Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

Day 13: A Day In The Life

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The title by no means is unique to me or The Beatles, sorry to say. I'm of the persuasion that the hit 1967 song was inspired by the short book "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published in 1962. But I could be wrong. A gripping book, by the way. A short read but deeply moving, full of deep, beautiful and tragic thoughts:


But I'm taking the long way 'round to this post. My intention is to give a kind of a snapshot of a typical week-day in my own life. It's a journal post, after all. 
  • 5:45 a.m. Wake up, fall out of bed, find coffee. Should be brewed and waiting.
  • 6:00 a.m. Shower, get dressed. Drag the comb across my head.
  • 6:15 a.m. Fix breakfast, get lunch together, keep waking up.
  • 7:15 a.m. Leave the house.
  • 8:00 a.m. Arrive at the University
  • 8:05 a.m. Start coffee (most mornings), eat breakfast and get all systems booted up.
  • 8:10 or :15 a.m. Start workday: e-mails, phone calls, so-forth and what-not
  • 8:30 a.m. Once a month, meetings until 11:00 a.m.
  • 11:00 a.m. (when school is in session) Chapel
  • 12:00 p.m. CrossFit in the Fitness Center (or lunch meeting, depending); shower
  • 1:00 p.m. Back in the office (generally, unless meeting carries through until mid-afternoon)
  • 1:15 p.m. Fix lunch and work 
  • 2:30-3:00 p.m.-ish Get out from behind the desk and walk around a bit.
  • 5:00 Close up "shop"
  • 6:30-ish Dinner, clean up, work outside a little, read, write, watch TV until
  • 10:30-ish Go to bed. 
Exciting, my life, eh? 

That's ok. I'm going on vacation in a couple weeks and all this won't matter. 


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