Ahhhhhhhhhhh, it's Thursday. I love Thursday! Since I'm done with classes for the week, I say that Thursday is the new Friday. Tonight I get to kick back, relax, and maybe watch a movie - an indulgence I don't have time for practically any other time of the week. The semester has well and truly started, and I am now feeling the time pinch.

This weekend will be interesting, as I'm staying in Lansing (and Emil is going to Ann Arbor to work on the house). It'll be the first weekend since we've moved here that I'll stay here on Saturday and Sunday, and, oddly and for no particular good reason, I'm wondering what I'll make of it. For some reason, I imagine that I'll be bored. I imagine I'll be bored, as if I had no friends here and no idea what or where I could do or go to amuse myself. Weird. But I suppose it's natural, in a way: Up until now, my life really hasn't been that different than it was when we lived in A2 - during the workweek I don't do anything in town except maybe go to the grocery store, and on the weekends I've been back in my old stomping ground.

Probably, truth be told, I'll amuse myself by unpacking boxes and grading papers. My clothes are about 80% unpacked, and the remaining few boxes are really starting to get to me. My study has reached a stopping-point because we have to get the window repaired, and there's a chair I want to retrieve from Youngstown, and I don't have enough bookshelves to accommodate all the books I'd planned to put in there, and I haven't had enough time to think about what I'll do about all of that . . . oh, and a biggie: I need a lamp. Right now I only have the overhead light, which is very bright and will do in a pinch but really isn't conducive to the kind of atmosphere I'm after . . .

So I'll probably spend the weekend rescuing myself from New House Limbo. And, too, I'll have time really to catch up on my classes (I got papers to grade today, and the online classes need some serious attention). And study some German; I've been skating by in that class since it began. One bright spot though: This afternoon, since I now have time to sit in my office and work rather than having to hop on the road right away, I was able to finish and send off the abstract of an article that I hope will be accepted for an edited collection. I might or might not get lucky - but more to the point, before we moved, I told myself that once we got here I'd actually be living my fantasy professor life: Working in the town I live in, with time for scholarly pursuits. Getting the abstract out the door makes me think that yeah, I might have been right about that fantasy . . .

Ah, well. I'm not going swimming tonight, so it's time to hit the road . . . I feel ragged around the edges right now from too much concentration, but after fifteen minutes on the bike I'll feel revived and refreshed and ready for that movie . . .