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Whew!
With the start of school, we just had three days of classes, but they were sufficient. I came home the first day feeling completely beat, and still had to go back for two more.
Not that things are going badly--quite the opposite, in fact. It probably started with how little I slept Tuesday night, between staying up prepping for the first day and then the night-before-Christmas sort of sleep that I got. It wasn't as bad as one of my colleagues, who set her alarm for 6, found herself awake when the clock said 5 and decided to do some work on her computer... only to have the computer tell her it was more like 3! She'd set her clock forward when setting her alarm, but found she couldn't get back to sleep anyway.
So I wasn't that tired, but the first day back plus tennis practice did me in. Nonetheless, I had to go back the next day and then the next, but they got progressively better.
It's really just the change of schedule, from waking up whenever to waking up with an alarm, from doing whatever to having a rigid schedule and work to do, from collecting my paychecks to earning them again.
Still, no complaints. I've got names learned in half of my classes, the kids seem pretty good (though there's still a lot for me to learn from their first writing assignments, which will start queuing up for my attention this week.
Also on the horizon is the first JV tennis match (varsity already had one) on Monday. I think we've got quite a good team again this year, but I guess we won't know anything until the season's over--or at least gets under way. Last year's undefeated run will be a tough act to follow, but I don't worry too much about it. As long as the girls are playing hard and learning to play better doubles as the season goes on, I'm sure winning will take care of itself. Really, that's the only thing we have control over--what kind of effort are we putting in and am I teaching them things that will make them better players. If we run into a team that's just flat out better than us, well, so it goes. The JV league had to be realigned this year, putting us in the southern division rather than the northern, so I don't know what to expect from any of our opponents--which I suppose could help keep us from getting complacent.
At any rate, everything is in full swing out here, which is what has kept me so long from the blogging community. As thing settle into a rhythm, I expect I'll get back here regularly again.
Speaking of rhythms, this school year is not only a different rhythm of life compared to the summer, but it's also just plain different. Mornings, I get up when Fiancee does, though she has an hour commute to get to the same start time. This allows me a slow morning and a leisurely walk to school that still gets me there plenty early. There are also all sorts of little things that have changed. Last school year, at a certain point late in the evening, I would spend an hour or so on IM with Fiancee while watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on iTunes. Now? Not so much. In fact, I'm finding myself much earlier abed. Well, so it goes. Our lives fall so easily into patterns that it's nice at least to change up those patterns every so often.