Today I came home craving, more than chocolate or salsa which is a big deal if you know me, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I just bought new peanut butter last week, and eating fresh peanut butter is delightful anyway, because the top is smooth and perfect, and dipping into it with your knife (or finger...who am I kidding?) is just as satisfying as popping bubble wrap, if you ask me. So I had this new jar of peanut butter to look forward to, along with delicious grape jelly and bread in my mouth all at the same time. Until. I discovered it. My bread. All of it. An entire half a loaf (today's blog is brought to you by the word "oxymoron") was green and fuzzy. And, as I sadly transferred the plastic bag of formerly-edible-bread from the bread box to the trash in an unceremonious dumping sort of way, I was surprised that more than anything else, I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my bread that was not there when I wanted it most. I mean, what's the point of being a food staple if you're going to turn on someone like that? I blame Thanksgiving, where, for a week I had food provided for me through the family dinner, the leftovers, the going out with friends, and the having time to prepare real food - there was just no time to think of sandwiches, nor room for them in my stomach. So anyway, I was betrayed. That was the point.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the wind is whistling around the eaves while I sit here typing this, but it doesn't sound like wind, it sounds exactly like pigeons cooing. And when I get too absorbed in typing and forget where and when I am for a moment, I hear it and wonder at the birds sitting outside my window. This has happened at least three times in the last fifteen minutes or so. So there's that too.

This whole post has been written in the dark, since I really only stopped by the computer to check tomorrow's weather report before bed, but I can never just 'stop by' the computer. So now I'm sitting, but I never managed to make it to the light switch, so it's still dark, and I'm realizing that there are certain computer keys that I still don't know automatically, like the question mark key. I must glance down to find it unconsciously, because I didn't realize this was an issue until it took me four tries to find it by touch back up there when I was talking about bread.

I think it's important to be aware of these things that we usually do unconsciously whenever we can be. Noticing things in general is useful, and much easier for me to do again now that my semester of grad school has ended and I have time to do things like think and breath and write for fun. My next post should be about my recently developed, new-and-improved 5 year plan. But saying it out loud might jinx it. How does academia look upon people who are ardently superstitious? I hope the answer is "favorably."

Just a thought in passing...

From time to time, I get bats in and around my apartment. This comes as no big surprise seeing as I live in an attic and everything. But last weekend the Halloween episode of This American Life featured callers telling real-life horror stories. And one of them was about bats. In a sound bite that couldn't have lasted longer than two minutes, my formerly tolerant opinion of my nocturnal, mammalian, winged neighbors (and sometimes roommates) was egregiously readjusted. Apparently bats have been known to bite sleeping people without waking up their victims or leaving marks. Many bats also have rabies, and the window within which someone exposed to rabies must find treatment is an alarmingly brief 72 hours. So what happens if a bat bites me in my sleep and I don't realize it and get the anti-rabies vaccine in time? Exactly.

Some 2am Lists

Fun Board-Game-Related Phrases to Throw Into Everyday Conversation as Punctuation:
Bingo!
Sorry!
Yahtzee!
Do Not Pass Go!
Check Mate!
Go Fish!
King Me!

A semi-reliable source told me that 25 is the age where the body stops growing and, essentially, starts dying. I have 40 days of growing left.

Lesson of the Day: How to write a good facebook 'status' update - be ridiculous enough to be interesting without being personal enough to be meaningful. (This can be a fine line).

Other Things That Are True:
Job-school's done for a spell
Grad class is starting again on Monday
Matt's here
I'm busy living as hard as I can (read: sans reflection/narcissistic blogging) for the next 40 days
I like cake and sangria

and you

I don't understand how running works with my body. Or I should say I don't understand it yet. But I'm learning. There are patterns I'm noticing - things that work and things that don't. For instance, earlier this month, I was running a few times a week. After couple weeks, each run was killing me. I had no energy or stamina, I got cramps and stitches in my side after the first half mile, and I actually gained a couple of pounds. Gross. Then it got cold and grey and wet, which I took for a perfect excuse to stop exercising.

