So Colleen bought me the new Beck album and I've been listening to it, a lot, and it's sounded very good. But I have not been down, and to appreciate a work of such towering sadness, I think you need to be a bit down to appreciate it. But I've still enjoyed it. And I know that my moods shift oftener than the tides even. On the way home I may feel it all, 'cause in a sea change, nothing is safe.

Teaching's going very well. I designed perhaps my best lesson ever yesterday. It had to deal with the moral philosophies of the characters in "Lord of the Flies" and how peer pressure can make good people do bad things. I bought two bags of candy and put them in my backpack. Then I found a culprit in each class and told them that I was going to leave the class for a moment and they were to go to my pack and say "Hey, there's candy in Mr. Brugioni's bag; we should take some, he'd never know." Afterwards, I came into the room and yelled at them for getting into my things. Then I turned on the overhead w/ the journal prompt beginning "Did you take the candy?" It worked very well. In first period, only about five out of 27 people ate it, and all felt bad about it. In second period nearly everyone ate it and most were quite remorseless. And in fifth period, no one ate it, and yelled at my culprit for getting into my backpack. Such conflicting results, but they lent themselves very well to the ensuing discussion.

I went camping over the weekend, with Sarah. It never got as cold as I had anticipated (Sunday was quite warm and muggy in fact) but the weather, bar a nightlong Saturday storm, was wonderful, and I got to do my usual hiking and fire-making and sleeping. I love what I am doing, but it does beat the hell out of you, and I slept a lot. But I felt refreshed and only slightly harried when I got back home. We went to Governor Dodge State Park, about an hour west of Madison, WI, near the fabled House on the Rock.

Blah, this sounds so uninspired, I know. I'm just tired, I guess. I want to do more, but my funds are limited. My brother's in town and we went out last night for coffee and donuts and talked of old times. Weird. It's been seven months since I've seen him and we still had several comfortable moments of silence together. He leaves today. It was good seeing him. I'm glad I don't have kids.

So, I'm off. Take things patiently. It's a weird twilight, and I want the solitude of the woods, the somnolent buzz of the rising evening flies. The call of an owl, shivering over the forest. Tuneless. Unaccompanied. I miss Sarah, but sometimes I do.

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