Don't call it a comeback.

I know: it's been a long, long time. Over here, it hasn't quite felt like a long time; this semester has been one of the fastest-moving on record, for reasons I both can and can't tell you. This morning, I started contemplating moving the Cabinet off of this platform and over to Wordpress. And then I realized that that impulse was probably stemming from the fact that it's been so long since I even knew my Squarespace password that I've been locked in to my old design and feeling utterly unable to do anything about it. A few help forum searches later, and I had my password back and could try out a new look for this place. I'm still working on it, so if you have gut reactions about which I should know, feel free to share them--if you're even still here after all this time, that is.

As you might imagine, I now have hundreds of images from the first quarter of this year (and the very tail end of last year). They're also split between two cameras: my good old workhorse and the newer super-point-and-shoot I picked up in December, in the hopes that having a more portable camera would help get daily photographing back into my life. (Did it? Yes and no. Canon seems to have created a point-and-shoot that's in some ways far less intuitive than my DSLR. Or perhaps I'm just less used to intuiting its ways...)  

In the days ahead, you can expect to see:

  • the early days of one dog's life and the last days of another's;
  • glimpses both of the monastery and of the wack version of Los Angeles I experienced while there for work;
  • orchids, with assorted attached lessons about how they prove the difficulty of attaining focus;
  • fun trick photography from the Baltimore airport, where I got stuck for many hours on Oscar night and passed some of the time trying to learn the Miniature Effect on the little camera without being a total creep;
  • airports in general;
  • glass and ice;
  • perhaps the Parthenon (The Nashville Parthenon. I don't have those images yet, but I'm about to visit my excellent brother, and I wouldn't mind it if a Parthenon trip were on our agenda);
  • and my excellent parents' new Airstream.

I've been here for years.

Peekaboo.

I have a little trove of where I've been and what I've seen in the month since you last heard from me, and every day I mean to poke into the trove and let you all see the snow at the monastery after I drove there during the Boxing Day blizzard, or the improbable skylights of the Bradbury Building from the last day I was in L.A. the first weekend in January, or the dog reclining in the backyard snow, and instead I have been going to bed late, getting up early, running the classes and going to the meetings (and managing to do a tiny bit of yoga!) and sitting the zazen and helping do the penultimate stage of a hiring process, and so I have been away, though I have also been here all along.

The recommending life.

The past twenty-four hours' chief labor: filing sixteen letters of recommendation on behalf of six students.  That brings me closer to getting this year's recommendations out and about.

The dog's chief assistance lay in her silently communicating confusion about why I was still up and about, and why the light was still shining when she opened her eyes every once in awhile.

Sudden chill.

I can't say that this is my favorite weather, by any stretch of any imagination.  Though the dog has become Miss Stinkalot again, I have been sorely tempted to invite her into the living room's easy chair simply so that I can cadge her warmth.  It's not quite 5º (much less -11º) in the house, and for that I'm thankful.  It's just significantly colder than it was this time last night, and cold enough that slipping back out of the next in time for morning office hours isn't going to be easy.