Third week of Advent

December has advanced almost without my knowing it. Taking four courses has been so grinding andfor several weeks during and after Thanksgiving, all I had time for was for course work. My GPA is 3.5 after my first semester, which was what it was when I got my first MA. Guess the 4.0 will remain elusive to me in this life. Earlier this week, I was back in eastern Tennessee following a preliminary hearing in the serpent handling case I am covering. Neither side is ready or willing to give in, so I think this looks like a jury trial is in the offing for the spring. All of which is very helpful for the book I wish to write. Not that I planned for all this to happen, but all this court stuff has added a lot of extra drama. Am so looking forward to spending a week in Seattle next week where I hope to get some R&R.We happily decorated our Christmas tree weeks ago, me throwing in a new decorating idea this year with the purchase of large blue bows. One thing that happened late October that I've not mentioned yet was the harvesting of cotton. It was quite interesting to see these huge bales sitting in fields and lots of cotton balls lining the highways. Had no idea that cotton was harvested so late. There's tons of fields around here with the stuff and I made Veeka wander about in it one afternoon (there is a field across from our housing development) just so she could have memories of what cotton looks and feels like. It's been a quiet month in that I'm racing to get projects done before taking on another overload of courses for the spring term. Getting out Christmas cards is one and it always takes me ages to write notes for each one. But it's one of the rites of the season for me. When you move about as much as I have in my life, you have to think up ways to keep up with people. One small project I did was to prepare some Christmas pieces on my harp. I had not done anything like it in 12 years, so tonight when I was at a musicians' gathering in town, I played 4 pieces of music. They were very rusty, but at least I'm back playing - a good thing.