on its shelf that day, so I brought it home just in case.

finals week is behind me now, but this academic treadmill has no end. life goes on and it is full of things. there are articles to write and proposals to draft and next semester to plan, and so many goals and ideals to make sense of. German to practice and songs to sing and sunrises to watch. some of all that is prescriptive--shoulds and expectations. some of it is deeper than that, and my little brain is anxious for reading and thinking and enjoying the work of it. most of it is a little bit of both. half-want, half-ought. that makes me pretty lucky, I guess. or congenial and submissive toward my chosen lot. or at least delusional enough to find (slash hallucinate?) a little bit of want into the efforts this context currently expects of me.

speaking of hybridly fun-required projects, this here is the very first draft of a game I developed for Dr. Blackmon's class this semester. it is roughly based on a very long, very random, very adventuresome story I started writing ten+ years ago (more info). there is an island. a mystical ocean. pie. yaks. sock-related conflict. the main character in the story wears lots of plaid. a game doesn't really have a main character, and while identity is a major game element, plaid doesn't really play into it as much... so I'm not really sure if it should keep the name The Plaid Identity, but so far no better name has suggested itself. my colleagues and classmates who have play-tested the draft versions agree that the name seems to suit the randomness of the game itself just fine.

Dr. Blackmon's class is all finished now, but I'm still fiddling with the game, its little pieces, and its design. since there is no main character, I'm experimenting with making the board wear plaid. bright orange plaid for zombie-river spaces, deep green plaid for yak-meadow spaces, brown plaid for pie spaces, sandy beach plaid for fulgurite spaces, and a small grey plaid for sock spaces. and then lots of blue for the ocean. I'm not sure how practical this design is at the moment--it needs testing. I hope to get my family and old friends to play it a few times with me when I'm home next week. I hope there will be time for it between the camping and the theatre and the dinner parties and maybe a little sewing/crafting stuff. 

oh and all that reading I have piled up. there will need to be time for that, too.