I spent the past two mornings at school revising the Advanced Placement Calculus curriculum. After teaching AB for twenty-five years, we have finally switched to BC. This will require a bit more work on the part of the students, not to mention me since I will be teaching what is basically a new curriculum next year. In fact, I have five different preparations to teach next year (AP Calculus, AP Statistics, Honors Algebra 2 with 30 students in one section, Regular Algebra 2, and ESL), so it should be a very hectic and busy year. Good-bye, weekends...

The Tibet book is coming along steadily, but I think it needs another quick draft. Plus I have not begun writing the outline and cover letter yet to submit to publishers, all of which I need to finish in the next 4 weeks since it is almost impossible for me to find time to work on a book during school. Another reason why retirement might be a good idea, haha.

Currently listening: I recently got three of Elton John’s best albums on CD: Elton John, Madman Across the Water and Honky Chateau. It is easy to dismiss him as a major artist because of his personal craziness and the fact that he releases every song he records, rather than sifting through them to weed out the chaff, like most artists do. But when Elton John is on the top of his game, he compares favorably to any recording artist, and these three albums are absolutely sparkling.

Currently reading: Redemption Ark is the second novel in Alastair Reynold’s far-future space opera series Galactic North, and it is nearly as good as the first book Revelation Space. I want to live in the 99th millennium and experience some of these sfnal marvels for myself!