In which I make some lists

Hi! I'm back from my hectic holiday schedule of sleeping all day and playing nerdy computer games all night. It was exhausting, but someone had to do it.

I'm clearly in denial of the fact that the winter quarter starts on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. for me. I did manage to update the syllabus, but I haven't decided what to do about the final exam/essay option. I really don't want to read 40 essays on Why Rosalind Is Awesome, but I'm also thinking that an essay exam in a class intended for upper-division English majors does a disservice to the students.

So, looking ahead, I have two lists to make, one domestic, one academic:
Domestic:

• Laundry!
• Take down the cute li'l tinsel tree
• Organize my closet so I can dress like a grown-up again (strides were made toward this with the 10 bags of donations we dropped off on the 31st)
  
• General dusting, sweeping, vacuuming
• Call landlord about the tragically slow drains in the bathroom sink & tub
• Make a hair appointment (only three months after the last)
• Disassemble & felt sweaters for the felted-throw project I'm planning
  

Academic:

• Revise Chapter One & resubmit to committee
• Plan meeting with committee
• Draft Chapter Three
• Read a bunch of Marlowe-related stuff
• Sort & file Fall class notes
• Sort library books, renew & return
• Turn in receipts for conference-travel reimbursement
• Get an old essay into shape for journal submission
• Get Chapter One into shape for journal submission
  

Well, it doesn't look so bad laid out like that. Now I just have to put it in motion. Oh! And I have a resolution: I'm going to stop being lazy and whiny about going out to eat. This is step one of the Plan to Enjoy Chicago While We Can, which goes into motion tonight with a date with C. to go for steak frites.

Oh, yes, there's also news on the Get C. a Job front: two interviews at MLA, both of which went well, both of which were with schools located in places that wouldn't suck my soul dry. Now comes the fun part of waiting for the campus-visit calls, as well as news from the schools that weren't interviewing at MLA.

In which I get uppity

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Eminence the Very Viscountess St. Eph the Disheveled of Wallop upon Deane Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

{Something more substantial coming soon, I promise.}

In which nous n'amuseé pas

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

Drat, I was hoping for Henry VI. (And please forgive the bad French.)

In which things are better now

Two delightful things happened today. First, I got a response from one of my advisors, the Demanding Advisor who has never quite accepted my dissertation premise. He gets it now, and calls my approach "profound and promising." He also started the message with "Hooray!" and had some specific ideas for fleshing out the chapter to a more chapter-like length. So, yay.

Then C. got an interview call from the university where I'd most like us to go, and is high on his list as well. He's been itchy the last couple of days waiting for calls, so this has settled him down nicely. And tickets to Philadelphia aren't looking crazy-expensive, so it's off to MLA for him. So, woo.

Also, the quarter is officially done for me. Finally. I have two late papers to deal with, but I can't change the grades until January, so I'm not worrying about them. I'm also finishing up an incomplete with a student that requires some actual thought on my part, but that's not so bad and is making me reconsider the course and how it went. Oh, and the teaching observation thing was fine, kind of helpful but more telling me I'm fairly awesome, which is always nice to hear. I think I just waited too long to jump through this particular hoop; it would have been very useful the first year I was teaching, before I figured out how to stand up and use the board. I'm better now.

In which I am... not right

I'm halfway through this last batch of grading and I just... enh. Nothing's particularly wrong with any of them, but nothing's spectactular, either. They're all solid A- papers, which is not a bad thing by any means, but I'm feeling... not right. I don't know if I'm not in a good enough mood to be grading, or not in a cranky enough place. I should be happy that this batch of upperclassmen know enough to foreground their claims, to engage with the quotations, to have a position from which to argue, but I'm getting hung up on their inability to format quotations and put the quotation marks in before the parenthetical citation.

I'm not sure what this feeling is that I'm sucked into right now. It's not the Mean Reds, it's not cranky, it's not depressed, it's just minorly annoyed with the ongoing minutae of day-to-day life. Which I'm not even engaged with, since I've left my apartment, like, twice in the last week. I have no excuse. It's almost like bershon, but the grown-up version, where the object of disgust is my pajama-wearing self.

But halfway done! Eleven more!

Oh, and I forgot to report back on What I Learned from My Teaching Observation. I don't get the official feedback from my observers until Monday, but I watched the tape and learned that I 1) wave my hands around my face all the damn time, making me look like I'm doing some kind of seizure-inflected dance, 2) say "all right?" and "yes?" pretty much constantly (I'm thinking about replacing the first with "aiight?"), and 3) I read textual quotations much too fast. C. says that, shockingly, my teaching approach, performance-wise, mirrors his. Because, of course, we share a brain. Which is just as romantic as it sounds.

In which I check in

So, yeah, it's the end of the quarter and I'm mostly MIA 'round here. Sorry about that. How about some random bullet points?

