it is the coldest morning in the history of new orleans. It feels like it, anyway. I am huddled NEXT to the oven (which i turned on (shhhhhhh...)) with fresh coffee, po' boy bread, and i splurged on a lovely australian cheddar last night at Whole Foods. bam! there go all my local food efforts, nullified in one spectacularly distant purchase. I am reading the paper, preparing for a day of work. It is Saturday, after all.

i am thinking a lot of a particular quote that's usually falsely attributed to Aristotle (it is in fact an academic's summary of one of Aristotle's arguments): "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

Bleagh, how dull. While his logic is impeccable (ha!) I do not find that in the least bit comforting or inspiring. I had to go for a long long walk yesterday when I was uptown at the school. Because of the cold everyone is inside. I put on mittens and longjohns and hat and had the world to myself and it was so beautiful. Exhilarating! We are far enough south that the sunshine was surprisingly warm, although the wind had howled down from the Arctic and was bitter. Tulane has a beautiful campus of large trees and old buildings and, recently, modern art installations. I've never been there when it was Canada temperatures, and just walking in an unfamiliar place and seeing a new side to the city made me so happy... my routine of working in the same same same doing the same same is sapping my joy of life. There is a limit to the rewards of repetition. I'm trying to align this reality with the misattributed Aristotle quote about excellence.

10:07 a.m. - 2010-01-09