Spring?

Today was my first outside run of the season. At least I hope that it was my first. There should be one last cold snap this month to drive me into the gym for a couple of weeks. I am not looking forward to it.

I have been gradually paring down my obligations for the rest of the term. Teaching is coming to a halt soon and I'll miss it because I genuinely like the handful of students who attend class on Fridays. I feel good knowing that they exist. For the film class, there's only one more take-home test and then half of the essays to be marked. The Czech studies conference Doctor Cz. had wanted planned shall be cancelled due to lack of interest.

Also, I successfully weaseled my way out of a conference that I had wanted to attend until I saw the program and noticed that I wasn't on it. The young stars (and I am not including myself among them) will not be present this year and someone who makes me feel all skeevey and who isn't very smart will be there. I know that I will have to play nice eventually, but I'm going to feign psychic distress and postpone adulthood. I'm actually still waiting for Doctor Cz. to scold me for backing out, but she dropped the ball first by promising to contact someone and then not doing that. I simply grabbed the dropped ball and chucked it onto the roof. We'll have to wait for Dad to get home and fetch it with the help of the ladder.

So now I only have to worry about the on-line journal issue I co-guest edit, which due to the incompetence of the webmaster, will cause more stress than it should, work on my dissertation, and write a conference paper that is actually related to my dissertation topic. Back to Mácha in the 1930s. I can hardly wait. -Zh.

P.S. I finally received the holy grail of random mail: an anonymous envelope of stuff. It was indescribably awesome.