A Good Week

Over a week since my last substantial post. It's advising time, which means lots of random meetings with students in professional writing and in gender studies. Then, there are all those other meetings. Still, good week.

As some of you know, we had the amazing opportunity to have Ryan Claycomb come to campus. He gave a talk in the lecture series I've been coordinating this semester on pain. And since he was already in town for that, I got him to lead a workshop for the writing faculty on the intersections of performance studies and the teaching of writing. Both were amazing, going better than I'd expected, and I'd already expected them to be pretty damn good. It was funny that at one point Ryan made a comment about it feeling odd when those of us further along in our careers (a nice way of saying "old people") see him as an authroity. I then told him that I sometimes feel downright insecure around him because he knows so much about things I want to know about.

That was a big part of the fun, just hanging out and talking for hours on Monday and Tuesday. At one point, I thought he was going to get sick of being stuck with me all the time, but the talk flowed at all times. It made me think how we need to do more things like this on our campus, bring in generous, smart people to shake us up a bit. It was great how our conversations bounced around from the health of our mothers to the ways we develop narratives about our lives to our experiences at the gym to dealing with societal boundaries around masculinity. It's nice to realize I might not be the only freak who bounces easily from theory to life in my own head, who has random thoughts about how Judith Butler might respond to the clothes I wear everyday. He left many of us--but especially me--with much to think about, and it's been fun delving into those thoughts since he left.

I admit that the emails and other things have piled up this past week, too. Thoguh some of the arrivals included the official contract for that article that was accepted and the official notice about my acceptance into the NYU workshop with word that we'll be staying in a brand new dorm on 12th Street as opposed to the really old (and moldy) one from previous years. Gotta address the rest of the piles at some point, though.

But not so far this weekend. Da Man left early yesterday for a research trip, and I've been using the time not to work but to hang out. I had the chance last night and today to see a couple of guys I'd been wanting to hang out with for a while, but the timing was always off. And I had more fun than I expected, too. I mean, we stayed here and didn't really do anything, but it's been fun. Yep, I'm writing this with a slight hangover from this afternoon, the little, dull headache that doesn't feel too bad while lying on the couch watching the DVD of Just One of the Guys. Man, I still know that movie by heart.

I swear, if anyone who didn't know me had seen me this past week, it would have looked like I was an extrovert or something. Yet, it always felt more stimulating than exhausting. Of course, I might spend tomorrow here at home alone. Or not. Right now, the wind is blowing like crazy, and I'm thinking a bubble bath might be in order before bed.

I know that this cycle of good energy can't last, but I'm really trying to enjoy it. I'm certainly grateful for it, and I'll be feeling the effects of this past week for a while.