Back to life, back to reality

Everyone is telling me to update this more often. And I’d like to post more regularly, I really would. I just don’t know what to say – with two classes three times a week I have a hard time finding space in my head for much else, or even switching off my teaching voice (my roommate is now reluctant to watch Canadian or crime television with me – I'm a few didactic outbursts away from being insufferable). This first day back after the break was a refresher in how unwaveringly routine and segmented each week is: Monday, Wednesday and Friday: teach, office hours, gym, office hours, teach, dinner, prep, bed (coffee breaks are implied). Tuesday and Thursday: run, write, domestic errands (such as buying more coffee), dinner, prep, bed. Repeat two days later. My planner breaks weekdays down by the hour, and I actually have to use that section. I mildly enjoy all this structure. I always know exactly what I'm doing next, and my days are a series of small tasks continually being accomplished. Full and satisfying. Like lasagne.
Today’s tasty tidbit: I taught a few of Poe’s short stories early in the term, and as a larf started one lecture with The Alan Parsons Project’s “The Raven.” Since then a bunch of students have emailed me other musical interpretations of Poe, and after class today one approached*, earphones in hand, to have me listen to an Iron Maiden version of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Rock on! I've now got nearly enough for a very macabre mixed tape.

*the same student who, in a discussion about the eroticism of violence and the violence of eroticism, mentioned that it’s easy to meet a chick you want to fuck, or a chick you want to kill, but never one you want to marry because that goes on forever. Maybe romance really is dead.