One of Sesame Street's lasting influences is the way I still always want to chortle, "Three! Three things done, mwahahaha!" when crossing items off a to-do list.

The opposite of the first robin of spring is the first indoor wasp of fall.

Do I want to drive two hours just to get Indian food? Yes. Or rather, yes I want Indian food, no I'd rather not drive. Teleportation would do wonders for the restaurant industry. Someone please invent it. Before dinner.

Just riding trains and unicycles for story research purposes, as writers do at emliterary.com @emliterary.

Every single line of the poem I've been revising has now changed. So... *is* it a revision, or a whole new poem? Is it the Ship of Theseus?

"You see, I am getting so sleepy," he said, "and when I have time to write, I only really like writing poetry." -Bilbo Baggins, on page 988 of Lord of the Rings, for the first time decides not to do NaNoWriMo.

Today's commute expressed in iambic tetrameter: In case you really want to know / I hate to drive in stupid snow

Just typed "in-text citation for this information?" on a student paper, then thought, "Hey, that rhymes!" Now attempting to rhyme every comment, because grading might as well be fun.

Pie. Music. Nap. Book. Movie. Repeat.

Two days of snow. Nowhere to go. Cocoa, a blanket, a book.

While excavating a glacier, I found this Ice Age relic of unknown purpose. We believe Neanderthal hunters may have used it as a food cache, or possibly a musical instrument.

🎵Papers ungraded and emails unwritten. Snowdrifts to shovel, as big as Great Britain. Trying to rest when the phone starts to ring... these are a slew of my tedious things.

The saddest thing about being a grownup is the way snow changes from "play" (sledding, snow days, snowballs, snow forts) to "chore."

Chimney Pond was my favorite childhood playground, though I never got to see Orion over the peaks like this. But I did once wake up to see a curious moose sticking its antlered head into our lean-to.

An anti-ode to Monday, starring Sisyphus: mootpointmagazine.com/post/sisyphus-…

Snowfall, shovels, slippery roads but maybe not for long. February 28 feels like the Wednesday of winter.

It's weird being just the right age to be able to simultaneously amaze younger friends & relatives with ancient, arcane, Merlin-like wizardry (reading cursive) and older ones with impossibly complex NASA-level technological skills (restarting the WiFi router).

This is the story of a shy person/night owl who somehow ended up in a career requiring awfully early wake-up times and lots of public speaking....

In hope of getting at least one bookish thing done today, I've changed my to-do list to this: 1) find pirate treasure map, 2) invite wizard to tea, 3) buy candy bar with golden ticket, 4) contemplate tesseracts, 5) exercise/walk away from Omelas

A new poem, dedicated to adjunct professors. smokyquartz.org/fall-2023-issu…