Today I went out again for the first time in a while, and it was great. I did my longer, 4-mile loop (the other times I was going about 2.5) and it was good. Nothing cramped, nothing stitched, I have a few almost-blisters and I don't smell great right now, but I'm willing to take all of that in stride.

I think the big thing that changed (I mentioned patterns before - this is what I meant) is what I ate beforehand. Today I had a bottle of Blue Moon, Meijer sushi (readers in South Carolina need to bit their tongues. It's not that bad, ok?), and a mountain of chocolate chips, while before I was eating healthier but heavier things like pasta and drinking lots of water. This latest combination of victuals was magical - the sushi was light enough not to gum up my intestines, and the chocolate gave me enough sugar-energy to make it more than half way around the lake before I needed to stop and walk a spell. This menu might have to be a regular pre-run thing.

Also, I've decided that I'm a compulsive exerciser as much as I'm a compulsive eater (but neither of these things to an extreme degree, don't worry). When I got home from work today, I had no intention of going running, but once my "after school snack" turned into a feast, my guilty conscience chided me into a few miles of cardio. Maybe I'll wait a week and then go again? Tomorrow Danny and I are garage saleing, but before that there will be cream puffs and long johns, which might at least be incentive for a few jumping jacks or a sit-up. Or maybe we'll just power walk through Heritage Hill and I'll tell my conscience to deal with it. Because that usually works (?)

It's May and I'm tired. I've been trying to diagnose why (or of what) I am tired. I think the reason simply is that it is May and May is awfully far away from September. This school year has not been bad, but it has been full. So there's that.

Robert Frost wrote a poem called Neither Out Far Nor In Deep about people watching and watching the horizon, even though they know they won't be able to see anything that they can reach or understand, which can either be read as uplifting or bitter, depending on the mood you're in when you read it. We all already know how much I like Robert Frost, so I don't need to expound on how deliciously (excruciating-ly?) apt is the duality of this analogy for things and life and the effect of May on a young teacher approaching the end of her second year.

Today I just...left. After more than an hour, I stood up from half a pile of tests still waiting to be graded and walked out. I needed to be gone from there. Usually when I get impulses like that I'm able to quell them pretty quickly. I get that there is this discrete (yet never ending, like the post office, like everybody's job) amount of work that I am responsible for finishing, and just because I abandon it today does not mean it won't be there tomorrow morning; this is usually why I stay after school until I'm done, or at least until I reach a nice, neat stopping point. But today for some reason I just didn't want to. And when I got home I didn't feel any better.

But now I've posted for the first time in more than a month, so that helps a little. It's something, at least (for once, then, something...)

Update from The Future (Two Hours Later): I figured out the real reason for the tiredness. I had a caramel apple today at school (It's teacher appreciation week and our PTA has chosen 'Carnival' as the theme of their daily treats for us) and, after spiking in the middle of sixth hour, my blood-sugar proceeded to bottom out right in the middle of my grading session and maintained its dangerously low level all the way through the end of my original post. Nice how I get so emotional about it and immediately assume I'm spiraling into terminal lethargy, hm?

Anyway, because being enigmatic and obtuse isn't cool, here's what I'm (that is, I was...why is there no contraction for 'I was'?) talking about:

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull

he land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be--
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

And

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something

.

This Is Not An Allegory

Two of my geraniums sit very near each other on the windowsill. Over the winter, when they had to strain toward the sunshine because the light was so weak and the day was so short, their stalks and stems began to intertwine as both leaned toward the window pane. They were both very hungry. Now they are so tangled together that I could never separate them without doing significant damage to one or the other. They support each other; they depend on each other. And I know it's childish to go anthropomorphizing all over the place, but I like to think that they are in love (like those trees that show up in in bad romance movies...I know this is not a new phenomenon or an original take on it, I've just never had the occasion to host such an occurrence in my very own kitchen before, and I think it's kind of nice).

This is actually an observation I've been holding onto for a while but I haven't had time to write it down because I'm always busy with Things and Life and such, plus it's (kissmenow)spring, so, honestly, what do you expect?