• I finished the chapter that I've been plugging along on since, oh, this time last year. It is somehow no longer than the last draft. Eh, whatever. I'm turning it in tomorrow, and I like its new title.
• Attention: Internets--The word you're looking for is "simple" not "simplistic." Not synonyms, and stop pretending they are.
• All my shows are fall-finale-ing! So sad! What will I do without Heroes and Betty and Gilmore Girls for the next month? Read books?
• Speaking of books, yet another pleasure-reading novel from the UChaos library has been recalled. Uncool, people. Stop it. I'm going to start leaving nasty notes again in the books I return.
  
• I've been sucked in to an online monster-killing game. It's only a bit compulsive.
  
• Oh, dear, I have papers coming in tomorrow and grading to get behind. Drat.
  

In which my true self is revealed

How evil are you?

Well, maybe, but I did return a Home Despot credit card I found on the street today.

In which we regroup

Wow, it certainly has been a while. I'm, like, the anti-NaBloPoMo 'round here. Sorry.

Ok, first it was the end of the quarter at St. Happy U., which included a final-exam time-slot of 8:45 a.m. Dude, seriously. For all of four students who took the exam option. And now I have a pile of papers and exams to grade by Friday, so I really should get started on those soon.

Then, I dove into teaching Donne at UChaos. I was so excited about doing Songs and Sonnets (in which there are no sonnets!), but they're so tired, it was quite a slog through them. And tomorrow we do some Elegies and The First Anniversary, which I fear will further trample them down. And how about ending with some refreshing Herbert? Yes, that'll be awesome. Plus, I'm being observed for some Teaching-Certificate-related nonsense on Wednesday. Whee.

Then there's the good: Thanksgiving in Rural PA. Family, food, the whole shebang. Instead of cheesecake, this year I made this, which is so super-fantastic I want to eat it every morning until the end of time. And I've ascended to a new level of competence in my mom's eyes, as I was left singularly in charge of the kitchen for a good 45 minutes while she had to run out and pick up my brother from somewheres. I think I've perfected my green-bean recipe (pan-fried in olive oil with minced onions, splashed with balsamic, lemon, and lime juice, topped with crumbled cheese, fresh mozzarella in this case, though feta is better). And my mom introduced me to the wonder of fancy-schmansy gourmet salt. We are a salt-loving family.

Mostly, it was good to see everyone together and happy after a fairly tough year that isn't quite over yet. Sappy, yes, but we made up for that with the general mocking and hard-time-giving.

There was also shopping, of course, as this seems to have become an inadvertent tradition. We chose our spots wisely, though, and so were not trampled. Carl wound up with not one, but two velvet sportscoats. Because he clearly needed them. We might have to throw a party for the burgundy one.

Oh, yeah, and there was a party last weekend. Our friends look pretty swanky when we force them to dress up. But remind me that the weekend before Thanksgiving is no time to be throwing a party, though it did mean that we left a fairly clean apartment.

And how are you? Full? Happy? Thankful? Tired?

In which I catch up on some correspondence

Dear Ohio,

Thanks for a lovely weekend. You were so very nice and gracious that I hate to mention this one little thing, but could you do something about the roadkill? I'm still traumatized by the chunk of deer that I ran over Thursday night (and then screamed for a mile) and the drive back to Columbus brought three more deer, two coyotes, and a wide variety of small, smushed critters. Just, ew. Also, aaaaaahhhhhhh.

And this may just be a small-town quirk, but that thing where you turn off the traffic signals at 10 p.m.? Is weird. But I did love your ranch dressing. Thanks for that.

Kisses,
S.

* * * * *
Dear UChaos,

Listen, I'm only telling you this because I'm your friend. You know you're super-cute and super-nice and super-cool, but you have, like, this reputation? Like, with other universities? They think you're like, mean and snobby and crazy. Now, I tried really hard this weekend to tell them that you're totally not like that, but for some reason they're kind of... scared?...of you. Did you, like, use to make fun of everyone else? I think that maybe you need to apologize to some people, because they would totally be your friend if they really knew you.

Just being honest because I love you,
S.

* * * * *
Dear St. Happy U,

Thank you so much for finally being done with the quarter. Could you maybe talk to UChaos about this scheduling thing? Because I don't think they understand it.

Love,
S.

In which all's well that ends well

Good day. Presentation went well. Not a lot of questions for me, but I'm choosing to believe that the reason for that is that I blew their minds, baby. And the Grand Old Man who sat in on my session, the GOM who's editing a fancy edition of My Play, said it was one of the best papers he's ever heard (oh, heavens) and asked for a copy.

And then, because I do what I do, I rounded up a herd of grad students and junior faculty, got them drunk, and took them on a midnight field trip to Wal-Mart. It's a gift, what I have.