Like driving through a J.M.W. Turner painting

I stayed on campus later than usual today to hear a talk by an American history professor for one of my classes, and so wound up driving home around 6:30 this evening, just as the sun was setting. On my drive home, I can see the smoke stack for the UT hospital's power plant rising up on a bluff by the river; tonight, it was backlit by the incredibly orange glow of the sunset, and it and the billowing smoke it spewed looked positively evil. It was seriously cool. :D

(On my drive to campus in the mornings I was able--until early this month, when the sun started rising after I leave my apartment--to see a particularly attractive church spire silhouetted against the pale sunrise. The drive both ways also takes me by an especially winsome section of the Tennessee River, now lined by flame-colored maples and other trees of various hues. I have a nice commute. And at seven minutes, it's not overly tedious. I think I spend more time parking and walking to the English building than I do driving.)

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Apparently the entire eastern half of the US is having a cold snap...? Sure seems that way. It only hit 50 or so here today, I think. It's cold enough that one boiler has been on all day, and two of them were on for a good chunk of it. It got broiling hot in my apartment, actually, until I turned off all but one of the radiators, and turned that one just one 3/4th turn of the knob. (Oh, how I wish for a thermostat. Setting degrees would be so convenient.) It was cold before, when the temperature was hovering just above what would set the first boiler off. I can't win.

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Still on Frankenstein. Hopefully will finish it tonight, but I have to meet with my Renaissance professor tomorrow to chat about my paper, so I also have to prepare for that. (Because of that and another meeting, plus regular classes and such, I have to be on campus from 7:30 AM to 9:20 PM tomorrow unless the Nexus meeting runs short enough that I can run home for dinner before class. It's gonna suck.) I last read it the summer before ninth grade, so I was fourteen or so, and I'd forgotten how engrossing it is. I actually gasped aloud when Victor Frankenstein saw the lightning illuminate the shadowy figure of his monster across the mountain. Creepy! I might have to use it for my 102 class--although I get the impression most people read it in high school, so perhaps that would be too repetitive. I'll have to think about it.