Month: November 2012

Friday!

I don’t know what it was about this week — the disruption of my normal schedule that was Wednesday, the much bigger disruption that could be next week, or just the fact that I have so few weeks left before the end of the year — but I’m really glad it’s over.

No immediate plans for the weekend beyond sleeping late tomorrow.

Random 10 11-30-12

Last week. This week:

  1. “Jim Cain” by Bill Callahan
    I started telling the story without knowing the end
  2. “Long Dark Twenties” by Paul Bellini
    But all he really wanted was to have a past

  3. “The Bluest Eyes in Texas” by Nina Persson
    Another town, another hotel room
  4. “Oh Yoko” by John Lennon, guessed by Kim
    In the middle of the bath I call your name
  5. “Ulysses” by Franz Ferdinand
    So sinister, so sinister
  6. “Worthy” by Ani DiFranco
    I remember cool was the plan
  7. “Black Hole” by She & Him
    My eyes are so bleary
  8. “City of Dreams” by Talking Heads
    The dinosaurs did a dance
  9. “The Mountains Win Again” by Blues Traveler
    A pocket is no place for a smile anyway
  10. “Taken at All” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
    Did I see you looking blindly at your book

Good luck!

Wedthursday

Last night, I went to this:

It was part of Selected Shorts, one of three I’m attending in the next few months. The stories were quite entertaining, and Baldwin — who apparently almost didn’t make it, thanks to filming across town — was quite good, as were all the other performers/readers.

I got home around 11 o’clock, quite tired, and allowed myself to oversleep and catch a slightly later train this morning.

I was also still weirdly shaken, almost certainly more than I should have been, by a phone call that had gone exceptionally poorly earlier in the day. I’ve been trying to set up campus visits, this time closer to home than Maryland, and it’s been tough. One instructor agreed to talk over the phone with me yesterday…and then almost immediately asked that we terminate the call. “Yeah, I think I’m going to hang up,” he said. “I really don’t want to go through all the courses I teach.” Which, you know, fair enough, especially at this busy time of year. But that’s the only reason that I called, and what I hoped I’d made clear in my original e-mail. I want to know the courses you’re teaching and the books you’re using and the challenges you and your students face. I have no hard feelings toward this particular instructor, who e-mailed after to apologize, but I’m also not at all happy about how things went. Those phone calls are awkward enough without the other party being openly antagonistic or non-communicative. I’m a pretty shy person to begin with, so I just hope for someone who’s eager to talk about the hows and whys that they teach.

I didn’t lose any sleep over it, though. (I may have mentioned, I slept in a little.)

Today, was just a lot more work. I have another phone call lined up for tomorrow, although I’m hoping that will go a little better, based on the e-mails I’ve already exchanged. And then next week…provided I don’t actually have to go on jury duty*, I’ll actually meet a few instructors in person.

I could use a weekend, though, I really could.

* Yeah, I forgot this summons was for next week. It’s a telephone standby one, which means I might not actually have to show up, but I won’t know until the night before, for about a week, starting Sunday. When I first responded to the summons, and filled out the form, I didn’t realize that now would be the single worst time ever for me to be on jury duty.