Today is the last day of the first half of summer boot camp. We have all of next week and the long weekend off...10 whole days in a row of vacation. Unfortunately I did not believe that it was really going to happen and so I made no concrete plans. Andrew took our kitchen apart yesterday and reorganized everything so that the kitchen is more functional so we may do the same for the rest of the apartment (I know the cabinet under the bathroom sink is housing several creatures and products of unknown age). I'm sure we will find something to do in Toronto for the week.

Yesterday I had my private student who is attending McMaster in September but for some reason is not capable of writing an essay. So I am teaching him how to write an essay and he is reading novels that we can discuss because he admits that it has been a YEAR since he last read a book. He started with Life of Pi which he thought was okay but he would prefer more science fiction. So I gave him Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan. The plot is fairly complex but suffice it to say at one point there is a character living at an all inclusive luxury resort on the Moon where there are prostitutes and for about 1/2 a page there is a description of the increased flexibility of positions available due to the moon's lower gravity. My student came in yesterday and made it clear that he hoped that the book was rated 19A because of the sex. I blankly looked at him trying to bend my brain back a year to when I read the book to recall what he was so appalled by. I then questioned him on how old he is (20) and does he know about sex (yes). Okay then what's the problem? Apparently the scene made him think about IT and that made him uncomfortable. Now as far as I know young men in their teens and 20's pretty much think about sex all the time but apparently my student is made of kryptonite and the robot prostitute made him feel things he wasn't prepared for.

Thank God I didn't give him Heinlein's' Stranger in a Strange Land, he would have had a coronary.

M