On vacation (almost)!

Yesterday I spent most of the day listening to high school students sing and judging them. It was "jury day" for the singers in the high school music magnet program where I teach one day per week. All of the students had to have three pieces memorized, and at least one in a foreign language (freshmen typically do Italian, sophomores, German, and juniors, French, for instance). I enjoyed getting to hear some of the students of other voice teachers whom I had not heard before, or who have made great improvements since the last time I judged them. Most of the students did very well, though of course I wrote copious comments on areas where they need to improve. Now, I am enjoying silence. Ahhhh.I still have some private students to teach in the next couple of days, but on Thursday, we leave for North Carolina to visit my family for Christmas. I've got lots of bits and pieces of things to do before then, but now that I'm done with the semester for my college and high school magnet students, I'm starting to feel like I'm on vacation!My writers' group, the Off-track Bookies, is meeting today for a craft presentation by one of our members. We're supposed to bring something a little rough to use for a writing exercise. I'm bringing an unfinished piece I wrote a year ago that could be a possible first chapter of a modern-day fantasy dealing with dryads in a location based on Hot Springs, Arkansas. I hoped to make it a short story, but it raises way more questions than it answers. I am cursed to think in the long form every time I sit down to write fantasy. I'm slowly but surely working on draft 3 of the novel and would sometime like to get back to the novella I had workshopped at TNEO. One of these days, I'll write a fantasy short story that really is a short story and not the first chapter of a novel or a novella. Really, I will.