Bullets, mostly domestic and pedagogical

* I did laundry tonight, since it's no longer so hot that I can justify buying new underwear to avoid the laundromat. The washer that had all of my dark / warm water stuff in had fabric softener in it--something I don't usually use myself. Now my dark / warm water clothes and my towels smell like Downy--not a bad smell, but they don't smell like my clothes and towels.

* Speaking of clothes, my bridesmaid's dress has been chosen for me. It's not actually that bad, right? I don't think I've ever worn a strapless gown in my life, though. As I observed to my mother this morning, that's a good incentive to keep going to the gym through the summer and fall, especially because I will be the token old maid in the wedding party.

* I feel like I've been working really hard today without getting anything done. I will be switching to full on work with Coleridge tomorrow. Well, that and getting my paperwork together at New Teaching School which Needs a Pseudonym, having lunch with an aunt and uncle who are in town, and going to hear some friends read / perform in Brooklyn. So tomorrow, alas, may not be a gym day.

* Speaking of NTSwNaP (see what I mean?). I got a whole bunch of info on the fall semester from the Writing Director there. I'm already in a different world--there's just more here in terms of sheer documentation than I got from Erstwhile Teaching College in two years. And it's a whole new ballgame, one that's played without course readers and where you actually write course descriptions based on topics from which the students then choose. In a general sense, I realize that the centers of adjunct autonomy are almost completely reversed in these two situations--ETC has a reader that they want you to teach from, and they require more essays, but beyond that they aren't at the moment pushing their adjuncts to do much more that's intellectually coherent, as long as the kids learn some grammar along the way. My class tended to be organized around some broad units, but they weren't necessarily connected to each other--and, especially in this last semester, they were all in a certain sense tailored to the institution, which basically meant that I could be very self-referential in terms of things like linguistic diversity, what it means to write in English, and so on--and be reasonably certain that 90% of the people in the room had personal experience with that kind of thing. This new teaching gig will be the first time I will be standing in front of a classroom of majority English-speakers (as a first language, that is)--not to mention students who will probably all be living in dorms close to campus rather than with their parents in Ozone Park and Bensonhurst. And all of this makes me a bit nostalgic (read: terrified of change) for ETC and makes me wonder if I shouldn't give up that class--but the places are so different that it doesn't make sense for me--at least not in what will be a prospectusing and fellowship applying semester--to be teaching at both. Also, in a very practical sense--the New Gig is probably closer to the kinds of writing programs that are going on at places where I would like to teach. Not that I want to teach exclusively in a writing program, but I think it'll be good to have both things.

* The Poet has been getting himself into political controversy in his hometown, and it's the kind of thing where if it backfires in a certain way it's going to hit me too. Okay, so that's a little bit unlikely at this point, but if I'm still with him when the next step in his political career comes, then--yeah, he thinks he's going to be able to keep me out of it, but it's clear even from the tone of what I read online today that it won't be up to him. (Of course, if I'm still even with him, then that will...ack. Anyway.) Which is all a long way of setting up the fact that I about had a heart attack tonight when I got a call from an unknown New Jersey number on my cell. Especially since we'd been flirting a bit over email in the afternoon. As it turns out, though, it was just my aunt--calling, I suppose, from a hotel rather than her cell--but I only found that out when I listened to the message. I have a pretty strict policy of not answering numbers I don't recognize.

* I feel sticky and I swear it's from the fabric softener on this t-shirt. Was that gross?

* I'm beginning to miss creative writing a lot. But I've been pretty good about forcing myself to think in paragraphs and not just mindlessly take notes on things. But the emphasis is on "pretty good."

* When my mother was here, the soap dish fell out of the wall in the shower. She managed to at least provisionally caulk it back in. That lasted until Sunday, probably because it got so damn hot in here. So now I'm back to having a plastic bag taped over a gaping hole in my shower. I'm waiting a few days before calling the landlord because I don't want to be stuck here until I'm ready. Also, this feels stupider than the toilet situation--not that this one is my fault any more than that one, but still.

* My life has been vastly improved by my cultivating the habit of making coffee before I go to bed and then putting it in the refrigerator--hence, iced coffee in the morning, and something more securely portable. This will be essential when I start teaching that 8:00 class.

* Finally, I may be starting to heal from K, since I was able to watch an episode of the Daily Show without thinking about him and getting depressed. Technically, I stopped watching during the writers' strike, but K first entered my consciousness as "dude in my German class who looks like Jon Stewart," and that's been sort of making me reluctant to go back. Oddly, though, now I find the whole thing less funny than I did--am I an enormous killjoy because I got kind of queasy about the Gitmo jokes? I don't know. I suppose I have other things I'm supposed to think about. Tomorrow--Coleridge and the syncope!