Sweet Procrastination

Would you want to read a 20 page paper that starts like this:

Besides simply being literary contemporaries, James Joyce and Ezra Pound shared a relationship built on common literary goals, and each enjoyed the advantage of the other’s influence in various arenas. Pound was a well-connected writer and editor who prided himself on his ability to discover and promote new artists, while Joyce was a brilliant but unknown author who would only be able to achieve success if he had venue by which to share his work with a receptive audience. Pound’s work reflects his discontentment with early modern society and the artists it was producing, while Joyce had the ability to deliver writing that ably filled the creative void Pound was complaining about. Their introduction marked a miraculous nexus that would richly reward both men. Examining the course and nature of their relationship offers insights into the mental space and creative directions both were exploring, as their work overlaps in certain places and diverges in others. Forrest Read, who compiled the letters Pound wrote to Joyce over the course of their acquaintance, makes the comment, “Pound thought of his work and Joyce’s as complementary treatments of the same subjects, the modern mind” (147). This idea of a complimentary relationship extends to many facets of the authors’ friendship, and their common interest in illustrating the modern mind becomes especially interesting when Pound’s poem Portrait d’Une Femme is compared to the third chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, Proteus. Before looking at individual works however, it is useful to understand the basic dynamic of Pound’s relationship with Joyce.

That might be the most laborious piece of text I've ever written. It must have taken half an hour. This is that part of the paper where I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to say, so writing every new sentence feels like groping in the dark until I fix on something mildly meaningful and relevant to the previous sentence. I hope that since I've forced myself to define a purpose and direction, subsequent paragraphs will flow more smoothly. I promise no more posts like this though, where I trick you into reading boring things instead of bringing stories and jokes like usual.

Update: It's 9:30 and I'm done, except for the conclusion paragraph which will not happen until I've read the other 18 1/2 pages top to bottom. (Not all of these pages were written this afternoon. The last 12 came from last weekend). As a reward for finishing tonight (I could have been done two hours ago if I didn't feel the need to get up every three paragraphs or so...I wandered around the apartment, watered plants, did sit-ups, dyed my hair, ate chocolate, and took out the recycling) I'm buying myself some Sufjan Stevens AND Spoon. (If this section of the post could have its own title, it would be called 'SPLURGE!')

Comedy or Tragedy?

...or perhaps farce? When it comes to my life, at least. I was recently in Meijer restocking my apartment's liquor corner. The last time I did this it was May or June, and somehow over the subsequent months my guests and I have managed to drink in such a perfectly proportionate fashion that I've run out of all my supplies at once. So I'm walking around the grocery store with a basket of booze (and some bananas and green beans, I think) slung over my arm, and who should I bump into but the superlatively kind and straight-laced parents of one of my favorite students. They see me (despite my sweatshirt/vest/scarf scrubby college kid ensemble) before I recognize them, and we chat for five minutes. The whole time, I'm casually inching my basket from its rather conspicuous position and trying to move it out of their field of vision. I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter that they saw what I was buying, but I still felt a little guilty and awkward as I made my way toward the international foods aisle for some salsa (tragedy: 1 comedy 0).

In other news, today I went outside to put my trash in the bin, and found my back patio had turned into an icy slush lake. I usually don't mind a good morass of snow and water, but today I was only wearing flip-flops (my original plans had me heading somewhere NOT outside to switch my laundry), so wading around the side of the house was interesting. Actually, I felt like I was walking through World 6 of Super Mario Bros. 3, and it was surprisingly warm outside, so that adventure turned out much better than it could have (tragedy: 1 comedy: 1). Other tragical/comical/ironical/romatical/historical/heroical events as of late include: a bat coming (and the quickly going) from my apartment, Mossing's bridal shower carrying off well enough, and my accidental and temporary gluing together of my vocal chords (sort of). I suppose this is what happens when I have time on my hands and I don't want to research or write or read or grade or plan and there's nothing left to clean.

Final score: comedy: 3 tragedy: 2

...but who's really keeping track?

