Notes on a Sunday Afternoon

It's finally all coming together. After grading 36 finals, I am beginning to understand why some teachers used ye olde scantron. Essay questions are murder. I am tempted to exerpt a few, but a good teacher would never do that.





Currently, I am absolutely devouring an Manu Chao produced album by Amadou and Mariam called Dimanche a Bamako. It's my favorite purchase in a long time. Pick it up. It's feeding into my repressed love of afro-pop. I got my first whiff of afro-pop back in 2000 when I took a postcolonial theory class. The professor, known for having one ear pierced, loved to play music at the beginning of class, probably to show he was still with it. Anyway, he lent me this amazing compilation called the music in my head, which is A+. Check it.

In the new semester (tomorrow), I will be teaching a few old faves...

• The Odyssey
• Beowulf
• Grendel
• Star Wars trilogy
• and...Robinson Crusoe. Pray for me.

Rise of Nostalgia

...I'm trying to pull myself together for the end of the semester and I'm putting together a few notes about the rise of the novel, which totally puts me back in my 18th Century Public Sphere class at the U of C. I went to my bookcase and busted out Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel, the one book that made real sense to me in grad school. It's quite stuffy, totally diachronic, really self-important, but I love it. Watt makes it all make sense. Anyway, I'm looking through it and looking at my really eager notes ("ridotto?? look up" and "8 hanging days at Tyburn?") and I was momentarily transported back and for a few minutes, grad studies weren't so bad. It made me slightly sad, like the smell of pineapples.

A Few Things

1. I'm going though a huge Wilco phase right now. Specifically, I am ALL OVER A Ghost is Born. Not really sure why it sounds so completely amazing right now. Actually, I'm not sure if it's a Tweedy phase or a Wilco phase, but either way it's serious.
2. This weekend was productive. Classes will be on autopilot all week.
3. I need to pep up my personal appearance. Maybe these will help...

4. The evil sub will be gone on Friday. My prayers to St. Jude have helped.

In Which I Just Remember That I Have A Blog

Doh. I really didn't remember until about 5 minutes ago. How did I ever used to post so often, sometimes daily? Oh, I remember now. I was a dilletantte in a Ph.D program. Ooops. That seems like a lifetime ago.

Today, after leaving school for a long lunch at this very wierd place, my friend Amy and I found this house that had piles and piles of amazing furniture outside. A woman and a man were taking things from the house, and upon chatting with her, we learned her mother just died and that she needed to get rid of a ton of stuff. Among these amazing pieces were oak highboys, chairs, end tables, just amazing things. We were almost late going back to campus, but we returned at three and most of the things were gone. The lady was still there, though, and she invited us inside the house to see if we wanted anything, which creeped me out, but there we went, so nosy. Anyway, her mother had a collection of tiny amazing bottles that I snatched up, but then I felt creepy about the whole thing and Amy and I left. The whole thing made me kind of sad.

wow....

I have not even BEGUN my grades yet. YIKES!!!

Personal Best

This is a crazy school weekend, but happily, I am not planning on going to anything. Last night was a bit benefit party, today is a dance, and tomorrow is some kind of holiday tea. I think that I will have to increase my involvement in the next few weeks, especially because when faculty is not present at after school things, tongues begin to wag. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect that it's because sometimes people are jealous that younger faculty have a life outside of school. Still, I am a bit sad about not going to the Christmas dance tonight, as I love to mock my girls' dates and make predictions about who will end up crying at the end of the night in the bathroom.

Regardless of extracting myself from school this weekend, I will be doing grades, which tends to be an excersise in creative writing, as I am required to write evaluations of all my girls. Today, I'm liking the phrase, "personal best".

L'Ennui

A bit exhausting. The faculty meeting was a bit long, and though the yelling was not totally out of control today, I did eat a bit too much port wine cheese ball, which is basically toxic to me. I'm just glad I wasn't left alone with that thing. It wouldn't have stood a chance.

We're done with our film studies unit and now I'm stalling. We SHOULD be beginning 100 Years of Solitude but I'm being a total chicken. I love it and I think it's a good step for me to take (as in teaching something I've never done before) but I'm worried about how the girls are going to respond to it. So today, I gave them 20 minutes to partner up, design and propose a Star Wars X mas decoration for the room. My favorite is called...E wok in a M anger.