My undying gratitude goes to Brent for sending me a link to this video on YouTube:
Even with my overdeveloped sense of irony, I can’t resist loving early Genesis. But I won’t blame the rest of you for giggling through the vid, especially if you make it to the part where Peter Gabriel starts playing the flute. Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout!
Okay cats and kittens, here’s the latest list of things that are irking my jive.
Location, location—what was the third thing again?
My place of employment is engaged in a half-hearted (and half-witted) attempt to relocate from the place it’s been for the entire 33 years of its existence. The current prospects are: 1) a lovely, spacious, modern building in the heart of the Square that’s close to all kinds of stuff and actually has room for everyone on staff; or 2) a cockeyed, ramshackle dog of a building that is about 40% of our current size and perhaps 20% as charming—if you keep one eye closed and a bottle of vodka handy. But the hard fact here is that option 1 isn’t even a true prospect, because there’s no money to pay the lease that would come with it. I wish I’d never seen it in the first place, just to have my hopes raised and then summarily squashed flatter than hammered shit. And to the university whose name we bear, I ask: Where is the love, comrades? How about offering us a space that’s larger than Khrushchev’s shoe?
I know it’s almost over where you are, but here in EDT it’s just getting started. I hope your day has been bitchin! Have a big plate of calamari tempura on me.
I got an email out of the blue today from one of my students from Russian 101 back in 1994. Of course I remember her, since there’s so much personal interaction in language classes and the students spend the first couple of years just learning how to talk about themselves. It’s definitely flattering that she remembers me. That was my first quarter teaching, and I was probably a pretty lousy teacher. Then again, 101 students always have the best impression of you. You’re like the Oracle at Delphi, writing mysterious characters on the board and speaking in tongues. The students are all optimistic and fresh, and everything is fun and games. By 104 three quarters later, they’re completely demoralized by the strangeness of Russian grammar and beaten down by complexities such as motion verbs and verbal aspect. It was at that point that I was hearing one girl lean over to another and utter in a stage whisper, “She hates me!” And how could I forget the student who wrote with unexpected candor in his instructor evaluation of me that he didn’t work very hard in the class because was just trying to pass. He did—just barely.
Today was the first day of classes here at the ivy-encrusted university where I work. I sure don’t miss grading workbook exercises every night, or trying to figure out an engaging way to introduce the dative plural. (I don’t think there is one.) But it’s nice to know that somebody learned something because I was there to help.
Just like the date-stamp says, it’s September 14, which means it’s the tenth wedding anniversary for Steve and me. It’s a standard assumption that getting married changes things, but for me I don’t think it really changed anything. Steve was my best friend and the most important person in my life before the big day, and he has been the same ever since. Maybe getting married actually changed everyone around us, since the government and the law and the people around us had to acknowledge what I had already known.
Anyway, that day back in 1996 was a great one. A fun party, perfect weather, my stepbrother-in-law taking my sister’s dare to roll all the way down the grassy hill outside the reception site. And of course, the magisterial trashing of one of the crappiest cars I ever drove. I’m still grateful to everyone who took pictures, especially Laura who captured the best one of all, the mobster shot (email me if you want to see the pic). 
With that threesome it can only mean that last week was our mostly annual trip to Maine. If you don’t know anything about Acadia National Park or Bar Harbor, start Googling. This year was the fourth visit, and it was great to be back. Now let’s break down the three Bs.
On Day Three, which was supposed to be recovery day, we rented the aforementioned mountain bikes and hit some of the more difficult carriage roads. I’d been on some of them before, but we did two sections that we hadn’t done before and that had some great views. It’s really satisfying to dog up a hill and realize that it’s the same one I had to walk the bike up a couple of years ago. And we went much farther in terms of distance than anything we’d tried before.
Andre Agassi played his last professional tennis match today. He’s an interesting chapter in my interaction with sports figures, because he’s the only one that I used to passionately hate, but now completely love. How did it happen? After much self scrutiny and analysis, I can only conclude that it must have been the hair. He used to have that nasty, nasty mullet. Going bald was definitely the best thing that happened to that guy. But I kid—it was also his transformation from cocky asshole to gracious sportsman.
