Extreme academe

Overjoyed at the lack of official hazing as the new prof on campus (nobody force-feeding me Jager shots or rolling me up in carpets), but dealing with a whole lot of paper and a to-do list the length of I-80. Sigh. I just finished my very first tenure/review portfolio, and I should be celebrating with an Old Speckled Hen, but instead I am preparing to finish everything else that has been on hold the past few days. Last night I ironed for--literally--three hours and forty minutes straight. I was dizzy when finished. But at least I have an endless selection of shirts to choose from. Looking forward to eventually not being sole earner in the household, so I can heap all of my fancies in Nordstrom bags and drop them with the kind folks at One Hour Martinizing.

When I wasn't busy ironing or trying out my cool new hole puncher or collating photocopies of all past publications (eek!), I was able to have an absolutely wonderful lunch with poet Diane Gilliam Fisher, author of Kettle Bottom, who was visiting campus today. It was so exciting to hear about her experience reading and speaking at Smith, and many other places lately. I kept thinking to myself, all giddy, undergraduates gaga for... poetry! It was also very interesting to discuss mapping narratives within collections of poetry, which is something I worked on during the last revision of my book manuscript. Apparently people like connections between poems in a book, especially when they can discover them while reading. So much for my theory of intense disorientation and literary chaos...

I know someone will ask, so here you go: I had a Salade Niçoise and an unsweetened ice tea, and yes, it was delish.

Hopefully I'll be back in the coming days. I have two faculty meetings on Wednesday, so perhaps Wed evening I will finally spend some time with that Old Speckled Hen and the word cage.