WEDNESDAY. 11:00 AM. I have once again signed up for thirty days of hell. This will be my third year participating in National Novel Writing Month. Clearly, I don't have enough to do. Ah well. I've managed to convince my friend Cate to join in the madness as well.

THURSDAY. 11:44 AM. The beginning of the October has come and gone. It's almost halfway through the month. Time seems to be hurtling by, and I don't have much time to blink much less breathe. Life hasn't been bad, just busy. Very busy. Before I know it, it'll be Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then the end of the semester, then Christmas, then New Year's. Crazy.

I have a little bit of down time right now. Though I really should be finishing up some grading and reading for my classes next week. I need to get better about doing things a bit more ahead of time. But after my very busy weekend, very busy Monday, very busy Tuesday, and very busy Wednesday, I am ready to just sit and vegetate on Thursday. Then Friday rolls around and the whole busy cycle starts all over again.

Last weekend was a mix of both good and bad.

Friday night, I went out with Cate and Skinner to the movies. Alenda and Brian met us at the theatre in Bethesda, MD. We went to see Lost in Translation, a new film by Sophia Coppola starting Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. It was an enjoyable movie, a puzzling movie, and a deeply quiet movie. If you like long shots of people staring out windows at the Tokyo skyline while soft techno plays in the background, then you'll like this film. It's deep, I guess. I think the movie is about loneliness, about strangeness, about discomforted (discomfited) lives. I think it's a film about finding answers in the quiet (even in the middle of the insanity of a city like Tokyo). I enjoyed it, but it will be probably a little while before I would watch it again.

Saturday began nicely. I got up, got cleaned up, got dressed, and got ready to head to campus for Family Weekend. I am nominated for the University of Maryland Parents Association Outstanding Faculty Award. So, the Parents Association was having a brunch. I was invited to attend. I was looking forward to meeting some of my current students' parents. Unfortunately, life had other plans for me. A little after 9 AM, I walked out of my house and discovered that my car was missing, gone, nowhere to be seen. At first I thought I was having a clueless moment and maybe I parked the car somewhere else (considering my lot tends to fill up). But, then, I distinctly remembered parking right near my house. What the fuck, right? I call the police and they check to see if the car's been impounded. It hasn't. So there's a good possibility that it's been stolen. Great. They say they'll send over an officer. Nearly three hours later, the cop shows up, takes my information, and leaves without so much a "how's it going?" or "sorry to hear about your allegedly stolen car." The police officer calls me shortly after talking with me to tell me that indeed my vehicle has been impounded. I call my sister to come get me and go get my car. Another couple hours and two-hundred bucks in cash later, I have my car back. It seems I need a parking permit to park in my lot. Of course, I didn't know this. Of course, my father neglected to tell me. It was a big mess.

I totally missed the brunch. I was supposed to head over to the Maryland Renaissance Festival for a co-ed wedding shower for my friend Christine. Of course, I was two hours late. I got there and everyone had just left. So I ended up walking around with my sister and her boyfriend for a few hours. I tried to have fun and enjoy myself, but the day's tribulations were weighing on me.

Saturday night, I went to a party at Meredith's house. The party was a goodbye, farewell, seeing off party for our friend John, who is being shipped off by the Navy to Italy for three years. By the time I got to the party, people were well on their way to getting completely trashed. With the day I had, I was ready to just drink myself into oblivion. But when I got to the party, I just didn't feel like drinking much. I was stressed out, frustrated, disappointed, and just plain grumpy. I tried to relax. I tried to have fun. And I wanted to make sure that John had a good send off. But shortly after midnight, I just decided to go home. I needed to bring Saturday to a close and just sleep. Pictures are here.

Sunday, I spent the morning working on stuff for school, reading, and grading papers. Around noon, my sister came over to prepare food for our Monday night class. Since our readings class is from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM, our professor thought it woudld be nice to have food every meeting. So, all of the students signed up to provide some sort of dinner. The first class was cheese and crackers. The second class was bread and spreads. The third class was pizza. The fourth class was homemade couscous. Of course, when it came around to our turn, Alenda and I totally gave into our overachieving tendencies. So, we spent a couple of hours on Sunday getting our menu ready. We made Chinese dumplings -- she made turkey dumplings with ginger and green onion and I made vegetarian dumplings with mushrooms and spinach. We also made an Asian green salad with a spiacy sesame, garlic, and ginger vinagrette. We made some plain white rice. And for dessert I made a cranberry-banana bread. It was a lot of food.

