About to go on my first adventurous bike ride into the countryside. Sans map, but with a relatively good sense of direction. Like, I know town is to the left, and farther than that is the ocean. It's a perfect Danish summer--a little cool to wear a t-shirt, but sunny, with clear blue skies. Huge puffs of dandilions cover the fields. It's very quiet.

Re: Sloppy Typing-- I go frequently to the Google Cameroun page(www.google.cm). And then I imagine myself in Cameroun, and what I would be googling there. J'ai de la chance!

rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain,rain.

I was in Cafe Q from three to five today to give back student journals and portfolios. Many students (well, six) had emailed to say they were already gone; I'm going to mail their work to them. The rest don't care, and I will have their don't-care portfolios in my linen closet until I am old and gray.
One student came right at three, apologizing for being late, and he was one of the nicest and most hardworking of them all and I wanted to say something to that effect but I was standing and a little flustered and ended up with the quick thank you have a great summer. After he left, I read Ann Truitt's journal "Turn" for two hours. At five a second student, just out of baseball practice, arrived, to my great relief, and I made him sit and talked his ear off like he was my last remaining connection to humanity.

Then I walked very slowly home in the spitting rain. I really wish right now that I knew for sure where I'm going to be in the fall. Isn't there some truism about it being easier to give something up when you know what you're gaining in return? If there isn't, I have invented a truism.
On the other hand, there's "Leap and the net will appear". But who said that? I bet it was someone living in a country with universal health insurance.

Now I have to stop worrying (and love the bomb) and go have a wonderful dinner with friends. Everything will work out. I just need to figure out a way to paint and write while retaining structure to my days.

Last day of classes at JHU ever, and I was expecting sadness, poignancy, etc., but really it just felt like any other Friday, except I went to Dunkin Donuts first thing to get two dozen "mixed assortment" and a jug of orange juice. The lady at DD did the mix herself, which I assumed was random but the second box was the exact same ratio. I ate a cake donut while preparing for class, and a glazed cake donut afterwards, so my rollercoaster blood sugar probably contributed to my odd feeling all afternoon.

Then, department party: 5 P.M. Hodgson, subdued, very little food that can be politely eaten in public, the usual suspects, S. Dixon remembering me from his retirement dinner, the hawk catching the rabbit on the lawn (that was last year, says Thomas). Gina drove us to Abell (by way of the Schnapp Shop), we ate nutter butters, talked too much about the future to be enjoying the present.

That writing about Takayama reminded me that I totally dropped the ball on helping a nice woman in Charlottesville find homestays for her students this summer. I emailed her today but it was too late to help this season; she had already moved that leg of the trip to the Lake Biwa area. I suck. So many ideas, so little follow-through.

The ice cream truck has been out in Hampden this week. Nearly every evening the mechanized tune floats its way past my window. I can’t figure out the melody—is it “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”? Dave and Wendy thought it was "Maple Leaf Rag." Does anyone know or have a guess?
I remember that in Takayama, every day around dusk, I could hear the Yaki-imo man calling from his wooden cart. It was sort of a song, or an intonation, something about grilled sweet potatoes, steaming and delicious and fresh. That sound, mixed with incense on the air and the evening bells (I lived adjacent to a Shinto shrine) is one of my strongest memories of daily life in Japan.

Apparently I once made Joe laugh by saying that Richard Powers was like Scientific American plus a Bach CD. I do not remember this at all. Oh, where are you, pedantic/brillant Richard Powers book? I gave alot away when I moved to Baltimore; this time I'm going to box all my books up ahead of time so I don't get overwhelmed and suddenly overgenerous with my belongings.

What a beautiful afternoon. Spring Fair is going on, with its funnel cakes, beergarden and moonbounce. I'm keeping my distance. Ran a long, glacially-paced, cathartic run this afternoon, then talked to my Dad, who is visiting Baltimore tomorrow. I'm going to need to clean the refrigerator tonight and make sure I have enough towels.

Update--no clean guest towels at all, so I need to get quarters for the washing machine. Bank is closed; could go to the ATM and then to Chocolatea. They've been stingy with change in the past, so I may need to do a One World/Chocolatea quarter-begging combo. Logistics!

I had a woman nearly knock me over yesterday in the Ambassador elevator. I'm on my way to class, waiting to get out on the ground level, the door opens and she charges right into me. This seems to happen all the time; folks are shocked, SHOCKED to encounter another human being in the elevator. They get all wide-eyed and flustered. Maybe I’m standing in the wrong place? Another compelling reason to take the stairs.

Wendy kindly asked me if I wanted to come over and watch a fish movie with them tonight. "What kind of fish movie?" I said. "Something Dave got at work," she said. I was delighted by the possibilities for an almost ecstatic boredom while watching a sustainable fishing documentary, but I made the hard decision to stay home and Write. So that's what I'm going to do, starting....now. Or now.

I have had it up to here with writing student recommendations. The worst is one I remember spending a good portion of a Christmas break afternoon on, matching rec letter with a dozen envelopes, program details and such, and then hearing nothing from the student until a semester later when I ran into her at the library. "Oh I decided not to do that," she said. I'm all for changing one's mind, but grrrrr.

On the other hand I've really been happy to mentor some wonderful former students and help them find their way. It's the wholr recommendation letter shenanigans that gets to me. Maybe because I still have to painfully ask for them myself.

Whatever happened to the letter of introduction as a social tool? What if you carried around a laminated letter from the most powerful person who liked you?

“Sharp pain stop, dull pain keep going,” the yoga instructor said. But he didn’t speak to the bothdullandsharp pain that appears twenty-four hours later when you try to type, or lift your arm above your shoulder. In a fit of New Year’s enthusiasm I bought an unlimited monthly yoga pass. I’m getting stronger, slowly. Still haven’t learned which instructors are better and which are the ones to avoid.
Yesterday’s instructor talked like an angry flamboyant Yoda. Lots of inverted syntax and growling. At one point, when the room was about 100 degrees and we were in warrior pose, he said, “no buzz like the yoga buzz, there is. The only greater buzz is loooove.” (The way he said love didn’t sound like he was thinking agape.) But he did play the Beatles and not all Hare Krishna music, so thumbs up.

This inflatable mattress P. and I bought has grown on me. (Ha.) At first I hated its shower-curtain smell and its tendency to deflate throughout the night. But now that I’m back to my firm and delightfully collegiate extra-long twin bed, the night-raft’s still taking up a large corner of my living room. With some pillows and blankets, it makes a good reading nest but is not going to win any design awards.

Middle-school sleepovers at A.D.’s house often involved her brother’s water bed (brother not present). It was underfilled and with a small movement of my shoulders I could create a loud slosh of inter-bed tsunami.

All this reminds me- I want to see Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. It came and went at the Rotunda in the space of a week. Anyone seen it?

I bought strawberries at Whole Foods this afternoon. They're all mutant and shiny. A beginning fuzz of mold on the bottom ones. Have cut them up and put sugar on top. Powdered sugar would be best, because granules never quite melt in.

So now I'm having strawberries in the sun. I almost need a fan in here.

Tonight is the first Orioles game of the season; I'm going to watch it at Frazier's.

The winner of my search for "mutant strawberries":