Professional Mirror, PhD: Random morning bullets

If I spent a few hours today choosing materials for my old-new class, writing the syllabus, writing the assignments, and then working out the dates for the syllabus I am not changing for my other class, I would be free from all of my teaching and research obligations for the rest of the month. Well, at least the most pressing obligations. Would this not be awesome? Why would I not do this favor for myself?

Despite experiencing on one level the dark-night-of-the-medusa-soul anxiety I wrote about yesterday, I am also doing things like waking myself up from a deep sleep because I am laughing in my sleep. I have friends who do this, and I once listened to a despairing ex-boyfriend of Amy Poehler describing lovingly her tendency to laugh in her sleep on a regular basis. But this is not something I normally do. I did it a couple of times last week when I was with More Fun, but that's because we laugh so constantly when together that there is simply not enough time for all of the laughing during the waking hours. Last night I dreamed I was having dinner with a much older (imaginary) colleague and her teenage daughter. Her daughter kept disappearing into the bathroom, quite obviously to do cocaine. But I was the only person who noticed that this is what she was doing. Her mother was completely oblivious to the fact that her daughter was a crazy cokehead. (Let me explain that this cocaine factor is totally random. While you might think I encountered it on my travels with the rock-n-roll circus and while I am sure it existed in bountiful amounts around me, I do not do it and I was not aware of it.) Anyway, every time the daughter returned from the bathroom, the mother would say with a knowing smile, "Beware the Ides of March." On her last visit to the bathroom, I heard the daughter mutter under her breath, "Yeah, Beware the Ides of Coke." This is what had me laughing so hard that I woke myself up at 3:30 a.m. And I actually still find it hilarious this morning, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone who would like to offer an interpretation of this or explain it as proof of my incipient insanity, please feel free.

Is it just me, or is Project Runway terribly boring this season? Has it jumped the shark so soon? I am sure people are blogging about this somewhere.

Some things I want to blog about but cannot seem to get it up to do so: 1) my annual birthday resolutions, which this year involve correspondence, learning to sew, and financial stuff; 2) my "Year without Cigarettes," quit-smoking reflection post; 3) a return to discussing great mirror scenes in movies or maybe a Great Mirror Scenes contest of some sort; and 4) a post about blogging boundaries (what people feel comfortable blogging about, what they absolutely will not blog about, whether it is a personal thing or if some kind of blogging boundary etiquette exists).