Over the past few weeks, we have fallen into a new routine because of the evening class that I teach. Twice a week in the afternoon, Sam and I drive downtown to meet J at his office. Then I stay downtown and teach, while J and Sam take the bus home. The bus has become the highlight of Sam's life. He talks about the "busss" (pronounce it like you have a lisp (which Sam doesn't have, but he hasn't mastered his pronunciation of "s" yet)) all day long. And we constantly have to draw pictures of buses (see sample above) that include depictions of J and Sam (and the bus ad for Brown Bear Car Wash).

All day long we talk about the raisins and goldfish crackers that Sam gets to eat while on the bus, the "Yo Gabba Gabba" show he watches on J's iPod during the bus ride, and the numbers of the different bus routes (Sam can only remember route 222 ("two-two-two")). He loves riding the bus, and I think he'll be heartbroken when my class ends in March. Maybe we'll still drive downtown sometimes, just so Sam can ride the bus home.

In addition to being bus buddies, Sam and J have developed a new game called "Blanket Monster." J hides underneath a blanket, and the blanket monster asks to be fed books and colored blocks. This is one of Sam's favorite games - he especially loves to feed the monster something that wasn't requested, and then the monster spits the object back out. Here's a clip of their little game:

I can't sleep. I keep thinking about how Adam Lambert's new album cover is completely hideous. The typeface is awful, the glistening stars on the serifs are ridiculous, and the extreme close-up of Adam's unabashedly Photoshopped-face is silly. I get what the designer was trying to do, in the sense that he wanted a throw-back aesthetic that recalls the '80s. And I know that the album cover is supposed to be campy as an homage to the past. But honestly, the florescent colors, glittering stars, airbrushed look, and even Lambert's eyeshadow just remind me of the Lisa Frank folders that I used to carry in my Trapper Keeper.

Sorry Adam. You probably weren't hoping to be associated with elementary school.

For some reason, Fridays have been more difficult for me in terms of grief. Maybe it has something to do with my internal clock: my mom and I used to talk on the phone each week, and it's weird to approach the weekend without a phone call from/to her. Fridays also might be harder because I don't have an immediate distraction: I don't teach another art history lecture until the following Tuesday, so I don't need to hurry and prep. I also think Fridays are hard because my mom died on a Saturday morning, and it's easy to remember the things that I was doing on the last Friday night before mom died.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to teach my students about the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Should be a piece of cake, right? I hope so, but I'm a little bit worried. This is my first time teaching at a Catholic university, and I'm not quite sure how Catholics feel about the Reformation. I obviously want to be respectful of both Protestant and Catholic views, and I don't want anyone to feel defensive.

I haven't quite figured out how to style my hair. The important thing, though, is that I try and do something with it. If I just blow-dry my hair, it always looks exactly like this:

It makes me chuckle. Good thing for hair product and hair straighteners, or I would belong in an episode of "Little House on the Prairie."