2004-05-04 - 8:53 p.m.

egads, REMEMBER ME???

Hard to believe that it has been 43 days since my last (oops this is beginning to sound like confessions of a diarist please do not send me out for 7 hail googles) entry.

Here I sit in my apartment wondering about what to say except that I am BACK, at least briefly. My world has been full of work - proposals, teaching, and uh, proposals and teaching. Intermittently I've had short breaks for things like a 10-day visit from K over Easter.

But wow, the time has just flown by. Last I wrote I was awaiting a visit from Ilonina who arrived and spread her boundless enthusiasm for NYC around me for all of 15 hours or so. It was wonderful to have her reveal how exciting a mere trip to the grocery store could be. So many foods that could not be identified. More frightening, the Irish food section where too many strange items COULD be identified...This grocery store madness (my life revolves around finding the best food) continued during K's visit - he also noted just how obscure some of our grocery store items are - I guess it comes from living in the most diverse village in the entire US of A...Anyway, to see the city through her optimistic eyes at this end-of-winter time was like a shot of tonic.

K's visit was wonderful albeit EXHAUSTING. It's hard to pack an entire relationship into ten days. But it was just comforting to have him here. In fact, as I was coming home this evening I was reflecting on how nice it would be if he were there when I arrived. Alas, it's me and the cats.

Shortly after Ilonina's visit, I had an eventful trip to a beauty salon...This is an entry in itself. Safe to say I was not pleased. Safer to say that I have been working my way through a HAIR CRISIS every since, thanking my lucky stars that hair grows out. Egads is this ever a dreadful thing that they did to my head. But I will describe my hair experience at a later date. Next time I go in I'm thinking of doing my nails. It appears that EVERYONE in Queens does their nails.

Since then my dearest friend in the world ran the London Marathon on a bum knee (yes, the word "insanity" does come to mind.) But nevertheless I wanted to put in that I was darned impressed.

I have also finished two proposals since my last entry and I am closing in on a third. By the time I leave for Germany in June I will have requested slightly over half a million dollars. Which of course doesn't mean that I will get it. But I will nevertheless keep trying.

I also had my first teaching evaluations - a total of five evaluations for two classes. The one evaluation from a faculty member was a glowing evaluation, which had me all puffed up for the last 24 hours.

I also had my first experience of sending a student infuriated from the classroom - she was actually astonished that I would not accept her late homework after I said multiple times last week that I could not accept late homeworks, and she tried to turn her work in after I had reviewed the answers during classtime. Also had the experience of telling a student to "look it up yourself." These are the experiences that I need to learn to cope with. And soon, I will need to cope with failing students. Sigh. I hate that.

What else has happened? Spring has put forth the most splendid effort - my goodness I step outside every morning and remember what I left behind seven years ago. And I think of those fateful words from A E Housman's "A Shropshire Lad" - the words that state, oh, how sad it is to know that if I am lucky I only have 50 more Springs in which to see the heavenly cherry blossoms.

Alas, on that happy note, I say hello again and good night until the next time (hopefully not 43 days from now).

k