Sunday afternoon and evening, I had Tellings. It was fun, though most of my players were recovering from the party the night before. After gaming, I graded some more.

Monday was all right. Long as usual. After teaching and office hours, I hurried home to get the dumplings cooked up and to bring everything to class that night. I even made up little "Cafe Chang & Chang" menus. Our food was a big hit. Both Alenda and I love cooking for people. It was good to have people enjoy our food. It made for a good class.

Tuesday, the plumber/handyman was supposed to come by to finally get my plumbing straightened out. But he called and had to reschedule. So I ended up packing up my school stuff and heading over to the coffee house to do some work. I was at the coffee house for almost six hours. I got quite a bit of grading and reading done. Then I came home and just zoned out in front of the TV (I rarely watch television anymore). After a bit of a break, I did a couple more hours of grading and hit the hay.

Wednesday was teaching and class. Wednesday night, Alenda and I went to a poetry reading by one of the graduate MFA students. It was pretty good. Then I went to the coffee house to meet Cate and hang out.

Today, I had a Speakers Bureau to do in the morning. I really enjoy speaking in front of a classroom, particularly if it's about LGBT issues. It went pretty well, I think. Now, I'm going to try to finish the last bits of my grading before tomorrow. And the plumber is supposed to come by this afternoon. Here's hoping it happens! Then, I might treat myself to a quiet evening at the coffee house...

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SATURDAY. 11:00 AM. Happy National Coming Out Day!

SUNDAY. 9:01 AM. Yawn. It's a sleepy Sunday morning. I tried to sleep in this morning, but pretty much woke up around 8 AM and couldn't fall back asleep. I had two anxiety dreams this morning. I don't remember the first one at all, but I do remember waking up from it and feeling totally freaked out. The second dream had me in some sort of class -- I think it was a class about teaching -- and the professor was having us look at a writing textbook. The professor, who was a woman, surprised the class with an exam. We had to write about the textbook, why it was useful, why it wasn't useful. Everything went wrong for me during the exam. Even the professor was making fun of me, unsympathetic, and rude. I think the dream ended with me walking out of the exam and walking out of the class entirely. The second part of the dream was completely unrelated. I was in a meeting with a few people, one of whom was my book agent or something like that. But, again, it had something to do with teaching. Maybe she was my teaching agent -- if there was such a thing. During the meeting, the agent tried to take advantage of me trying to use her status as a way to molest me sexually. I refused and she threatened to ruin my career. But there were other people in the room who were witnesses and stood up for me. Again, I left the meeting, left my agent, and got into the back of a limousine and drove away. Then I woke up. That's all I remember, unfortunately. I'm still a little rattled.

I might just be a little stressed. I do have a midterm exam next week, which I don't feel particularly ready for. I have a campout weekend to plan for and run for Archaea in two weeks. And I have NaNoWriMo in a little over two weeks away. Plus, I have all the regular everyday stresses and stuff to worry about. I guess I just have to try to take it a day at a time.

The past weekend has already been pretty filled to the brim. Friday, I had teaching. Many students made appointments to talk to me on Friday about rewriting their first assignment. Then I went to the "march out, speak out" on campus for National Coming Out Day. It was a small affair. We were a group of about twenty students and faculty carrying brightly colored balloons marching around the main mall of campus. We chanted, "Hey hey ho ho homophobia's got to go!" or "Two four six eight are you sure your roommate's straight?" or "We're here we're queer we're fabulous don't fuck with us!" After the march, we ended up at the small amphitheatre near the student union. People got up to speak about coming out, about being LGBT on campus, and about the importance of allies.

Friday night, I drove over to Cate and Skinner's to meet up with folks. Cate, Skinner, myself, Meredith, and Dana headed up to Baltimore for the Fell's Point Ghost Tour (which starts at aMuse Toy Store, 1623 Thames Street). We met a bunch of other people in Baltimore. The tour was interesting -- a lot of sordid history about the Fell's Point district of Baltimore -- though our tour guide seemed a little inexperienced and it was difficult to get into the "spirit" of things with traffic and Friday night revelers in the way. After the ghost tour (which lasted only about an hour), we decided to eat at Brick Oven Pizza (otherwise known as BOP, 800 S. Broadway, no website), which seemed to be the local hangout for punky kids and cops (go figure?). After pizza, we went to The Bar (1718 Lancaster, no website), a tiny, one room, hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar that looked like, smelled like, and was dark like someone's basement. Normally, I like divey little places, but this place was a little too grungy for me. After The Bar, we headed up to Leadbetters (1639 Thames Street), which was one of the haunted sites on the ghost tour. We had a few drinks, listened to an acoustic guitar duo Pete & Rachel, and basically had a good time. The musicians were really cool, pretty good, and interacted with us a lot. They didn't mind when we tried to name their duo "Vaginal Majesty" -- they though it was a great name but just didn't quite fit their ethos. We made requests. They sang as many as they knew. I even completely flummoxed Rachel as she was singing Sheryl Crow's "Strong Enough" by changing the lyrics to "Are you strong enough to be my tam...pon?" as if singing the jingle to a Tampax commercial. Cate ran with it and we sang:

