1. I missed yesterday owing to poor time management. Oh, well.

2. I’m officially on a 3-week Christmas break from work. A break I’ll need to use to find another part-time job and get myself onto a good schedule so that I can be more successful in the next semester.

Not that this past semester was unsuccessful; I largely enjoyed it. But I feel I could do better, especially now that I have a better idea what I’m doing.

3. Reading about Archimedes for a week and a half in Classical history turned that class into a Science/Math class, with me trying my best to explain scientific and geometric concepts. Actually went fairly well; we conducted the buoyancy experiment (showing that the water displaced by a floating object is equal to or greater than its weight), which went off without a hitch, and afterwards I explained to them why we didn’t get an exact result and the need to make note of everything that might affect the outcome whenever you perform a scientific experiment.

4. Been mildly sick all week, and then last night it burst out into a full-blown cold. I’m grateful it held off until school was finished, but it’s still annoying.

5. In the final weeks before break, my ‘Chief Truths’ class has been reading St. Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul. It’s actually my first acquaintance with her writings, and I’m finding her a much more engaging companion than I expected. St. Therese, I think, is one of those insidiously profound saints, where when you simply read about her, it’s easy to imagine you’ve reached the sum total of her insights: offering small, everyday things to God as opposed to great, grand endeavors. One nods and thinks that that makes sense, or even finds it a little treacly and trite, too small and self-contained of an idea to explore.

Actually reading her, however, is a very different experience. There is a depth and intensity to her reflections, even amidst her almost casual writing style, that is difficult to put into words. It’s the insight of a soul very close to Christ, operating on a level most people can’t even imagine, but offering her experience in plain, ordinary language that is perhaps less precise than the theological mastery of a St. Thomas or St. Alphonsus, but much more accessible and immediately appealing. It’s my current daily spiritual reading.

6. Grammar rules tie into mathematics, which tie into basic reality. “Less” vs. “Fewer” deals with the difference between units and extension: Arithmetic and Geometry. A length is a certain number of inches, but who can say where one inch ends and another begins? The difference between distinct units and continuous extensions is one of the core distinctions in understanding the world.

“Less” refers to extension / quality – less water, less heat, less fun – while “fewer” refers to units – fewer drops, fewer degrees, fewer games.

7. Finally, ending on a Belloc quote I found this morning (not sure where it’s from; the essay didn’t give a source):

“There is a time to see why someone thought a certain course of action was justified or advisable, how they could not have seen the reasons for its failure except in hindsight. And there is a time to simply call people idiots.”