Our trip to Ocean City, MD was fun. Lots of time spent in the ocean, in the condo’s pool, walking the huge boardwalk, walking along the bay side of the narrow peninsula, eating (three buffets), shopping, and visiting Assoteague Island, the home of 180 wild horses! It was good to have a relaxing week before shifting gears from summer vacation to the new school year.

Friday was the first day of teacher meetings, with freshmen orientation Monday and classes Tuesday. My schedule is slightly better this year than last year, only 4 preps instead of five: AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics (2 sections), Honors Algebra 2, and ESL Math. My department has 6 new teachers, but 3 of them are experienced, including Jean, so there should be lots of people helping out the newcomers. Check back with me in three months on all this...

As usual, I did not accomplish as much writing and editing this summer as I hoped to do, but I actually did more than I finish most summers, so it was a fruitful summer overall. I even read 10 books, the best of which were Steven Saylor’s historical mystery The Judgment of Caesar, set in classic Alexandria, and Robert Silverberg’s Roma Eterna, an alternate history which presupposes that the Roman Empire survived into modern times. I guess that makes my second consecutive summer a Roman summer in some ways.