It turns out that I am, indeed, still in Portland . . . glad not to be negotiating icy roads this morning, but the downside is that I'll be home all day for the tree-removal clamor.

Oh, well. If I survived the ledge pounding when the city tore up our street, I can survive an all-day chipper. But I'm not looking forward to it.

Though I won't be in the classroom today, I've got lots of work to do: editing to finish up, and then a bog of class and program planning to wade into. I should start this week's round of bathroom and floor cleaning. I'll get through my exercise class, and figure out something to do with shrimp for dinner. I'm reading the Inferno (copying it out) and an anthology of 17th-century English verse (with Teresa), and the graphic novel Watchmen, which my nephew gave me for Christmas, and in the interstices a comfortable Dorothy Sayers mystery.

But I'm still feeling unsettled . . . from Christmas, from that football game . . . whatever the cause, a lingering miasma of trouble, past, present, and future--the ghost of sadness that was, is, and will come.

By the way, my friend Angela left a gorgeous short essay about the football game in yesterday's comments. If you haven't read it, you should.