Hello, computer...

So, in the midst of driving all over the great state of North Carolina this week -- to visit friends doing PhD's in Europe, help friend doing PhD at UNC move house, and help Theatre Sis get a bed frame to on of her friends in G'boro, and then driving back to the Dash(as Winston-Salem is lovingly referred to, to make up for it lacking Chapel Hill's ultra cool "The Thrill" nickname)with Opera Sis (who, I often forget, is now in fact old enough to drive *me* around. The times they are a'changin'.) -- I bought a new laptop! An HP Pavilion, in fact, which was only barely within my price range. I'm still getting used to the new machine, and frankly, when I found out late the other night that I wasn't going to understand the interface anymore anyway (seems completely different from my standard WF issue Think Pad!), I wished for a moment that I'd just gotten the cute little Mac I covet. Ah well. I'm still a PC user, at least until this thing goes.

Once again not quite ready for a real post, so a consolatory prize: this awesome post at Acephalous. The part about watching a whole season of House, all the while marvelling at how many improbable diseases show up at the Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital sounds particularly familiar. Not that I spend most of my time wondering how many times House's patients will die next episode...but I guess it is a significant portion.

I've had the particular pleasure of accomplishing things in the past twenty four hours -- I managed to plan out my draft of a syllabus *and* I got to the last folder of the Mandelbaum Collection over at Wake. Musings on both are forthcoming, as well as the other four posts I've been working on haphazardly. Although I have to say -- I'm quite excited about teaching my university's version of Freshman Writing. I can't decide if it's my boundless and often sadly ill-founded optimism talking -- but I just can't wait to get started with my teaching career. After all, that's more or less why I wanted to do this in the first place! For the moment however, I'm trying to decide how many books to try and get on the plane tomorrow...for once in my life I appear to have enough room for them.

Next time, from NYC! Goodbye summer, vacation, and North Carolina. Hello real life.

Well, as real as grad school gets, at any rate.