is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Situational Loneliness. Darling Students. New Hair. Cola. Dog-in-Boots. Octagon!
Situational Loneliness. Darling Students. New Hair. Cola. Dog-in-Boots. Octagon!
The Octagon!
Does this ever happen to you? Sometimes when I have been out with people I really like, and then I come home and am all alone, I become paralyzed with a sad not-knowing-what-to-do. Don't get me wrong. Most of the time after a good night out with good people I come home happy and sleep well. But sometimes spending time with someone you really like, whether it's Evany or Heidi or someone more new on the scene, just underlines the lonely aspects of your life rather than alleviating them. And then there you are, at home, alone again. It's situational.
Plus here I am in academic isolation land, in winter, with very little daylight, and a blizzard arriving tomorrow. Anyway, I got home tonight and felt SAD. And I'm tired of getting in bed and not sleeping, so I cast my eyes around the room for something to do, and saw my teaching evaluations from last semester waiting to be read. I thought, whoa, not now, it is bound to make things worse. So of course I sat down and read them anyway. And you know what? Those students LOVE me. It was so encouraging, because not only do they LOVE me but they all (minus one) think I am a great teacher, in fact, many of them said I was the best teacher they had that semester, or, even, ever at Amherst. (HA! I say HA! to those at Amherst who chose not to give me a tenure-track job! HA!) (but of course we all know those decisions aren't really about teaching ability anyway. what are they about? oh, we all know and yet who knows.). So, who knew? Reading a batch of teaching evaluations put me in a GREAT mood.
Tonight I walked into Tom's house, looked at his son, and said, "You got your HAIR cut!" He looked back at me and said, "You got your hair DYED!" and then we sat down and ate the rest of yesterday's chocolate walnut tart and talked about Ipods.
Did I mention there is a blizzard coming in? On the news they keep calling it a Nor'easter, which I find really annoying. What, you don't have the energy to include the 'th'? Anyway, I took local advice and stocked up on food just in case I get stuck here for awhile. Speaking of stocking up, I looked into my refrigerator to take stock this morning, and noted that in there I have a bountiful supply of Pepsi, Pepsi One, Pepsi Edge, Diet Coke and C2. What?! Apparently I have many cola moods, all of which have to be able to be satisfied at a moment's notice. This cola profusion is yet another symptom of my current state of anxiety over not knowing "what's going to happen?" (quotation from Evany Thomas). Am I going to need a Pepsi to Make It All Better? But what if I have had too much sugar already on that day? How about a diet beverage, or a half-diet beverage?
Speaking of which, and here we have another product placement in the diary, I really really love Pepsi, as you probably know by now. But I have to admit that Pepsi Edge SUCKS whereas C2 is actually quite good. And Diet Coke is MUCH better than Diet Pepsi (which tastes like rotting dust), whereas Pepsi One is by far the best diet cola. I also like Squirt, the grapefruit soda. Also, Squirt has my favorite soda ingredient, glycerol ester of wood rosin. I always have to pronounce that with an old lady British accent, as if it were the name of a noble dame, Lady Glycerol Ester of Wood Rosin. (But, really, WTF is it?!) And then there's Dr. Pepper. It is good. But it has too much caffeine for me� makes my heart palpitate wildly, and not in a good way. But it also contains polyethylene glycol, which is, I believe, an ingredient in antifreeze. Don't even get me started on that the Diet Dr. Pepper ad campaign, because I've been down that rhetorical road already. Nasser saw me walking up the stairs today with my groceries and some more Pepsi when he said, "hey, I didn't think you drank any of that stuff." I was all, "dude, you have NO IDEA!" And for some reason it made him really happy, in the way he loves U.S. pop culture because he spent many formative years in Pakistan.
Tonight I took Dog-in-Boots, the upstairs dog, out for a walk because his slaves are out of town for the weekend. Hilary had said to me that when it's cold out the walks don't take long. He does his business and wants to go back inside. Last time I walked him, back in October, I took him half way to campus (1/2 mile) and tried to turn back to come home and he would not budge. He wanted to KEEP WALKING. Tonight I took him out and he peed right away, like next to the front door. Then I walked him down the walk toward the street. He paused. Nothing happened. Then I said, "Come on, Boots." And then he looked at me, with his floppy ears raised up, and gave me the funniest look, as if to say, "You are CRAZY, biiiiotch," at which point he ran back toward the front door. It was the shortest walk EVER. I did not mind. It is FOUR DEGREES OUT. (Richard, that is roughly �15 celcius.)
Last, but not least, OCTAGON! Last semester when the department secretary asked me whether I had any classroom preferences, I, knowing nothing beyond the few buildings I've had reason to venture into on campus, said, "I'd like a room with windows, the kind that actually look outside." Last semester I taught in a room in the science building that had a window looking out into the institutional-looking hallway, but no view of the existence of an outside world. I think the existence of the outside world matters. So anyway, when we got the room assignments today I realized right away that I had struck it RICH! I am teaching in the freaking OCTAGON. It is a big yellow octagonal building on campus, and at the top of the stairs of the octagon is an octagonal room with a big table in the center surrounded by chairs, a row of cushy couch-things surrounding the room, a curvy staircase heading up to a balcony lining the top of the room, and a bunch of little windows looking outside as well as a big octagonal ceiling window from which is suspended a dramatic chandelier. And this is where I am teaching!
1:52 a.m. - January 22, 2005
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