Not much drama

Tuesday took us fairly smoothly back to school and work after seventeen or eighteen days off. The kids wore new N95 masks with little complaint. Nicole opted to see how Omicron plays out rather than getting right back in the classroom this week. We haven't heard yet what the outcome of the testing frenzy was, nor do we know whether we will hear, but one casualty of the situation is Rachel's basketball. Middle school sports have been suspended indefinitely. I don't know how disappointed she is.

Colin said they celebrated his birthday in class with a round of compliments from his classmates, and affirmed that some of them were interesting, when prompted, but wasn't willing to recount any specifics, which is typical. Our curiosity concerning how his peers view him persists.

Eric slipped and fell on the way home, so he opted out of Spanish after school, but I took the other two, Nicole being engaged in a read-a-thon meeting. Nicole picked up Rachel, stopped by the bookstore with her, and eventually picked up Lydia and Colin, too. Rachel had pre-ordered a book that released today, but it wasn't in yet. She ordered another in person that wasn't available online.

Intrigued by sardoodledom, I started reading the introduction to my omnibus of Nineteenth Century French plays. I think this was a gift from friends in college. It came to me pre-owned. I have read at least one of the plays it contains, but not from the book itself. I found it is full of pencil notes from a prior owner. The introduction is from circa 1933, so it is from a much closer perspective. Much of it is pretty new to me, having focused on novels of the well known persuasion. I've read, in English, French, or both, Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, and Verne, but nothing else, more or less obscure, from that century.

All the kids save Eric were reading quietly to themselves at bedtime, so I got to finish the second of the Teahouse Detective mysteries I began, yesterday was it? They're rather different from Conan Doyle as I remember it, in that the "detective" recounts the facts of the case and then explains his theory solving it, all in one sitting. Hopefully it's not the case that all of the solutions will involve disguises, or I will quickly tire of them.