Also, it's a bad idea to eat chocolate before a cardio-kickboxing class.

I cannot kick this high.

In an effort to fight off Father Time, prove something to myself, and continue my quest to one day become the oldest man in the world, I've decided to go to my cardio-kickboxing class four days in a row this week, with a possibility of a fifth time on Saturday. Today was day three. There were so many kicks, and kicks are the thing I hate the most in the class because I'm not good at them and my hips are boney and inflexible. Plus, my shins still have nerve endings in them so they have not yet become accustomed to striking the heavy bag one hundred times in succession. That is to say, it hurts. But it's on my to do list, so it must be done...just like this blog post!


Frosh
We've been dedicating time to sonnets of the Shakespearian variety.

Tuesday, we went over the components of a sonnet in detail and took a close look at Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, where the speaker compares his friend to a summer's day. As long as people survive to read the poem, his buddy's beauty will always live on through the words the Bard uses. That makes it pretty neat that we're here reading it 400 years later, huh? You also received time to work on memorizing your lit terms.

Our focus today was Sonnet 73, where things took a more somber turn as the speaker in Shakespeare's poem remarks on aging and the inevitable onset of death. Notice that in the three quatrains, the speaker makes sure to note that the person he's talking to sees in him the youth that used to exist. Again, it ends with a nice note of friendship as the buddy still wants to know and appreciate him despite the fact that the youth that used to be there is all gone.

This is also the perfect opportunity to detail the Frosh bonus assignment: For 15 points, write a Shakespearian sonnet that contains all of the components of a sonnet that we've discussed (3 quatrains, 1 ending couplet, and it follows the correct rhyme scheme). If you want to go the extra mile (and really impress the everything out of me), write it in iambic pentameter for an additional 5 points. Heck, if you manage to successfully write a full sonnet in iambic pentameter (successfully being the key word here), then you'll have earned an additional 10 points. The breakdown is as follows:

• Shakespearian sonnet: 15 points
• Shakespearian sonnet attempted in iambic pentameter: 20 points
• Shakespearian sonnet successfully utilizing iambic pentameter: 25 points

Good look. All poems are due by Tuesday. I'll accept blog comments until Monday at 11:59pm.

Seniors
We've been spending our time discussing Macbeth.

On Tuesday, we started off the play proper. The first scene sets the spooky atmosphere and provides spectacle to calm the masses who would have otherwise been a rowdy audience. The second scene provides exposition so we know just how awesome Macbeth is. Our third scene introduces Macbeth and Banquo as well as the prophecies. Remember to keep track of the various dichotomies for your act paragraphs because they are everywhere throughout the play.

Today, we finished off the third scene and then you spent time working on the questions about the aside passage where Macbeth reveals that he's had some rather impure thoughts about how he might become king. It kind of makes you wonder if he's thought about this sort of thing prior to our introduction of him since his mind immediately goes to thoughts of regicide. Those questions, by the way, are due tomorrow.