ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

As you may have noticed, the blog has undergone a bit of remodeling. I've been feeling the winter blues something fierce these last few weeks, guys. Something had to change and we're not allowed to paint our apartment so the blog gets it! To be honest, I don't often look at my blog page the way you guys see it and I'd forgotten that I'd left it so...drab the last time I changed the design. I'd like to apologize for that. Looking at it reminded me of the winter landscape I see reflected through my office door right now and I don't need to suffer that online as well as in real life.

We're three weeks into the new semester here and I'm finally starting to pick up on my normal routine for the next three months. I'm taking an editing class three times a week and - while my mind is constantly being overwhelmed with terminology and questions about how I've managed to get this far in my life without knowing some really basic grammar rules - I'm really enjoying it. I think Tim might be a little concerned about my new habit of randomly attempting to identify parts of speech in everyday dialogue but a girl's got to practice. It feels good to be learning in a classroom setting again and the silver-lining to my earlier mornings is that by the time the semester ends it'll at least be light outside by the time I wake up! The sun was still up when I left work at 5pm yesterday and I almost cried.

This editing class will be largely project based and we'll be getting our projects via whichever student journal we sign up to be editors for. [There are a lot more student publications on campus than I'd have guessed] I'm apparently insane because I signed up to work for two journals this semester when we only have to do one for the class. I think I'll manage because all I have right now is part-time work and this one class so the work load should be doable. But I might still be crazy. I just couldn't choose between two of them, mostly because I'm really attached to the idea of editing for the student fiction journal but I also need experience with source-checking and the second journal will be better for that.

I'm hoping I really used my best judgement on that decision because right now I'm inclined to take on way more than I normally might in an attempt to get myself out of this funk. For example: while already toting around the Chicago Manual of Style [our "textbook"] yesterday I chose to check eight books out of the library. Eight. [When seasonal depression hits: read.] Guys, I have long arms but even for me a total of nine books is a lot to hang onto. Thanks to the donation of a coworker I was able to use something sturdier than a grocery bag to get them home and I've already started devouring them. Look for some book reviews in the coming weeks. I finished My Name is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson this morning. I'm going to need more distance from it before I can write anything but suffice to say that I highly recommend this short but poignant novel that centers around three Native Alaskan brothers who are sent away to a Catholic boarding school.

Speaking of reviews, the one I wrote for The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook was published on the Children's Book and Media Review website earlier this month. Pop on over to check it out and while you're there sign up to be a reviewer. You get to keep the books they send you for free. I know of no better incentive for bookworms like myself. I've got another review due in March but I'm pretty confident that I'll inhale my library books before then.