And, just because I like you so much, I will leave you in Eddie's competent and well-manicured hands as I finally make my way to bed.

When I want to remember why I like Modernism so much, I like to read Wallace Stevens...

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

...against Ezra Pound:

The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.

So that's the first tidbit for today. Since last Ash Wednesday, I do not feel like I have made much progress toward learning to care and not to care (learning to sit still...). I have been reading (too much?) Joyce and Joyce criticism, where essayists like to describe the symbolic structures in terms of constellations, a word which I especially like when it is used outside of astronomical contexts. Next I have to learn everything I can about Ezra Pound and cobble together an essay of my own. It's going to be great, but I'm afraid that I'm going to be so awash in the hopelessness that is the Modern psyche that I might get a little (read: intolerably) morose. Finally, despite having more snow days than school days for the past two weeks, I am staying busy working ahead in work/class/life because apparently February is the month of Fun Things Happen All Weekend Every Weekend, and I want, nay, I need to be prepared. More updates as events warrant (read: see you in March).

For the second time this winter, my car has been scraped by some anonymous angel (perhaps related to the Parking Lot Angel who helps me find good spots everywhere except Meijer?). The angel apparently only works on days when we get upwards of five inches of snow and there is no school. I'm noting this not to complain, but to try to discern a pattern so that maybe next time I can catch him (or her) in the act and thank him. I would like to know who is out there taking care of these minor inconveniences in my life, as usually that job falls to my dad (and for this i am very lucky and not ungreatful). Right now my best guess is that the guy who shovels our front steps and walkway is going beyond his call of duty, or else Judy is slipping him a few extra bucks - perhaps drawn from the rather exorbitant laundry fees I've recently been suffered to tack on to my rent - and making him do it . Whatever, or whomever, is the cause, I would just like to know.

This is the story of what happened to me between 3:23 and 3:29 this morning.

I had finally fallen asleep, which was significant because lately I've been having trouble doing so. Something about switching back to a school schedule after more than two weeks off, plus I can't seem to stop thinking about biscuits, showers, and random cities in Ohio right around bed time. It's very odd, and certainly a little ridiculous, but those have been my nights lately, so it was nice to be sound asleep for once. Until the lamp by my bed blazed to light.

Here is the tangential back story: Daisy the Cat has figured out how my awesome K-Mart bedside table touch-lamp works, or else she has gotten very very lucky many many times. Somewhere in here walnut-sized cat brain, she seems to intuit that by nosing this metallic surface, she can almost instantly elicit a response out of me, as long as I'm in the room. She has only-child-syndrome (picked up from her roommate, no doubt) and starts to resent being overlooked pretty quickly, so when I'm doing things like reading, grading, or sleeping, she likes to make a ruckus, and this lamp has now become one of her primary disruption tools.

So it's 3:23 in the morning and my light is suddenly on. I know this game, so instead of rolling over, I swing my arm in the general direction of the light source, because this lamp is so great that you just have to touch it and it will turn off. However, in my haste to make it dark again, I swing a little haphazardly and instead of tapping the lamp, my arm connects full-force with Daisy trying to make a swift get away. She loses her balance as the momentum from my swing effectively pushes her into the lamp and instantly there's a whole knot of cat and lampshade and light bulb in a pile on the floor.

Great. So now I get to fix this before I go back to sleep. Sleep that I kind of need and was certainly enjoying (sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care). The thing about this lampshade is it's kind of cheap and terrible. The construction is problematic in that the shade is only attached to the base by some flimsy fabric glued to these thick spokes that are nearly impossible to reattach after it's torn, and the shape is awful because it's slightly tapered at the top in such a way that I kept getting it stuck on the spokes coming out of the base that it used to be attached to (by the fabric. does that make any sense?). Anyway, I groggily struggled with it for way too long before figuring out that if I just turn it over, the smaller top will sit on the spokes and the shade will at least kind of look like it's back on the lamp in a hobo sort of way. This arrangement was convenient A because it allowed the shade to still do it's job so I wasn't blinded in the morning, and B, the cattywompus slant would remind me to fix it for real when I got home the next day. So everybody won and I finally got to roll over and commence to try to fall back asleep.

