orichalcum

I had a dream last night in which I went to sleep. This was odd. It was not the main part of the dream - there was a barbecue party going on at the pseudo-Junction* and in the early stages I got tired and went upstairs to take a nap. And I _remember_ falling asleep, in the dream. Also the rest of the dream, which largely involved a quest for pineapple, so I could slice it into chunks and lightly caramelize it, as my contribution to the party.

*I have a fairly consistent alternate dream landscape, with various places consistently showing up: alternate-Yale, for instance, a carnival/waterslide park which shows up periodically, and a few other places. Oddly, I now also apparently have an alternate-Junction. It is similar to the Junction, but with much nicer weather, and a big backyard, and much roomier 2nd and 3rd floors. I appear to sleep in the attic when I am there. Also, the kitchen is yellow and green.

And my dread headache has returned. This sucks. Off to lunch, blood-donation, strike-voting, picking up keys for the lecture tonight, picking up slide carousels and toting them around for the lecture tonight, class, dinner, lecture, and finally home.

My day has been one of bounces. As you may remember from my last post, when last I left you, gentle reader, I planned to:

A. Go have lunch with my friend Melissa. Successfully and happily done. Then went to the local library book sale and picked up 2 Turtledoves, including Ruled Britannia, for 1$ each, and a Tarr for 50 cents.

B. Go vote on the graduate student union strike. Foiled. Apparently, you can't vote on whether or not to strike unless you've already filled out a card saying you're a member of the union. (If you remember, they're considering striking as a method of getting someone neutral and official to count the cards.) So, as someone who _doesn't want a union_, I can't vote.

C. Went to donate blood. Rejected. I have spent too much time in England, and am thus still Not Good Enough for the people who call me up 4 times a week in the shower to ask for my husband's blood.

D. Went to pick up slide carousels and keys and stuff from the art history dept. Easily accomplished. As bonus, got free copy card for art history library from friend, went and copied lots of useful dissertation stuff.

E. Checked email. Got email from Bryn Mawr Classical Review, which gets emailed to several thousand classicists each week, saying they'd provisionally accepted my review of my archnemesis! My first publication! OK, it's only a book review, and it's short, and it will make me enemies, and it's only online, and it won't pay me anything, but it's in a major academic journal that gets read by lots of people!

F. Checked second email. Got email about upcoming jobs in my field. UPenn is advertising for a Roman Historian at any level, for fall 2005! Dream Job.

G. Went and ran lecture and dinner, staving off headache. Advisers think Bryn Mawr thing is great; think I should totally work towards UPenn job, think I need to work on dissertation like mad, get it done by January interviews.

I have a new goal. It is a stretch. It will force me to stop spending many wasteful hours netsurfing and actually write this darn thing. But maybe, just maybe, I could get a tenure-track job , in my field, at UPenn...