Laws a mercy, it's been a while.

In the interim, your intrepid blogger has been busy. A sampling? Yes.

1. SACS/SAIS stuff -- for those of you who do not work for a school, and do not have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous accreditation every five years, let me tell you -- it's BLISSFUL. ("Can I get an exact count of the learning disabled Aleutian Indians that your school has graduated since 1977? What differentiated learning skills did you utilize to reach this group?") Actually, it's not been that bad -- I'm just easily stressed by official documentation and the "R" word . . . responsibility.

2. GATA -- Over the weekend (Saturday, 19 March to be exact) the GACS Academic Team that I coach won the Georgia state championship. They are the best team I've ever seen, much less coached, and I can't express to you how proud I am of them. One of the greatest moments of my life happened on Monday when we were presenting the championship trophy to the school. The entire high school began to applaud the team, then rose and gave them a spontaneous standing ovation. You know what? They deserve it. (And yes, I cried. Like a baby.)

3. Graduate school -- I've been trying to get into English Ph.D. programs here in the Atlanta area to hopefully work my way through part-time. I've applied to Emory University (this, dear friends, is but a pipe dream), the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University. On the plus side, I'm a pretty good student with good GRE scores; on the minus side, it took me seven years to finish my M.A. at Georgia Southern . . . does this translate to taking 45 years on the Ph.D.? This doesn't really bode well, either -- I was forced to fill out a form at each of the schools describing my "Book/Magazine Publishing History" and I put this blog and my high school newspaper articles. I'm pretty sure the Princeton M.A.'s have a slightly different record. Then again, I'm pretty sure that the Princeton M.A.'s never wrote about Tennessee's draconian car window tinting policy for the Trojan Torch in 1992. This could be my ticket to a free education.

4. Mission trip -- Jami and I (and Bev and Ken Dowdy) are taking a group of GACS kids to Brno, Czech Republic over our Spring Break; I fully expect to be deported by day two. You can read about our misadventures here.

5. Grading -- I'm an English teacher; enough said.

I've got another epic in the works, but the bell has rung and you'll just have to wait anxiously until, uh, April? (Was it really a month -- yowza!)