Right before said sleep-falling occurred, I remembered a story my dad told me a long time ago about when he was a boy at Catholic school. One week he didn't have anything to say at confession, so he made up a lie that he'd broken his mother's lamp (that way if the following week was slow too, at least he could confess about lying at his last confession), and through the fuzz of oncoming REM cycles, I imagined that somehow I had just settled a tab with God (the bartender, apparently, in this analogy), and I fell back into a sleep of divine justice.

PS - Given that the Reader's Digest version of this story is: "I knocked my lamp off the table last night," you can imagine the magnitude of my desire to procrastinate right now. I'm not going to not like Ulysses, am I?

Do You Love JD Salinger Too?

I've finally figured out why I don't like New Year's (Punctuation Sidebar: Does the 's' on New Year's take an apostrophe? I would argue that it does, since the full phrase is New Year's Eve, so the eve clearly belongs to the new year, necessitating the posessive apostrophe; but every time I see it written, the apostrophe is left off and it's starting to bug me). The problem with all, or at least most, of my New Year'ses (oh yeah, I did.) up until now is that I have been approaching them from the wrong direction entirely. There was always a great amount of expectation surrounding the ball-drop and the magical moment when the numbers change, and when the moment comes and goes and nothing happens except flurry of kissing and toasting and then a whole lot of feeling exactly the same, albeit with a slight tinge of disappointment added into the mix, I am always faced with the undeniable fact that New Year's is a whole lot of preparation in honor of a whole lot of nothing, which seems like a dumb thing to celebrate.

But this year changed my mind. I finally discovered that New Year's must be approached from a passive stance (one does not set out to celebrate the night, instead the night proves itself a time worthy of one's celebration). I learned this by accident this year when we planned a party because friends were going to be in town, and this party just happened to land on the 31st of December, yet because of the people and the things, ignoring and perhaps even despite the date, we managed to have a perfectly mirthful night, completely devoid of dissatisfaction.

So I think I'm going to do it this way from now on.

A rundown of the actual events of the night (for those who like details of the nitty-gritty nature rather than lofty abstractions and sporatic italics):

We actually didn't mean to ignore New Year's. There was supposed to be a reservation and tickets and a fancy party, but complications that I'm going to go ahead and dub providential got in the way, so five of us girls ended up cobbling our own evening together instead. We started out driving through the beginnings of a snow storm to wait for a table at San Chez. For our first course we got mojitos from the bar instead of tapas, and drank them in the atrium while we waited. This nineteen-year-old waiter kept rushing past us with trays full of delicious things, and I was about to exercise some feminine wiles to procure us a papa frita or something, then our buzzer went off, so I didn't have to. Also, considering that I was too shy to even approach the host's stand to ask how much longer we had to wait, the wiles were probably going to stay under wraps all along.

So we're eventually seated, and we commence to order and consume delicious victuals for the next couple of hours. Can I just say that it's amazing what the Spanish can do with a little spicy sausage and cumin-flavored mayonnaise? We tried to eat slowly because Meredith was unavoidably detained by her mom's invalid daschund, Clarke, and we knew that she would want some kabobs and sangria when she eventually arrived, but it was difficult since our waitress had neglected to provide us with bread OR water while we waited for our entrees, so we were practically famished when round one (or two, counting the 'jitos) came.

But Meredith did finally join us, and she was just in time for dessert. After chocolate-chili trifles, truffles, and other flourless wonders, we paid our staggeringly affordable bill and retired to Danny's. Though the way was wrought with much snowing and blowing, we managed to rock out to a little Tally Hall and arrived in high spirits.

After that I suppose we don't need to go into too much detail, and there are facebook pictures to fill in most of the gaps. We stopped for a couple of minutes to watch the ball drop, but that's not really what it was about. It would seem that the combination of CatchPhrase, Bop-It, ten-dollar 'champagne,' cookies, and video games mixed in proper proportions comprises the recipe for a very jolly (though certainly not the most hip-and-trendy) night. It was a very refreshing change of pace, as far as New Year's parties go. Can I hope that the rest of 2008 will follow suit, or would that be asking too much?

