Rudi has resumed classes for the semester and I find myself home alone on Wednesday evenings.

There’s nothing on tv that night either, so it leaves me time for quiet reflection. Or time to pare down the email inbox while music blasts in the background.

It’s good to have time to oneself, particularly when one shares cramped quarters with others all the time.

Rudi is able to find his own space and time out on the bike — and when I travel, as I will be doing this weekend to San Antonio.

I have a harder time, perhaps because my chosen activities — reading, knitting, writing — do not require a separate space or a specific time in which to enjoy them.

I mean to take up a class or a volunteer activity one night a week this spring. This will give me some internal space outside the Burrow — and will offer Rudi some time to play with the cats or his Playstation or read his Beatles book at home.

It seems only fair — and can only serve to make us better mates.

For anyone who has ever been asked the question, “What are you going to do with a liberal arts degree?” we now have a pat answer: “Why, I’m going to coach a sports team at the pro level.”

Wesleyan University graduates Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini are the head coaches for the New England Patriots and the New York/Jersey Jets respectively and graduate Jed Hoyer is co-general manager for the Boston Red Sox.

Connecticut College alumna Anita DeFrantz is a 20-year veteran of the International Olympic Committee.

Sure, the old answer of “I’ll be able to do anything because a liberal arts education teaches one to think critically” still holds true. But don’t you think the annoying father of your high school pal will have his jaw will drop a bit more with your new answer?

I had a relaxing weekend. As you might have guessed, I did not manage to accomplish everything on my to do list. Nor did I really plan to.

The tree came down. Laundry and dishes got washed. A couple packages got sent. Veggies and milk were bought. Muffins were baked. I wrote a thank you note (the the person I knew least well, so at least it was the most pressing one from a mannerly point of view).

I also had a Billy Joel ticket bought for me, went out to dinner twice, and purchased new drinking glasses. I tried on a skirt that didn’t quite fit that I hope to find at a different store.

And I discovered a cockroach floating dead in a frying pan in the sink. Thank goodness the pan full of water was there. Otherwise he would have been running around the house, hiding from the cats in boxes half filled with Christmas presents we need to send to Boston. And that’s just unpleasant to consider — for the me and for the intended recipient. As it was, the cockroach was dead and I still asked Rudi to deal with him.

But, for the most part, I just sat on the sofa and lounged. I slept late and wore my robe later. I knit. I read. I drank a lot of tea.

It was a good weekend.

Last night we were lying around the Burrow, watching the Patriots lose to the Broncos and digesting the huge meal we’d eaten as part of Restaurant Week, when suddenly the lights went out.

And the tv.

And the rest of the neighborhood.

The wind howled ferociously outside, and it was easy to see how whipping tree branches and jostling power lines had gotten carried away in a wintery tango, leaving 20 blocks or so in the vicinity of Kalorama Heights and Dupont Circle in silence.

Amazingly, we actually knew where the flashlight was and that its batteries worked. Our shelf full of candles and oil lamps came in handy. And matches were sitting on the table from the other night when I lit a candle for ambiance. We even found our battery-powered radio and managed to tune in the rest of the Pats game (for all that was worth).

Sirens zoomed past in the night. I hoped no one had gotten hurt in the unexpected darkness. Flashing lights stopped outside our window; a cop had been sent to manage traffic at our intersection.

Eventually, the game ended. We listened to the news, then turned the radio off. We washed and brushed, blew out the candles, and went to bed.

It’s amazing how bright the moon is when there are no streetlights to obstruct your view of its light.

And it’s surprising how accustomed one becomes to the various noises that come with a modern home and with living in a city.

Yes, cars still drove past. And people still chatted as they walked by.

But the hot water heater and the furnace didn’t creak. The computer didn’t buzz. The cd player and iPod emitted no music.

The power came back up in the middle of the night, but we’d remembered to turn all our switches off, so it didn’t bother us at all.

And if it had come back on while we were in the middle of our quiet, at-home adventure, we probably would have turned it all off again anyway.

Because it was lovely.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my modern conveniences. I love having music playing and being able to turn the lights on when I want to read at night.

But for once, it was a magical change of pace to not have those conveniences available and to know that it was good just to sit.

Here’s to more nights when the lights go out — for the city or just here in the Burrow, by happenstance or by choice.

The long weekend is nearly upon us and it can’t arrive soon enough.

This week was the first full week I’d worked since mid-December, and it felt like it. This week had me dragging every day and napping every evening. And next weekend will find me working a conference in San Antonio.

This weekend’s plans are quiet, but thorough:

• We will take the tree down tomorrow morning.
• We will do loads of laundry in order to rediscover our bedroom floor.
• We may actually manage to wrap and mail the rest of the Christmas presents we owe to our friends.
• I will finish getting caught up on the dish backlog caused by the sink being out of commission.
• I may think about doing my taxes. Or I may not.
• I might make some bread. Or some cookies. Or some muffins. Or an apple crisp. Or all of the above.
• We’ll go to the farmers’ market and get some more good veggies and the first good milk of 2006.
• We will arrange the new reading/knitting nook by the window.
• I will sit in the new nook and read or knit.
• We will go hear Al Gore talk on Monday.
• We will flip back and forth between Brit-coms and the Pats game.
• I may even break out the Dance Dance Revolution game and do some exercising once I find sufficient space in my living room again.
• We will mail bills and thank you notes now that we have two-cent stamps.
• I will upload my most recent photos to the web so I can post my final roundup posts for 2005.
• We will sleep late. Or if we do not, we will not change out of pajamas until it becomes late.

That’s it. Some things may fall off the list. Others may get added. It’s hard to say right now. But the weekend will be luxuriated in. That I can guarantee.

Three beautiful things from the last week:

1. At Tuesday’s knitting group, I finally got around to that sock I started knitting a year ago before I got distracted by knitting things for other people. I had made a notation of where I had left off, but I knew that before I could begin I needed to replace one of the needles (because it was cracked and sock yarn is too thin to be forgiving of snags) and to move the stitches I had accidentally placed on the wrong needle. After I did both those things (and then did them again when I realized that I had moved the stitches over backwards, making it impossible to keep knitting), I couldn’t remember exactly how to knit using two circular needles. But then I remembered. And that felt so good.

2. This morning during the walk to the Metro, I was brought to a metaphysical standstill by the smell of earth. For those of you from warm climes, the smell of earth probably means little. But to me, coming from the cold Northeast originally, the smell of earth in mid-January offers the promise that spring will eventually arrive. Of course, a rainstorm followed by a sunny day in the sixties doesn’t hurt as a reminder, either.

3. Every review I read of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was great, so I bought a copy to read on a business trip a few years back. It was okay, but definitely not worth the accolades — its only real claim to originality was to set the plot in Africa and to feature an African woman as the sleuth. Just didn’t do it for me. But this week, when I went to the library, I saw a book from another of his series sitting amidst the new releases. This is why libraries exist after all — to pick up a book by an author that you might not like and don’t want to spend money on. I rationalized that while I liked M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth books, I’m not all that crazy about her Agatha Raisin series, and this could be a similar situation. I’m about halfway through The Sunday Philosophy Club, the first book in Smith’s second series, and am finding that I’m enjoying it much more than than the other.