Of sleeping positions, other people's emails, and wearing costumes to graduate classes.

Find your own pose!

I shouldn't really afford the time to write here tonight, so I'll just copy and paste the email that I sent to my brother's girlfriend. How's that? Loyal viewers of the Nilly Milly show will particularly appreciate the last little chunk of information--my latest and greatest scheme.

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Hi!
What's up with you guys?
I picked up the Augustus Borroughs book yesterday actually, and (accidentally) read a chapter while waiting for Andy to get ready to go out. Excellent first story--I'm really looking forward to reading the rest, after I'm through with this teaching madness. I was assigned to teach Julius Caesar and had almost all of my stuff ready to go, but my assignment was changed three days before my teaching's supposed to begin, so I am now frantically putting together a month-long writing unit. Bollocks. I start on Tuesday and will be flying off the seat of my pants.

Have you gotten around to reading any of the Jonathan Safran Foer stuff? (I miss reading.)

One of my night-classes is incredibly bad this term, to a painful (yet somehow hilarious) extreme. The lecturer is the head of the Education department--a frumpy, curly-haired, peach polyester suit-wearing makeup cake who really should have retired some twenty five years ago. She never smiles, and if she did, she would probably combust. Stony-faced, she drones on for hours about how teaching is like being a doctor... and she lectures about the "vital signs of learning" while our class of 70 grad students gradually glaze over and begin to drool. (You have to check your pulse after class just to make sure you're still alive; vital signs of learning are non-existent.) After enduring this torture for three weeks, my best friend Shay and I have decided that this farce of a class simply cannot go on as scheduled. We're devising jaw-dropping costumes to wear each week to class as a pair. For our debut next week, we're going as mad scientists (with lab coats, goggles, charcoally faces, and disastrous hair). If asked, we're going to say that we've been lesson planning.
The week after that, we're going as German yodelers (complete with leiderhosen and fucking hilarious hats with feathers). After that, we might actually dress as the professor herself. Or as rabbis with beards and sideburns, if we can find the right stuff.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes, assuming that Shay and I aren't crucified or beaten to death with metal-edged rulers.

When are you guys coming back to Oregon?
Tell Nojo hello for me.
Cheers,
Nicole

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Also: got into a big spat with the ex-boyfriend Chicago trustafarian, and have made myself a glorious enemy that I have to deal with in each and every class for the next year. Brillig.

And: I am feeling in love with Andy again, which is very, very good.