less than two weeks until the semester ends for me. this week is a short week, we have a long weekend so only work 3 days. then, next week is the last week and is also only 3 days (of course exams begin on friday). i must say i am ready for the semester to be over. i taught 3 new classes this semester and enjoyed the process, but nearly all my students are seniors, and if you remember the final weeks of your senior year, i am guessing classes are not what you remember.

i went to a baseball game this weekend. fun actually. it rained a bit, but the game was great (a few lead changes and it went 12 innings). the speed of the players and skill is roughly double a, although it is billed as triple a.

this weekend i am going to cuernavaca (a town about 30 minutes from where i live). the place is billed as land of eternal spring- never too hot or too cold (guatemala is also billed the same way). an acquaintance has a house there and two friends of mine and i are going down for a few days. my buddy is finishing up his second book, and i have been working on writing a foreword and am also writing one of the chapters. the idea is that he wants to have different styles, so i am taking a chapter that he wrote and making it into a scene from a film/play. creative writing is not something i have done for a while, and i have never tried to write a scene for a play, especially one that is not really for a play (it is prose) but that needs to at least look like. i have to say that the process is quite fun. i have done a few drafts and after each my friend and i get together and he tells me what he likes and what he does not (in the end the book is his). from there i come up with changes and then we go again. i have not been able to devote as much time to it as i would like, but that is part of the purpose for this weekend.
in the end, i do not see myself putting together a whole book by myself. but, working on a collaborative project is fun and knowing that it will be published is cool (the publisher is the owner of the house where we will be staying this weekend). i think i will leave the creative writing to others as they are better at it than i, but i am intrigued by the idea of writing a kind of introduction to the book. he and i have talked a lot about the book and i have read all the drafts and given lots of feedback. the process is fun in the sense that ideas i come up with he implements into his story (sometimes not always). so now i am going to try and place the book in a larger context and make some connections between genres and how it fits into whatever we are calling literature nowadays (postmodern seems rather done). also, i will be translating my own work into spanish so that the book will have a somewhat broader appeal down here (although the creative part will be only in english).

lots of projects are cooking. we started a philosophy seminar that meets every two weeks and i presented a few weeks ago. my presentation was the basis for an essay i wrote which i then sent to tech with my graduate application. on that note, i spoke to the secretary of the grad school today and she said they are now reviewing my app. i should know within the next two weeks what their decision is. in many ways i am nervous, but i keep reminding myself that if i do not get in, i will apply more places next time and will have more experience with the subject in general. we shall see.