Hopelessly behind

Yesterday, Daniel got to go flying as the culmination of his week of aviation camp. He was the first one to take off. Sitting in the pilot's seat, with the instructor in the co-pilot's seat, he was at the controls when the plane took off, flew up to Turner's Falls, and landed. One of the other students flew back. Now he's got a pilots log book with the first half hour of flying time logged. It was fun to take the morning to see him go flying, even thought I'm feeling hopelessly behind.

I never get as much done over the summer as I had hoped. With only three weeks left before the beginning of the semester, I've had to make some hard choices about what I can realistically expect to get finished before classes begin. At the moment, I've got about 4 major projects part-way done. Now, I need to finish the ones that can be finished and get the others patched up enough to get through the fall.

I've been making good progress in putting together the syllabus for my Esperanto course. I'm looking forward to teaching that -- it looks like an interesting bunch of students. The hard part is trying to guess how much time it will take them out-of-class to do what I'm asking. It's hard to strike the appropriate balance.

I miss St. Croix. I miss being able to walk over and watch the ocean. I miss the easy camaraderie. I miss the quiet of the refuge. Still, drinking coffee out of my Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge mug, I can close my eyes and almost imagine I'm under the great blue sky with clouds streaming across... With palm trees overhead and the black-crowned night heron standing like a statue... With the tinkle of the shells and beach glass as little waves lap at the beach. Ah, St. Croix.