It Has Rained

After two horrible hot days, we have just had a short thunderstorm and some rain. Rain is rare enough here these days to warrant a mention. Back to 38 degrees (C) tomorrow and Sunday. Erck.
The week has contained two Orientation days for students, one meeting with a local literary festival committee, much budgeting and paperwork, one interview with a police detective, one talk given by a Fraud Squad detective about identity theft (very interesting and now I want to buy a shredder), and one visit to my osteopath for acupuncture and various other treatments on the bits of me that have stopped working properly. And you're right - hardly any writing done.
But the research has been terrific, and I am currently reading another book written by an undercover cop which has some hilarious bits in it.
I also wrote a poem (yay!) and got a reply from an anthology publisher about a story of mine that made it right up to the final cut but not into the book (not so yay). And I found three boxes full of my old essays and stories and poems from my degree, which were a lot of fun to read. It was also very interesting to read their comments and compare them to the comments I make on my students' work. I think I'll leave that topic alone!
The festival is in Williamstown (in Melbourne, Victoria) and this will be the fourth year they've run it. They do a really good job and the festival gets better every year. Last year there was a session on Australian fiction publishing which was great, and because it's not a huge venue, the audiences are interested and keen to listen. I wish the Melbourne Writers' Festival had such a good atmosphere. There it tends to be extremely crowded and often the sessions are a bit boring because the speakers are 'playing safe'. Whereas at Willy last year we even had one of the comedy speakers strip and run around the hall!
Classes begin on Monday - I have boxes of stuff ready, and some notes, but I need still to organise the 'agenda' of what will happen when. That won't take long and then I will be writing.