Good morning from cold but sunny Lexington. Winter is revisiting. I had to scrape ice from my car - who knew the uses for a CVS card - yesterday a.m. before I could leave for the oral surgeons. I saw a number of cars that had an inch or two of snow on them. Today the grass is white with frost but no snow accumulation. Not good as my lilacs were starting to bud.

My surgery has been postponed until the 9th due to my exhaustion and the fact that we have to leave for Kansas City on Thursday and last time I had oral surgery I ended up with infections in two of three incision sites. The bone has filled in just enough to put the smallest screw in for the implant. All this because a dentist on St. Thomas put in a shoddy filling and the molar had to be pulled. Found out that the root may have been damaged on another molar during the wisdom teeth extraction and I may need a root canal on it. In other words, it was not a "good news" visit to the doc's yesterday!

It has been a couple of rough days and isn't going to get better for awhile. Steve's Dad died on Easter and we will be going up for the funeral and spending some time with his Mom and the rest of the family. We leave Thursday and come back Monday. Steve's Dad was such a delightful man and I didn't meet him until the Alzheimer's had already taken his memory of who Steve was so he certainly didn't know who I was, but he liked me. They lived with us for a bit and he some how knew what time I came home from campus and he'd be waiting in the driveway to give me a hug. He was such a flirt and sassy! I had a set routine of getting up and toasting a bagel for breakfast on the mornings I had to go to campus. I'd ask him if he wanted one and he'd shake his head no but 1/2 of my bagel always "disappeared"! So I'd ask, he'd shake his head no, but I'd make two bagels and the other one would disappear - neither of us acknowledged what was going on. Steve tells stories of his Dad's wonderful sense of humor and I wish I had known the man Steve misses so much. I hope he has already met my son Mic in heaven - I am sure they will get along splendidly and be playing tricks on the others. :-)

I haven't finished it so I can't blog in detail yet, but I am loving Mary Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox. This is a gotta have for every YA collection as not only is it extremely well written, it is so intriguing and thought provoking that I keep putting it down to ponder on the observations she makes about what the world could be like with all of the genetic alterations we are making to living things. These could prove both deadly or prolong life - even when doing so is questionable.

One of my students just booktalked The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean - this year's Printz Award winner. I absolutely adore the book but not one of her teens chose it as one they would read. It may have been the excerpt she chose to read to them as I am not sure too many teens would be turned on by the idea of being in love with dead guy 90 years older than them :-) But, Sym certainly is in love with the idea of Titus Oates, one of the early explorers to Antarctic who died during the experience. But, he is with Sym as she navigates life via hearing aids and dealing with other medical issues due to being experimented on as a child with overdoses of antibiotics. With her father dead (who she thinks despised her) her "Uncle" Victor is all she has, other than her quiet mother who lets Victor move into their home and "manage" their money. Sym knows everything there is to know about Antarctica and she has to use every bit of that knowledge when a trip to Paris turns into an expedition to Antarctica. Uncle Victor is sure there is a civilization that lives beneath the ice cap and he is going to become famous when he locates it. But, staying alive is going to be utmost on Sym's agenda as she watches Victor slip deeper and deeper into insanity as he searches for the hole to another world. One of the most terrifying books I have read where the monster is pure white and totally impervious to the feeble attempts of humans to control it. I wish I had time to go back and read it again. I will booktalk it, but I think I'l do it as a first person from Sym's point of view.

All for today.