on this beautiful, sunny day in NYC, I am intending to work hard on copyediting my book manuscript, an easy and ultimately brainless task that just needs to be completed. Classes have started at Fancy U and I am not there, instead living in this odd time-bubble in Brooklyn where I am so amazed by the joy of living with Jen day after day that I seem ( Read more... )

I spent all day today steeling myself to call my mother. Well, no, I taught a class, had a series of meetings with students writing everything from dissertations to crappy first-year papers, etc. etc., as always (I also continued to struggle with Winter Cold #1, which came to visit, and to stay, on Monday and seem to have me quite well in hand at ( Read more... )

On Thursday night, I sent my book manuscript to the publisher. I fully expected him to write me back to say that it needed some additional tweaks, so I didn't really start celebrating, just felt a great deal of tiredness and relief. This morning, I received a note from him saying that they were starting the copy-editing process. The book should ( Read more... )

I love graduations. I love them like other people love Christmas and Hannukah and Thanksgiving and Halloween. Let them eat turkey, I say: for me, it's college graduation. An opportunity to wear my polyester-but-velvet-looking Berkeley blue robes and find the Altoids I'd thoughtfully left in the pocket the year before. An opportunity to live for ( Read more... )

Dear All ( Read more... )

So, for those of you playing along at home ( Read more... )

You know what? I could post my incredibly depressing not-yet-finished musings on scattering my father's ashes. But I don't actually think I can stand it. Let's just be honest, all the other drama of my life -- job offers, crushes, etc. -- is doing a lovely job of distracting me from that stuff, and by "distracting" I don't mean "horrible bad ( Read more... )

So, THAT STATE SCHOOL (name omitted) dug deep in its pockets and was able to come up with.... no, wait for it ( Read more... )

Just FYI, my college housemate, whose various geeky & unsavory habits I know quite intimately and with great affection, was on the Oscars tonight. His documentary short subject, "Sari's Mother," (which I've not seen) was nominated for one, and there was a shot of him seated next to Seal and Heidi Klum (which makes my Project Runway obsession very ( Read more... )

so, surprisingly enough, I checked email just now to find a note from the department chair at UC irvine, saying that they had offered the job to somebody else. My visit had gone really well, and I am going to comfort myself (insofar as I need comforting) with the thought that they probably didn't think I'd come; I hadn't gone the "i'm so desperate ( Read more... )