School or not school? you be the judge.

1. I have ten school-related meetings this week.

2. TEN.

3. Still grading.

4. I'm engaging in long obsessive worryings about this-and-that. School-related, natch.

5. I bought two heliotropes, a fantastic pelargonium, and three marguerite daisies (pink) today.

6. We moved the outside pots outside, where they belong. In the rain.

7. I'm still writing notes to students about things they may have forgotten.

8. I'm receiving application materials from students for the Folio editorships.

9. I am about to read great swaths of my French detective novel.

10. I wore a white dress with a grey polka-dotted sweater.

Overlooked.

Here are my nominees for performances, scripts, and films the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences missed:

Performances: Kate Winslet in Romance and Cigarettes; Helena Bonham Carter in Sweeney Todd; Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. in Zodiac; Irfan Khan and Tabu in The Namesake; Leslie Mann in Knocked Up; Michael Cera in Superbad; Russell Crowe in something--he was terrific every time I saw him this year; Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men

Writing: The Lookout; Rocket Science

Picture: Zodiac

Pretty good year, actually, for movies, in my opinion.

Pop Quiz: If you saw Steve Carell in your grocery store in Sugar House, what, if anything, would you say to him?