I’m feeling better;…

I'm feeling better; thanks for the concern. I talked to various people, including some staff members, who gave me much-needed reality checks. They agreed with my assessment of the situation, which was really reassuring; I had been feeling as if I were the only one bothered by this stuff, and wondering if there was something really wrong with my perceptions. It's much easier for me to be firm and concrete in my decisions if I know I can trust my judgement on them.

One thing that has been clear in all this is that some of my staff is burning out. We're going to be looking for a fiction intern for Clean Sheets, who will probably do a lot of grunt work at first, but eventually would be doing interesting stuff, and might be promoted into fiction editor if they're interested. If you're interested, a more formal call will be posted to the CS newsletter list when we figure out the details. A similar post may open up in poetry.

The rest of yesterday was actually really lovely. The weather has turned so beautiful -- clear and sunny and 70 degrees. As I walked to work yesterday morning, I developed what I think will be the next two(!) stories in the Sri Lankan cycle. I had thought they would be just one, but I realized that I really need two stories, 'cause there are two serious events that need to be explored. The first one is almost entirely plotted; it draws on events from the troubles in '83 (that's what they're called -- 'troubles'. Never mind that thousands of civilians died....) and I need to call Roshani and get some more details out of her; she lived through it. The second is much vaguer right now...

Last classes went well, and now we start final grading. I need to be done by Thursday, since I'll be in the Bay Area from 5/4 - 5/14. I don't think it'll take that much time, though...I'm not really planning any crash days of grading right now, though next Wednesday might turn out to be one. :-) I'm going to miss some of my students -- I had some really great ones this semester. Hopefully they'll show up in some of my later classes. I'm teaching only two classes this summer, of business/tech writing. It's going to be very odd being done for the day at 9:30 a.m.

And yesterday evening, we had a really wonderful dinner party. Alex couldn't come (work stuff), so I invited over Pam and Samantha (to join Marcia, Kevin, Paul and me). Everyone had a great time, I think -- the food was good, the company was lively, the wine flowed freely but not overly so. :-) Samantha's really funny -- I'll have to invite her to more of these. It was a good crowd; Kevin was a bit quiet for much of it, but he's been deep in math head, and by the end, he was laughing as hard as the rest of us. I now have many many dishes to do (they offered to help, but I hate having guests deal with that, and I don't have to go anywhere today), but it was well worth it.

Today I catch up on various and sundry tasks, but before I go, I want to point you to a really interesting article on the homoerotics of Picard and Q, but quite long and academic; I must admit that I only read as far as paragraph 8 (out of 35). Still glad I read that far, though, so I recommend it unto you. It'll also give those of you who aren't familiar with academia an idea of the sort of thing I'll be writing in grad school.

Have a good day, my dears. I hope the weather's as beautiful there as it is here...

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *