Final hours of freedom

I spent all day today at the office--photocopying, running errands, working on my lesson plans, photocopying, chatting with people, photocopying, typing up assignment sheets, putting together a database of medieval and early modern images, and photocopying some more.

Tomorrow I start teaching, and I'll be on campus even longer: from 9 a.m. until 9.15 p.m. (thanks to my night class).

What makes all this bearable, you ask?

Why, quite a few things:

1. First and most importantly, New clothes! While in Northwest City I scored several great items and one fantabulous one: a winter coat from BCBG at one third of the retail price (it's leftover stock from the 2005 season). It's a 3/4-length black wool & cashmere blend, with wonderful, wide wings of lapels. The cut is very early 1960s, very ladylike--but it's got some heavy-duty zippers on it, à la a motorcycle jacket (on the underside of the sleeves, up the back vent, and on a slanting breast pocket) to punk it out a little.

It'll be a while before I can wear it, but until then I have these three items from Ann Taylor (courtesy of ma mère) to keep me happy:


It's hard to see, but the skirt is a nubbly blue tweed made up of several different shades that more or less add up to navy from a distance.


I actually got two of these tops, one in this light blue shade and one in black. I prefer to wear them so that my shoulders are covered and so that the neckline drapes down into a cowl--rather than in the odd, shoulder-tube-like way that this model erroneously thinks she's rocking.


And finally, a pair of navy pants with a woven pinstripe in the same color.

Damn. I love clothes.

2. My office. For some reason, I already have a reputation for having an unusually nice office--people keep stopping by and saying, "hey, I heard about your office. . . oh wow." Now, this is an ENTIRELY excessive reaction, given that I have the same industrial metal desk and bookcases as everyone else and I don't even have a proper window; all I've done is bring in one nice chair and a floor lamp, and hang up a couple of framed posters and my diplomas. Nevertheless, I did do a lot of moving and shifting around of furniture and objets until the space felt right, and I'm pretty happy with it. I think it will make a nice workspace.

3. Eight (well, now seven) bottles of wine, which Bert had shipped to me from Sonoma when he was out there a few weeks ago. Yes, he was probably intoxicated at the time. But it's damn good wine, so I'm not complaining.

4. Research productivity. No joke: I have almost 25 pages of my new chapter drafted. They're absolutely abysmal pages, at this point, but hey: they're a start.

So I say, albeit with some trepidation. . . let the semester begin!