In which the light at the end of the tunnel heaves into sight

Say it with me: Two more weeks. Two more weeks. Two more weeks and I'm free of the early class. Which is good, because they're working my last handful of nerves.

On the other hand, today I'm fully in favor of Daylight Saving Time, even though I continue to not understand it a whit--dude, I'm from Arizona, where we understand DST so little that we just gave up on it entirely. After last week's gloomy, pre-dawn wake-up times, today's happy sun greeted me. Just wait, though, I'll be cursing this evening as I trudge home in the 6:00 dark.

And the hotly-anticipated answer to Guess This Text? Troilus and Cressida, by Our Boy Will. Which, yes, I taught last week and with which I nearly prompted a mutiny. There was firm though irritated lecturing on the importance of reading, for pete's sake, followed by a class for which less than half the students showed up. So, today should be fun, then.

In which we play Guess the Text

[Yes, it's a meme-thing, grabbed from Dr. Crazy, she of the miraculous grading checklist. I'll be back with complaints soon, but in the meantime, this can be a clue as to what I've been up to lately, as the book came directly from my bookbag. A clue: instead of the fifth sentence, I had to pick the fifth line.)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

"Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt. This is and is not Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth"

In which I am a victim of my own good intentions

Just finished responding to eleventy squillion midterm paper proposals. Every time I do this, I wonder why I do this. But if I can head off one student who wants to write about how this play/poem reveals a Universal Truth about Human Nature, it's totally worth it. I suspect I may still get some Universal Truths about English Literature, but that's more funny than sad and eye-gouging-making, so I'll take it.

Tomorrow=essay grading. All so I can have yet another Fun Wedding Weekend. Why are all my friends and relatives so intent on pairing off in legal fashions all of a sudden? Don't they know that I need my weekends free for lolling about and whining?

Oh, and I made the mistake of looking at my Winter Shx enrollment--35. Crap. So I have that to look forward to.

Lush update: I stopped on the way home from class to restock my Sexy Peel. I love that it's literally on the way home. Makes it less of an indulgence and more of an efficient errand.

In which I become jet-set

I just can't stop with the buying of the airline tickets. No, the rush of three cities in four days has changed me. I'm a jet-setter now. In the next month, I'll be hieing my high-flying self off to such fantabulous ports-of-call as... Pittsburgh! And... Next-to-Nowhere (And West Virginia), Ohio! Jellus? Yes, yes you are.

Classes are kicking me when I'm down, what with that stack of midterm exams and essays waiting for me. And more coming next week, because even though both St. Happy and UChaos are on quarters, they're two weeks off from each other. Stupids. But at least some small part of my unconscious had a hand in my syllabi, as I'm teaching the same play in both classes this week. Which means that I'm only carrying around one slim Pelican edition, rather than the many and multiple copies of two or three different texts that I'm used to. It felt weird, though, so I had to go buy honkin' Arden editions of this week's and next's. Just so I'd be properly ballasted for my commute.

In happier, and more commercial news, there's now a Lush counter in the Marshall Field Macy's across from where I catch my second bus of the day. But, since I've decided I hate my campus office, there's nowhere to stash any purchases. Is it tacky to bring a pungent but lovely-smelling shopping bag to class with me?

In which we resume, yet again

You wouldn't have thought the Wedding Weekend would have killed me so very dead, but it did. It was fun, it was awesome, but it did us all in. Evidence of the fun is on Flickr; evidence of the dead is the radio silence that followed.

But now I'm back, and in the throes of midterms, part one. I've written up the exam, but I'm feeling less-than positive about the essay prompts. And the UChaos class wants prompts for their essays (coming up in a week), as well. Bah. But there's hope: This idea is fantastic, and I'll be implementing it for these midterm essays coming in on Friday. As I mentioned in the comments there, academic blogs are my new, best pedagogy resource.

Oh, and the first sickness of the school year is upon us. Stupid students, who won't stop kissing each other and coughing on their papers. I'm trying to keep faith in the miracle cures of Zicam and Airborne, but I still feel like crap.

