I’m hanging out at home today, waiting for the cable guy to come and give us cable TV. I haven’t been in a blogging mood lately, and work has been busy, but now that I have some free time I can catch up on some things I’ve meant to blog about.

I started taking a 10-week fiction-writing class this week. The first class, rather introductory, was all about words — particularly, nouns. He had each of us make several lists of nouns in different categories.

One list was nouns that we like the sound of. I wrote down velvet, damask, vanilla, silver, quinine and clasp.

Another list was nouns that we like looking at (the words themselves, not the objects). I wrote down xylophone, earthquake, kevlar, jackalope, reflex and exchequer. I guess I’m fond of high-scoring Scrabble letters. (Given more time, I might also have written down quizzical.)

Another list was nouns that we find personally meaningful. I wrote down sex, neurosis, isolation, pressure, time and space. Don’t ask.

Anyway, the instructor’s great — very friendly and easygoing. I like him. The class should be fun.