I go to change the batteries in my wireless mouse. I already have the new ones laying out on the table, and as I try to get the second old one out, it pops out of my hand and lands on the table, knocking into the others and mixing them all up. Now I don't know which are my old batteries and which are the new ones. This is the kind of day I'm having.

I think I am a bad maid of honor. Today I was doing bridal things all day with my mom, and it left me terribly grumpy. We were shopping for shower favors for half an hour before we decided we're not really make-it-yourself people and we could order something much cooler online. We also picked out thrifty invitations for the shower and I got my dress. None of these on their own are stressful things - buying dresses and cute paper products are actually two of my favorite things to do - but somehow the blizzard that we had to keep walking and driving through managed to dampen my spirits, along with the recurring realization that Lindsey and I have vastly different tastes, and I needed to pick things with her aesthetic in mind instead of my own. I was actually finishing a card with registry info to go into the shower invites when my mouse stopped working and the battery thing (I almost wrote 'fiasco,' but I don't want to be accused of speaking in hyperbole) happened. So. I'm choosing to take that as an omen and retire to Danny's for an evening of wii. Because I do that now?

some things i've been meaning to write about and a surprise visitor

There is a lady bug in my house. It just flew onto my computer screen. It is December. And I know I shouldn't harbor bugs indoors in the winter, but I don't want to kill it; I'm glad that it's here.

I seriously thought about picking up a chap-stick I saw laying on the sidewalk yesterday, cutting off the used part that had been on someone else's lips, and keeping it. How gross is that? (For the record, I left it on the ground. No promises about next time though.)

Last week Meijer started playing Christmas music, and while I was walking down the dairy aisle, a song from the Hanson Christmas album starting playing, and I knew all the words. I didn't sing along, but I must have looked a little weird as I couldn't stop grinning, and if I were a stranger looking at me, I would wonder what this girl found so funny about cottage cheese.

Now the lady bug is crawling through Daisy's fur. Daisy wants it to get off. It's by the base of her tail, so she can't reach it but keeps turning in circles trying to see what's tickling her anyway. The ladybug only has two spots on its back; I think it's one of those faux lady bugs like the kind that were swarming all over Markley in the fall of 2001. This makes me a little friendlier toward the thought of killing it eventually. It just crawled under the printer. Perhaps it heard that (because don't we all talk along to ourselves as we type, like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan do during every IM conversation of You've Got Mail?).

And speaking of Meijer, while I was checking out in the express lane (that same day, after the Hanson song was over) I couldn't help looking at the items of the man in front of me. I was in an express lane, but not the U-Scan; I don't use that one when I buy produce. Anyway, the man in front of me was buying these things: one XL frozen 'supreme toppings' pizza, a gallon of Gilby's vodka (I thought they only made gin...huh), a gallon of OceanSpray pink grapefruit juice, a pack of cigarettes. I imaged the night he was about to have, and felt a little sad about it. My basket, by the way, was probably just as depressing as his but in an antithetical kind of way; I was getting apples, peanut butter, and milk. While he was going home to eat like a hard-worn construction worker - as his attire suggested - I was going to eat like a 5-year-old. Fantastic.

I'm only here writing this because I don't want to study for my final.

Maybe the lady bug will drive to Allendale and take it for me next Tuesday...if Daisy hasn't eaten it before then (the lady bug, that is, not my final).

W.F.o.t.D.

Warm Fuzzy of the Day:

Hey Miss Taber!

I wanted to let you know that I've spent the last 55 minutes trying to memorize "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens, a poem that I picked to perform tomorrow in my interpretive reading class because I remembered it from your whiteboard last year! I hope all is well, and I hope to see you soon!

