k-brow: green things and exhaustion

The constant earworm of Brian Eno's "Everything Merges With the Night" is rattling around in my head tonight. I just had to go and listen to some Eno at work today, and now I'm paying the price. There are far worse fates than an afternoon spent listening to
"Another Green World" and "Before and After Science", though. I have the new Eno waiting in the wings, but am waiting for an opportune moment to gift it to P, who pretends not to like ambient music, but then I catch him listening to it...

I am now solidly back at work, which is not making me happy. Oh, my students do please me; I was overjoyed to see the galloping Portuguese twins and their beautiful-but-academically challenged sidekick, who bears such a resemblance to them as to make them all look like triplets, as they came in to visit me on their next-to-last day of winter break. They gushed and oohed over the new seating arrangement, and admired the 2 new laptops that the Techie had delivered this morning. These 3 girls are usually helpful, and often drop in after school to close windows, wipe down counters and file things for me.

No. It's the administrative stuff that's dragging me down. The endless staff meeting, slated for tomorrow, the stack of report cards that wait to be done, and the new fresh hell of writing letters of recommendation for private schools, because 6th grade is one of the points of entry for private school in Hawaii. None of this stuff is very daunting, but all of it together is not what I want to be doing.

What I want to be doing is working on Icarus, which is going well enough, if a bit slowly. I'm now into the 4th and final lace chart, but the 400+ stitch rows make for slow going. I'm only getting 1 or 2 rows done a day, which is okay by me, at this point. It IS pretty, though this doesn't reflect the color very accurately; I was playing with iPhoto's retouching features and may have warmed it up a wee bit.

More on the green front; dinner was roasted broccoli, canned black beans and sauteed Opah, or moonfish. Very nice, especially the broccoli, which is cut up, tossed with minced garlic in olive oil and pan roasted at 425 for 20 minutes, resulting in carmelly fabulousness. A dash of sea salt, a squeeze of lemon and it's good to go. I'm doing fairly well on La Vida Lo-ca(rb) though I did give myself a total cheat day, and went out for dim sum with Opal, her mom, Joy and Barb on Saturday. We knitted awhile at Starbucks, and then went on to eat many, many dumplings. Yum. I'm back on the wagon, though I've added red wine and chocolate back, just like I said I'd do. I don't consume much of either, but it's the key to my not feeling too deprived.

I am off to bed, in hopes of combatting this awful sucking exhaustion that I know is only partly a physical thing.