The White Stripes’ “We’re Going to Be Friends” has always been my soundtrack for the return to fall, and school, and (in my mind) cooler weather. The mornings are cool where I live, but the monsoon is not done yet (cross your fingers we get rain tonight), and to remind us summer’s not properly over yet, the daytime high has been soaring to 110 F.

In Arizona, the little kids have been back at school for as many as two weeks, and the college and university students return to classes today. I’m going back to school, too: Wednesday I kick off year 10 of college classes. Just one, MySQL Databases, but it weirds me out…for 10 years I have been becoming more educated. When I completed my (graduate) Digital Information Management certificate, I thought I was done, and could step back until it was time for refresher courses. That was over a year ago, and I feel less “done” now than I did then. Heck–I don’t even feel like I know more. If anything, every class I’ve taken has shown me how little I know.

The one thing I’ve gotten better at is knitting. When I’m not too lazy to pay attention to what I’m doing, I can knit socks, and sweaters, and shawls that look pretty good. The thought of having to teach a bunch of freshmen how to use Academic Search Premier (the most basic library how-to around) still freaks me out, but I can pick out a yarn that suits a pattern, and if you wanted me to present for an hour on knitting history, I could start now.

Knitting–the ultimate back-to-school friend.