Random Bullets of Still Here

Apparently my one down week meant going incommunicado on the blog, which I had not anticipated. What have I been doing with my one week of complete freedom? Going out every night? Taking long walks on the coast? Hanging out with friends? Maybe even just taking my time getting things in order in the garret, clearing out from the semester and getting ready for the summer? No no no and no. Rather, I have been:

• Sleeping late every day and spending lots of time in bed reading magazines (New York, Elle, and Us Weekly, which has mysteriously starting arriving--I am not kidding! Does anyone know how these things happen?--at my house every week) and watching movies (Stranger than Fiction, The Science of Sleep, Sex and Lucia, Zizek!). I very much enjoyed Stranger than Fiction, even though the Dustin Hoffman character calls literary theory "literature theory" and has weird books for a lit prof on his office wall . . . but the Gyllenhaal! The Gyllenhaal is fantastic; I love love love both The Science of Sleep-- Gondry! Gael Garcia Bernal! The fantastically beautiful and wacky dream sequences! I was in heaven!--and Sex and Lucia; and I would like to watch Zizek! every single day if I could, though I could do without the scene in which Slavoj is shirtless in a hotel bed.
• Taking a good hard realistic look at my chances of getting tenure, as much as I reasonably can with the ever-ambiguous and ever-in-flux tenure requirements at Foggy C, and feeling very panicked indeed at what I see as the very real possibility of being out of a job in a couple of years. I am also realizing just how radically TDC has screwed me in terms of allowing me to do what I need to do to get tenure, so I have also been considering how I might keep her at bay (but not incur her wrath) this year so that I can make a last-ditch effort to salvage my chances. All of this is nervous-making.
  
• Emailing colleagues. Almost all of my communication has been on a business front, NOT with Foggy C stuff (I am refusing to answer TDC's inane and still-constant emails) but with people about various research projects. I got bad news about a publication that has been tied up for two years and looks to be either dead in the water or tied up indefinitely. I am still waiting for news about another article that I thought was already accepted but now I think may not be. All of this is of course adding to the anxiety of prior bullet.
• Indulging myself by ordering way too much from Sephora. Love Sephora. Love the confirmation emails telling me my orders have been sent to "our fulfillment center." I want to live in the Sephora fulfillment center.
• Paying bills, running a million errands, and getting appointments--eye doctor, dentist--out of the way. (I guess this counts as getting my life, if not my physical surroundings, in order.)
• Working out like it's my job. I am frustrated that spending 50 full-out minutes on the elliptical every single day and eating a low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb diet with not a drop of (ack! I voice the blasphemy!) alcohol for an entire week apparently = 1/2 lb weight loss. What the fuck?
  
• Spending some very nice quality time with this adorable creature, who has been very companionable in the sleepy laziness around here.
  

So, as you can see, I really know how to have me some fun on my week off. Seriously, though, I know that the good times are coming soon enough and that I needed this week of going underground--being alone, thinking, and regrouping. This coming week I have to plan my summer class and write a massive and massively annoying document for the department, which has zero meaning in terms of getting tenure but which, if you ask TDC, is The Most Important Thing in the Whole Wide World. After that, the summer is mine. Full of work, but mine.