I woke up very early today, at 3:55 AM, so I could be sure to shave and get on my first train in time to make the 5:01 connection onto my second train. It was cold, with a small amount of frost on the ground, but not enough to make it slippery. I wore my fall coat, which is lighter than my leather, and a green hat with brown diamonds that Grandma Tina gave me last year. I walk quickly in the morning to catch my first train, and am even more hurried in the mild cold of southern NJ.

The moon was out this mornign, a slender crescent of white against the night sky. The wind whipped through the thin teal scrubs that I'm obligated to wear despite the fact that they're hip. In warmer weather, I see rabbits and sometimes raccoons when I'm up that early, but all the other animals were hibernating today.

Jill is in the midst of Tax Season mayhem working for H&R Block and is tolerating re-employment very well. She has been working 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday the last three weeks, and I have been very successful in keeping the kids from sustaining any kind of serious or permanent physical/psychological damage. Though I have been spending a lot of time with the kids, I still have done some fun things.

Friday night, I watched the documentary Helvetica, a movie about the design of that typeface and how it has been used in the last 50 years. If you're somebody who occasionally watches documentaries and thinks, "hmmmn," I'd recommend it. A lot of designers are interviewed and they get into some of the more subtle issues of typeface design and, in general, graphic design are explored.

Saturday morning I took the kids to the children's museum where they collected their share of germs and also donated germs to the general population. Saturday night we got a baby sitter and went to a cuss-word party at a friend's house. We all have kids and try not to swear in front of them, but this party was a great opportunity to leave the kids at home and say, "Gimme a glass of fuckin' Chardonnay."

On Sunday I had to teach Sunday school. May's class of 4 and 5 year olds had a lesson on work/life balance. I had planned to be very well prepared to teach, but felt grateful to make my appearance on time without a hangover. In my plan, I would have paper-clipped pages in the assigned text (The King's Stilts by Seuss), in reality when things got too academic I explained the pictures and flipped the page quickly. In my plan, I would have cut out images from magazines of people working and people playing, in reality the kids had a blast cutting up my old Coupon magazines and New Yorkers (thank you, Rakesh). It was fun and, other than reading the assigned text a few times to my kids, was only about 10 minutes of out-of-class homework for me.

This weekend I hope to try the new Thai place in town.