It looks like I�ll be teaching water aerobics again on Friday and possibly next Monday as well. Perhaps I have found a fallback career. You know, in case the lucrative field of teaching humanities doesn�t pay off the way I thought it would.
Actually, it�s kind of fun. And since I�d be there anyway, it�s nice to be getting paid instead of being the one doing the paying.
The federal warning level for my desk has officially been raised to orange. There is no longer any visible desktop surface, except when I jostle my laptop around while trying to maintain my Airport connection that doesn�t seem to like stretching into this subterranean region. A current inventory of those things I can see and recognize on my desk includes the following (and this is BY NO MEANS a complete listing, which would probably take a couple of days to type out).
� 3 books on the history of feminism in the United States� 5 unopened credit card offers awaiting the shredder
� 11 library books on a variety of topics, all dissertation-related
� A 2 year run of the journal Ethnomusicology
� Hymnals from 5 different religious denominations
� A stapler with no staples in it
� The neighborhood phone directory
� 3 pencils, none of which has a point
� A sheaf of wrapping paper that says �Happy Birthday� in about a jillion colors
� A three-hole punch
� 23 more books on dissertation �related topics that I actually own
� A German dictionary and textbook
� A slinky in a 50th Anniversary commemorative box
� A Latin textbook
� A small statue of William the Hippo
� 5 conductor�s batons in a pencil cup along with a pink Sharpie and a pair of scissors with orange handles
� A big, black rock, the purpose of which eludes me but the smoothness of which I find soothing
� An 8 track analog cassette recorder that I'm not sure I remember how to use.
� A pair of hideous Tibetan slipper socks (it�s very cold down here)
� An open bag of pecan halves
� An empty can of LaCroix orange-flavored water.
� 10 gazillion random pieces of paper � Xeroxes and printouts of articles for the diss, mainly.
� Postcards of the Dan River in Israel, the Matterhorn (the one in Switzerland, not the Disney ride), and Prague from my better-traveled friends and family.
� A ceramic ballerina music box that I've had since I was 3 that plays a theme from Swan Lake
� The world�s biggest Rolodex of phone numbers I will probably never call again.
I am half-tempted to take a match to the whole thing and start over, but I am almost certain I would come to regret that later. And just so you don�t think I have a remarkable lack of AJ-related items on my desk, the walls of the room are covered in his artwork.