All The Best,
Student X

(A note I found in my facebook mailbox this evening)

Since I'm sick of looking at those spinning wheels, it's time to put something else here. Actually, I've recently experienced a break-up of sorts, and I probably should talk about it in a balm-of-hurt-minds, cathartic kind of way.

It happened over Thanksgiving; my relationship with my cell phone ended, and I'm taking it pretty hard. I mean, we met in college, which everybody knows is a pretty intense situation as far as social networking and relationship building goes. We were together all the time - during class and going out on the weekends. It was there through that killer student teaching semester and then after graduation when I wasn't quite sure where I was going or what I was doing. But lately, things between us had been a little strained. The connection was getting weaker, the energy was low almost all the time, and the whole thing just felt kind of old and tired, like there was no mystery left. I mean, I knew those buttons and menus so well that I could dial in the dark, or one-handed, or even with mittens on if it came to that. That's how close we were. But it wasn't enough. I knew that fateful morning, when I woke up and found a blank screen staring at me, that the spark was finally gone for good. That was the end of it. And even though I had seen it coming for a long time, that instant it sort of felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

I've got a new phone now, but things are still awkward between us; sure it's thinner than my old phone, but that just means it's harder to find in my purse. And it feels different when I hold it in my hand and press it up against my ear. It's going to take a while to get used to each other, that's all. You don't just walk away from a four-year relationship, even if moving on means internet access and a built-in touch-screen mp3 player, whole and unscathed. Soon enough I'll be able to look back and remember the good times. For now, I'm just taking things one voice mail at a time, and that will have to be enough.

Can someone put this picture on a tshirt for me, or would that just be asking for unwanted leering? I suppose it would look nice as a nifty throw pillow or tote bag too. (Don't look too long or it will make you a little nauseated)

And while we're speaking of optical illusions, I almost think I'd prefer this one on a tshirt. Much more hip and edgy (if optical illusions can every be described as such...)

A Kind of Mediocre Thanksgiving Break Debriefing

These long breaks always make me feel obliged to retell as many Stories of What Happened as I can, but those things are (almost) never as funny to read about as they are to actually be in, plus there are plenty of pictures on facebook to allow the reader to recreate most of the weekend in his imagination. In this recreation, the following images-slash-story lines must be included: pirates, cougars, bulls' testicles, scrabble, long johns, whiskey, not going to breakfast after all - sorry scott!, mark wahlberg's penis, a fifteen-foot sushi roll, spooning, and Bop-It (If others who were there feel this list is incomplete, they should add on via tha comment box). The previous sentence notwithstanding, instead of particulars, I am simply going to report that though my sleep patterns over the holiday were practically inverted as well as severely truncated, I feel remarkably refreshed as I sit here at the end looking back. For five whole days, I had my life back to I spend time how I wanted instead of how some daily schedule dictated by The Man. I was also surprisingly productive as far as grading and grad-schooling goes. Who would have thought? In conclusion, I still love stuffing.

What I Did At School Today

Today and tomorrow are professional development days at school. This year we're focusing on technology, and somewhere along the way, between two key-note speakers and four break-out sessions, I learned about this crazy, new-fangled notion of 'embedding' things into blog entries. (I also started a wiki. If you know any word puzzles that would be fun for high schoolers, please share them with me.) But I digress; here is my first attempt at embedding on my own.

Somehow I've managed to land myself in a deluge of Shakespeare this month. This week and weekend in particular I will be reading four(!) plays for various grad-and-high-school-related undertakings. Othello and Macbeth will be (or have recently been) taught to the kiddles, and The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream have some strikingly tenable threads binding them to James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, which I will attempt to unpack and elucidate in a competent (or at least coherent) fashion by the beginning of December (sidebar: if anyone out there is a scholar of the Venetian Jew and has insights on the character of Shylock demanding to be shot in my general direction, they should not feel compelled to quell said impulses...). You'd think that the upcoming break from school would be a perfect time to immerse myself in this project, but the same days I should spend in academic seclusion happen to be the ones on which everyone will be home and ready to play. I think there used to be a version of me who was a pretty deft time-budgeter. We shall see if she's still in there somewhere.