Rachel, who was a good sport, totally laughed and forgot the next verse of the song. We helped her out by singing it for her. It was an interesting night. I had fun.

Saturday, I got up early to get ready for Archaea. It turned out to be a long game; we played nearly five hours. It was fun, but exhausting. After Archaea, I came home, showered, and got ready for Call of Cthulhu. Normally, this particular gaming group played on Friday nights, but we decided to switch to Saturday nights to fit people's schedules better. Everyone showed up around 6:30 PM. Unfortunately, the night's game didn't go as well as the day's game. We tried to play, but our hearts weren't in it. I was tired and distracted and didn't like where the adventure was going. So, I just "cancelled" and said we'd try again next time. Then we just all sat around in my living room and talked. It was a nice, chill, uneventful night.

Today, Sunday, I need to clean the house, do laundry, and do some reading for school. I might to a run over to IKEA, the coffee house, and the grocery store, too. Then, we have gaming tonight. Yay, Tellings!

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WEDNESDAY. 11:00 AM. Happy birthday to my father!

TUESDAY. 10:08 AM. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy.

I think that gets the point across. I have too much to do. I keep hoping we'll discover some sort of time-space distortion that will give us an eighth day of the week. Ah well. I'm not quite to the point of drowning, but I definitely can't touch the bottom of the pool with my feet any more.

Last Friday, after classes (which were oddly off and grumpy that day), I hung out at home for a few hours trying to shake off the weirdness of the day. Then I drove over to my friend Ryan and Matt's house (the gay boys). From there, we drove up to Baltimore to have dinner with their friend (and I guess now my friend) Erik to celebrate his birthday and housewarming. We had dinner at Mount Vernon Stable and Saloon. Then we made the short walk to Erik's new apartment, which is in the heart of the Mount Vernon area (also known as Baltimore's gay ghetto). It was a pretty chill evening.

Saturday morning, I got up very early and headed over to Cate and Skinner's. Myself, the Maynards, Meredith, Jesse, Shawn, Christine, Ryan, Kelle, and Allison drove up to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. It was a long day of walking around, shopping, eating, watching a few shows, and general lollygagging about. It was a fun day. Though I didn't have as much fun this year as I did last year.

Saturday night, after everyone got cleaned up and out of their fest garb, we all went to dinner at Chevy's in Greenbelt, MD.

Sunday, I spent most of the day at the coffee house. I hung out, chatted with Nicole (who works Sunday mornings), and read as much of Darwin's Origin of Species as I could. I was there for almost six hours, I think. I got to talk to Noah (who works Sunday afternoons), who is also one of Dr. Olmert's former students; he's very cute and articulate and emo-trendy in a good way.

Sunday afternoon and evening was gaming.

Yesterday, Monday, was a full day of teaching, office hours, and last minute studying for my Myth midterm. I haven't taken a midterm, much less an exam, in years and years. The midterm went all right, I think. Not too bad.

Now, I have to finish reading Darwin and about fifty pages from my rhetoric of science book. I really should get a stack of papers graded before tomorrow. And I have to get to work on putting the Archaea campout together considering it's this coming weekend! I have way too much to do. Though, with my midterm over, I have one less pressure on me, which is way good. Now to tick off a few more things on my to do list.

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MONDAY. 10:25 PM. I somehow made it through another long Monday. This particularly Monday was rainy, windy, and chilly. This particular Monday fell after a very long, exhausting weekend. This particular Monday was tiring, stressful, disappointing, painful, and lonely. But I made it through. Tomorrow is Tuesday, which tend to be much better days. Maybe the weather will be better, too.

FRIDAY. 6:43 AM. Happy Halloween! Happy Samhain! I hope everyone has a great (and safe) day and night!