July 17, 2014

Welcome-home dinner for K at Avenue M, then the crowd retired to my place, some of them to take it in for the first time.  I’m an awkward host. What lights to turn on for atmosphere? Should there be music? Offer what to whom? The cats are far better at it, offering their immediate affection and interest.

The burly lawn guys were here yesterday. The mower got jammed on the back of their truck, and there was a great struggle to release it.  One of them was goofy and the other was serious. The goofy one made the serious one smile. They work at a furious pace.

Reading applications for our opening at the university. They are so detailed and professional, so savvy about the correct jargon, it makes me wonder how I ever got a job. Someone should write a book on the rising and ebbing tides of what I call fake disciplines, disciplines that are all the rage for a while, and everybody does a dissertation on them and brags about intimacy with them in their cover letters, and then they disappear. It was Deconstruction in my day, I think.