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.

So what�s on your desk?

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