Sunday night

A) Sick. Woke up sick this morning and teaching eight hours of test prep is not, actually, the recommended cure for any ailment.

B) That said, my high school students are wicked cute. I will miss them, even though I'm glad my weekly journeys to Tacoma are over. It's weird how, unlike college kids, high school students want to know all about you.

C) I'm making chicken soup. It smells good.

D) My cat is bored and he's clawing up my jeans and I'm having trouble getting him to sit still while I clip his nails. But I love him!

E) My MPH profiles are due tomorrow and one person I haven't even interviewed yet. Shit!

F) Also in the next two days I need to: read a bunch of Pound's Cantos; plan class and figure out how to get a projector and hook my laptop up to it; buy and read whatever I need to read for my newly added Proust class (en Français???!); buy and read whatever I need to read for my pedagogy class; print out and read whatever I need to read for my special mini-seminar; go to some classes; work an evening tutoring center shift; and generally not go too crazy.

G) Chicken giblets make me think: Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.

H) Also, as I was driving home I heard this amazing Tavis Smiley Show special on the Little Rock 9. That's a pretty amazing story.

Writer's Block

I have this cool (at least to me) freelance job writing profiles of alumni of the MPH program here. I wrote one and it was super quick and easy, but now I'm having total writer's block on the second. I think it's because I want it to be good. And it keeps coming out cheesy. I had been thinking recently about how I mostly don't get writer's block any more . . . sometimes I am lazy or don't know what I want to say, but I usually enjoy actually making the sentences and feel confident that if I don't like the ones I come up with, I can find different ones that will be better. I guess I'm writing this to try and get the juices flowing.

In other news, it is gloomy here and I used my SAD light for a good half hour this morning before GMAT class. I love my SAD light. Now I'm sitting on my office couch under my sheep blanket, drinking tea and typing. I am beginning to appreciate a cat's value as a source of warmth as well as general lovableness.

I'm taking a lot of courses this quarter: one on Ezra Pound, one on Proust that I just added, my pedagogy class, a special mini-seminar in preparation for a visiting professor's visit, and, of course, teaching. Plus working, socializing, petting the cat, writing poetry. Everyone's been saying it's going to be a good fall and I think so too.

Thumbs Up for Grad School

Last night was the first grad pub of the new year, and all night I kept looking back and being incredibly thankful that it is now and not a year ago. I love not being new, I love being comfortable enough to be outgoing, I love feeling like part of a community that is in the process of getting warmer and closer and more fun, which I think this one is. I don't love that this is my one day off ever and I have a lot of work to do, but I do love that I am typing this in my office looking out at a blue sky, with my kitkat curled up asleep on my lap.

Before I decided to procrastinate by writing this, I procrastinated by responding to a brunch invitation that was cleverly phrased as a course description for a graduate seminar with a proposal for this set of projects, entitled "It Ain't Over Till It's Over-Easy: Egg Studies in the 21st Century," and including the following papers: "The Egg and Eye: Scrambling Vision, (Re)Visioning the Scramble," "Eggs Benediction: The Death of God and the Rise of the New American Sunday Morning," and "Poached Texts and Hard-Boiled Readers: Self-Referentiality at the Noir Breakfast Table." Have I mentioned that I'm a nerd?

First Day of School

Today was the first day of classes; tomorrow I go back to teaching. My photocopies are made, my pencils are sharpened. Now all that remains is to cuddle with the cat and put the finishing touches on the complicated series of name games I've devised to torture my poor shy students. After that I go to my composition pedagogy class, which I keep accidentally calling by the number (398) it had when I had to take it in Irvine way back in 2003 instead of the number (567) it has here in Seattle where I'm required to take it again. After that, grad pub and a glimpse of how the new social landscape will look this year. And then Friday will be my only day off for a long time.

I'm now a cardcarrying member of Petco.

Camouflage

Welcome to my world.

