extremely brief weekend report:

friday: had been making tentative plans with fafou and darthrami to meet saturday afternoon when i went to buy shoes. also made plans with friend M. afternoon, had sinus headache; by evening, had progressed to nasty scratchy tickle in throat. tonsils slightly swollen. sprayed chloraseptic and went to bed.

saturday: woke up 9-ish, intending to put some things in a bag, hop in the car, and head up to meet M and faf and rami, etc. felt like utter crap, and quickly self-diagnosed: tickle in throat had, as usual, been harbinger of sinus infection. all the (icky) signs were there. called student health; they wouldn't prescribe antibiotics without seeing me in person, but they said "we're not busy, so come on down." went on down, got antibiotics, day proceeded as planned (except i hadn't planned the head-cold aspect of the thing).

CHECK ENGINE LIGHT CAME ON AGAIN. BASTARDS. it seemed to be doing the same vague stuttering too-much-gas thing, though, so given that two-week-old repair is still under warranty (parts) and guarantee (labor), won't have to pay again to have same work done.

got to DC, bought shoes, had lunch, headed out to the LJ-less terri's to see katbear (does she have an LJ?) and the_emu, huzzah, huzzah. (had been planning this for -- literally -- months, and of course it was the same night as mearagrrl's birthday party. i understand that was a rockin' good time. sorry i missed it. :-( ) had dinner, made some notes on terri's next part of "sometimes you fly", watched reign of fire and heckled the hell out of it. up discussing Plot Ideas with emu until 4 am.

sunday: more chatting, more discussing, more notes. emu and i took terri's kid to the mall, where she wanted to go to hot topic; got buttons for emu and self reading "i'm not a role model". katbear returned and rami joined us, and we watched (and heckled) the two towers. dinner, schmoozing, came home because despite tomorrow's status as a legal public holiday -- and the fact that the university is closed, administratively speaking -- classes still meet. must load up on drugs and hot beverages. no doubt Cruel Fate finds it amusing that my first day of actual teaching will be spent in the throes of a nasty head cold. grr, argh.

but, got to see the_emu. yay, yay! yay!

i don't think it's just because i'm a linguist.

setup: friend C, mentioned in the stratford trip report, has been with her boyfriend for [counting on fingers] like seven years now. they've been living together for at least four of those years, possibly five. he's moved to different cities twice because of her work and school relocations (this is relatively low-impact for him, being self-employed).

so i (and eight zillion of her closest friends and family members) get an e-mail from her on friday with the subject line "new address" and the text "sorry for the mass e-mail -- i've moved. [new address] [new phone number]. nice place. had a good summer [research trip for doctoral work]. am now frantically unpacking and planning for fall semester. talk to you all soon."

is it totally insane of me that my first reaction was "uh-oh ... she's moved"?

now, granted, a mass e-mail saying "here's my new address" isn't how you'd normally think a person would notify everyone she knows that her relationship of long standing has ended. but this girl, you know, it could be. "i've moved" could easily be code for "i'm not ready to Talk About It just yet, but here's something you should know." so i said "glad you had a good summer. am i permitted to ask how come you moved? (i was surprised not to see "we've moved", if moving was happening ...)"

and now i get back "oh. no, never fear, we moved, i just didn't think to phrase it that way. bad C. ex-landlord gave us precisely 30 days' notice that he'd decided to let his sister live in the house instead of us. so now we live somewhere else."

am pleased to have been wrong.

head cold update

( i don't think it's TMI, but what do i know. )

off to class now. yes.

am now teacher-lady!

have taught first section. not much to discuss vis-a-vis what has been introduced in lecture, so i reviewed that and went on to the english consonant inventory. tomorrow's section is about twice the size of today's, and has a lower freshman:other ratio, so maybe they'll talk more. had a half-hour conversation with one kid after class who wants to take the discussion without taking the lecture (he needs five classes and at least fifteen hours; his four existing classes add up to 14; the lecture is worth three, which he doesn't mind, but it meets at an inconvenient time for him, which he does). funnily enough, this is not actually a completely insane idea -- but i don't think it's the best idea i've ever heard. recommended he talk to the professor who teaches the lecture, the director of the linguistics committee, and the professor who teaches history of english, which is a serious gut and doesn't have the intro class as a prereq. may or may not see him again next week.

my temperature is now 98.3, but i feel a great deal better than i felt this morning -- still stuffy, but more that hopped-up-on-decongestants feeling in which the sinuses are still congested but the mouth and throat are bone-dry. am definitely feeling the sort of tightness in the skin that accompanies a fever.

and where the hell did this thunderstorm come from?