My spring classes began today. I actually started my assigned reading yesterday. The Christmas break (which I’m sure the school calls Winter Break) was nice, though I spent it mostly working at this and that. I think of myself as a lazy man, but I do manage to keep busy.

Before me stretches a year of academics. If I keep on schedule, I’ll be done with classes in December, and then there’ll only be the final testing (or whatever) to convince them I deserve my degree (a Master’s degree, I’ve learned, entitles you to put the suffix Esq. behind your name. I don’t think I’ll avail myself of that).

So it’s a matter of doing my time, like a convict. Each day I do the designated work, and I’ll tick the days off one by one until I come out into the light at the end.

On an unconnected note, I bought my first pair of loafer shoes on Saturday. I suppose you’d call them loafers, though they don’t look quite like what I was taught to think of as loafers back in the ’50s. They look a little dorky to my eye, but not as dorky as walking around with my shoes untied (I have complained about modern Teflon shoelaces in this space before), and way less dorky than stopping to kneel down on my old man’s limbs to re-tie them. These are the small indignities God gives us, in His mercy, so that the Angel of Death, when he appears at last, won’t look like such an unwelcome guest after all.

I think I told you that my classes resumed last Monday. I wrote that in good faith, but in fact they start tomorrow. I got another week of freedom I hadn’t planned on.

I’ve used my winter break for a number of different purposes. There was the ordinary Christmas stuff. I did another revision on my translation of a book on Norway in the Viking Age, because the text I delivered to the publisher was a rough draft, and it’s been nagging at me. To my surprise, after I delivered the revision, the publisher told me they’re probably going to go ahead with it. Most gratifying.

And then there were Christmas cards. And then there was taxes.

But I’ve loafed a little. Last night I watched a new TV show called “Backstrom.” Wikipedia tells me that it’s an Americanized adaptation of a series of Swedish detective novels. It stars Rainn Wilson, best known from “The Office.”

It was horrible. Or so it seemed to me. I kind of tuned it out after the first 15 minutes or so. Possibly it picked up while I wasn’t paying attention.

Comparisons to “House” come to mind. House was a rude and irascible genius. Backstrom is supposed to be the same.

But House had one thing this show lacked — wit. You couldn’t help liking House a little, most of the time. He was funny. He was obviously in physical pain, which made most of us cut him a little slack. And he had people around him — notably Dr. Wilson — who put up with his act because they had a history with him and had reasons (often opaque to us) for valuing him.

Backstrom has none of that. He’s just a jerk.

Memo to Hollywood: Being a jerk in itself is not the same as being interesting.

Chris Yokel talks about visiting an art museum. “I was in the Art of the Americas wing, looking at some of my favorite paintings by the early Americans, Gilbert Stuart and John Singleton Copley. Leaning in close, I could see the brushstrokes, still visible after several hundred years. I noticed the cracks seaming the canvas, sometimes even enhancing it.”

His creative spirit is wonderfully refreshed.