I don't work in Alabama, but I do work for the state. My BMI isn't over 35, but it's definitely over 30. My cholesterol, etc. are fine, but they may not be in five or ten years. But even if I were a healthy, thin, self-employed twenty-year-old, I think the news that Alabama is going to charge obese state employees more for healthcare would freak me the hell out.

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So the first day report ended up in the comments to another entry -- blame Lori. :-) Yesterday was finishing up my online class from this summer. I think I'd be willing to do it again, but a) for a shorter period of time, as it's hard to sustain interest for that long, and b) with requiring them to get Steering the Craft, so we can all do exercises together, to help keep the class present in their minds and lives. I think if it's four concentrated weeks instead of eight, it will actually work better. I don't want to do anything crazy during the semester, but I think over the holidays I'll try this again. So if interested, keep that in mind -- it'll run 12/7 - 1/3, I think. I'll send out a registration notice about a month beforehand. I'm also tentatively planning to do an intensive writing weekend workshop this fall in Chicago at some point, probably in Oct/Nov. If you're interested and have a preference for weekend, now would be a good time to let me know.

The rest of yesterday was dealing with paperwork and e-mail, signing up for benefits and the like. (I have benefits with this new job, yay! The American health insurance system sucks, boo!) In the evening I went into campus to attend a meeting of The Packingtown Review -- the new magazine of arts and scholarship at the University of Illinois. They'll be launching their first issue at AWP in March, and I'm going to try to be pretty involved in the magazine, as time permits. So if you're a writer, please consider submitting. No pay, of course, but the chance to be part of a brand new magazine. The website says that the deadline for the first issue was 8/1, but they're actually always open to submissions it turns out, so if you send in now, your work will be considered for the second issue. (Also, I happen to know that they haven't finalized the line-up for the first issue yet, so your piece might well go in there instead if they particularly like it.) Submit!! No e-mail subs, I'm afraid -- I'll work on them, but to be fair, given the way submissions are handled at university literary magazines (and by how many people), it's probably safer for you to send in print subs anyway.

Also, they're trying to raise funds towards print publication, and to that purpose, are having a raffle. Only it's not a raffle, it's a drawing, for complicated legal reasons. There are a lot of cool prizes, mostly in Chicago, unfortunately, but if you'd like to either buy raffle tickets ($5 each, or a book of 5 for $20) or just donate to support the magazine, please let me know. I love seeing new literary magazines start up -- may a forest of magazines flower! (Yes, mixed metaphor, I know.)

Today -- bike to campus (wish me luck), lit class (poem "Warning" and intro to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, fix airport on computer and/or get ethernet adapter, workshop (Le Guin and reading "A Jury of Her Peers"), bike home. 3-5 p.m., work on DesiLit stuff.

And because yesterday wasn't enough, more cute Kavi photos:

She LOVES outside. If you let her out on the balcony, she'll happily just hang out there for a very long time -- sitting on the ledge and hanging out to the rails, toddling up and down the length of it. It's too cute.

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So, I took my bike into the shop for an annual tune-up, and you guys are going to laugh -- but you want to know why I had such a hard time biking the last few days? Apparently my lock had gotten twisted around and was pressing into my brake line, pulling on the brakes, so that yes -- I was braking the entire eight miles or so that I tried to bike in the last couple of days. Brilliant.

As an antidote to that unnecessary pain (although maybe, hopefully, it was good exercise at least), adorable toddler photos...

The author at work.

Just hangin' out.

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Busy day, tons to do. Here's a quote to tide you over:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

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Play workshopped -- it was 13 pages, which I thought meant it was 3 minutes too long, but it actually read twice as long as it was supposed to be, dammit. Mostly positive feedback, except that clearly it drastically needs to be pruned for stage. I really need to learn how to a) give the actors everything they need to understand what's going on in the play, but b) leave room for them to bring their half of the story to the play. Tricky!!! But I think I like the piece, and will try to revise it in time for the Ten Minute Play Contest, deadline 11/1. So that's cool.

I biked to and from workshop today -- six miles, round-trip, twice as far as I've gone before (but with a several hour break in the middle). It wasn't easy, but it was do-able. We're going to drive in tomorrow, because we have a bunch of stuff to take in, but Wednesday, we're going to try biking to campus (eight miles, round-trip -- we may end up taking the subway home if we're too tired).

Have just finished picking at my syllabi and have printed them, along with my class rosters (which latter I almost always forget to do, so yay, me.) I know what building I'm teaching in, and how to get there, and what my classrooms are. Kevin is out getting groceries right now, including milk for my office tea, and cold cuts and bread for my office lunch. My clothes for tomorrow are in the washer, and I'm going to go up and move them into the dryer before bed. I think I might actually be prepared, and can watch a half hour of silly sit-com before bed. Excellent.

As I head into a new job and a new school year, I offer a poem to you -- students now, students past, students in days to come. School can be tough, but maybe this will help. I memorized this poem in high school, and I've been known to recite it out loud in ringing tones when the occasion warrants.

Yes, I'm a big geek. That's why they made me a professor.

Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-- William Earnest Henley

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