Names

I had a dream last night that I took my new cat home to my family's old house in Belmont, where I suddenly realized (as one does in dreams--in life I would hope this would have occurred to me sooner) that the cat would be a danger to our bird. I started chasing the cat around the house as he chased after the bird, and trying to hold him as he squirmed away. The strange thing, though, is that in the dream the cat had a name. I distinctly remember saying, "I think _____ is going to kill Poco!"

But now I can't remember what the name was. The closest I can come is "Butter," but that can't be right.

Kitten party

Having dinner parties is one of my favorite things in the world to do, but somehow I got out of the habit when I moved to Seattle. I'd also started feeling self-conscious about not having the cash-flow to buy the best-pedigreed, freshest, most local versions of every ingredient I might want to use. Plus too many years of singleness and student-hood seem to have atrophied my cooking skills, which used to be pretty good. I hit rock bottom when I messed up oatmeal I was trying to to make for JJF, and vowed to turn things around.

So last night, with a kitten meet & greet as an excuse, I had my first Seattle dinner party. It was kind of a challenge on the culinary front because honoring dietary restrictions meant no meat or starch, so I just made all my favorite little things--tapas, sort of: homemade hummus with sesame flatbread crackers, carrots, cucumbers, and red peppers; two stinky cheeses and crackers; a caprese salad with basil and red and orange tomatoes from my garden; a greek salad with spinach, feta, olives, cucumber, red pepper, and yellow tomatoes and oregano from my garden; deviled eggs; watermelon; and three bottles of wine. I never leave myself enough time before I have people over, but as I was running around boiling eggs, squeezing lemons into chick peas, tearing up basil that was the byproduct of the afternoon's heavy pruning, and listening to equinoctial's mix #2, I felt totally happy.

And the kitten was loved and admired and completely worn out by the excitement, and everyone thinks it's scandalous that he still doesn't have a name.

cutest nap on record

More kitten news

E calls this picture "tiger arms."

Really, it's just been alarming seeing my boss's face every time I look at the blog . . . it's like he's looking out and can see me still in my pajamas at 10:00 am or whatever. (Less than a week left of that schedule, though--everything revs up again starting Sunday!)

It's not just cats . . .

Last night I went to see my much admired former employer give a reading from his new book. It compares the US to ancient Rome. Then I went and watched him on the Colbert Report, which is pretty hilarious and well worth watching.


My predecessor in my job and I (and her boyfriend) went together, so that it was like a meeting of the ex-assistant fan club. He signed my book, but not with one of the blue pilot pens I used to know so well.

And this is just the beginning

(from the fairy kitten godmother's photo stash)

Real Cat!

It's been a big weekend. First, the addition to the household of this incredibly adorable formerly feral 4-month-old kitten; thousands more pictures to come. He doesn't have a name yet but goes by Little Boy, Purr Machine, Purrkins, Shrimp, Sneezy, Sorfle, Snork Maiden, and Ex-Blaine. As you can see from the names, he purrs constantly (even when hunting . . . I think he has a lot to learn), he curls up like a shrimp on your chest, he has a cold, and he really likes to cuddle.

Emily, his fairy kitten godmother, and I had an eventful weekend on non-feline fronts as well. We took a water-taxi to the new Sculpture Park where the highlight for me was an incredibly charming rotating ampersand. We saw the Shins play for a small crowd at a beach cottage. We were treated to several hundred courses of brunch with a water view at a fancy restaurant: moule moule moule, plus crab legs, and a bag of donuts for good measure. We came too late for kayaking but had sunset margaritas, and next morning watched salmon, pleasure boats, and a really huge mad scientist experimental barge being moved through the locks into the city. The whole experience really made me like Seattle.

I also taught more or less the same test prep class three times, to GRE, GMAT, and SAT students, which really teaches one a lesson about audience. I'd forgotten how different high school kids are from college kids. Really different! But in a fun and sweet way, more or less. Then I collapsed exhausted into a bowl of pho. Now I'm going to home depot to look into screen doors.