In which my decrepitude becomes apparent

The fun, it is killing me. Our friend Gabi was in town this weekend and fun was pursued with a vengance, which meant that Friday night included trips to four separate bars and aborted attempts to enter two more before my committment to being a good time expired and I went home. Saturday was better; we parked ourselves at Delilah's and waited for fun to come to us. And Sunday, of course, = football and fried foods. A fun time, all around, but I'm clearly too old to go out on successive nights like that. So why not do it again next weekend, only with flying!

Toward that end, there was shopping. I found a dress for the Weekend of Weddings--a vintage heavy-satin wiggle dress with some interesting lacework detailing around the neckline. It looks late '50s and it fits me perfectly. Fishnets and some big hair should get me all set for the Vegas festivities, but I'm still undecided about what I'm wearing in Tucson.

Oh, and then there was class. UChaos started yesterday, and for the first time ever there I have a full house. And then some. We'll see how many I scared off yesterday with my rampage through English history ("Oh! I forgot James! He was kind of obsessed with witches! And had issues with women. But, considering his family history, that's not terribly surprising, no?"). But it was nice to see that I have five returning students from various classes in my past; considering the caliber of faculty we have, I'm fairly astonished that they'd choose to take a second class with me.

Also, the new tv season is killing me, what with all the shows all the time. Tivo helps, but I'm only one woman. Who should be reading Sidney's sonnets instead of watching Studio 60. And Gilmore Girls. And Top Model. At least Life on Mars is done for the moment (and it's awesome and you should find it on dvd), along with all my summer reality crap, so that clears the schedule somewhat. But I suspect there will be attrition in the future.

In which I make a (triumphant?) return

I have to go down to campus today, for various and sundry reasons, but one is the Beginning-of-the-Year Reception. Whee. I suppose I'll make an appearance, if for no other reason than to make sure that Flaky Advisor gets the materials she needs to write me a letter for conference funding. But I'm spooked, for the first time ever, by the idea of the reception. I know fewer and fewer people every year. I have no idea who the people are who are heading the grad social-ish committee, the same committee I myself served on just a couple of years ago. I honestly thought that I'd avoid the diss-years alienation problem, but, alas. I've become that ghostly sixth-year haunting the department, quivering slightly in the light, scurrying back to the safety of the library (metaphorically, that is; I hate our awful, brutal library and avoid it as much as I can).

Let's pretend, however, that my on-campus absence is due not to hermetical ways but due to my having a life outside the academy. In fact, part of the reason I can't stay long at the reception and lead a drunken contingent of first-years to the local pub for further revelry (the highlight of previous receptions) is that a friend is coming in from out of town tonight and I have to pick him up at the airport. Yay for visits! (Never mind that I still need to plan the first two classes of my UChaos class that starts on Monday. I'm sure I'll have time... sometime? On the bus to class on Monday, maybe?)

In which I have an embarrassment of riches

What happens when the same proposal is accepted by two different conferences? Can I tweak the paper to make them different? Should I mention that things might be slightly different from the proposal? Shouldn't the internets have this kind of information available somewhere?

Eta: Ok, having done some research, I think I'll have sufficient new stuff in the second iteration of the paper, since the chapter it's based on will be done by then. Now I just have to figure out how to tell the panel organizer that the title and/or content may be different than the proposal. But since the panel is Shx and contemporaries, he should be happy that I'll be including a contemporary, right?

In which my home is full of nerds

I'm wasting my Saturday night watching videos of my youth on YouTube, and I have discovered two things:

1) Carl is a gay nerd. He not only owns and knows all of Erasure's 12" remix singles, he has a favorite (the Big Train remix of "A Little Respect," apparently).
2) I spent my high-school years as a proto-emo nerd. Case in point.

In which I am delighted

Check it: I had two conference submissions accepted today, within hours of submission. Which means either they're desperate or I'm awesome. I'm going with the latter for the moment. As this is my first serious foray into the conference world, I'm quite pleased with the quick and happy results.

Special thanks to Flavia for her helpful advice on the proposal format--it worked!