Today's assignment: catch up.

First, an fyi: your blogs have been graded for weeks 5-7, so this week, week 8 of our reading, begins a new cycle.

No extra assignments today--I'd just like everyone to catch me up on what they have read in the last week with (a) a response post and (b) a currently post that updates your pages last week and shares your three favorite sentences of the quarter.

Tell me what you like about these overall favorites--something unusual about the words that are chosen? The way they are put together? Something original about a picture the words make? Do they make you think of something in a new way?

After you have caught me up on your reading, feel free to read your books or challenge the class in multi-eight. As always, I only ask that you do not use our time to do homework for another class.

If you're up for it, here is another Billy Collins poem, "Aimless Love," that, like a lot of my favorites by him, expresses a simple but thoughtful and tender-hearted affection for the every-day objects that populate our lives, and suggests the extent to which these things can fill us up.