sukha?

i want a sukha semester. i want one that is agreeable and easy and full of grace. i want one where i feel less obligated to pick fights with my male administrators.

i told my grad students today that i am in the mood to give them all the heisman. and really what i want to do is give the undergrads the boot.

i was on central campus today in a series of meetings -- planning our january conference on arts and community-based partnerships, one that will feature such famous people that i do not even know them, except that the main man, a righteous poet, sekou sundiata once pointed me to these totally delish desserts at a reception. i was contemplating whether and how many to cram into my pockets to take back to my hotel room and he intervened in my dithering. at any rate, we are planning a conference that promises to be great fun. (not the conference planning i have been involved in on north campus where i was having a total fit with the dean). i skiddaddled out of there after a little dunning and matchmaking for my february visitor, anu, and then made it afam for my faculty meeting there. during the meeting, such eyerolling and tomfoolery. i like the super junior people in the unit -- we laugh a lot and generally work together well. and i like sitting near them in the meetings. today, our hot meal there was lucky kitchen chinese food. kevin, our chairperson, sees to it that we get a hot meal every time we do anything extracurricular in the department. i used to laugh about this, but now, i see that this is actually important to him and quite nice. i still think it extravagant, but it is nice. and i get it now.

anyway, evidently while i was off in my other department the grad students were wearing quite a path to my office door looking for me. i think that their eager faces in the office window wore down my bunkmate, christina. when i finally landed on north campus, i got totally bumrushed and bogarted. christina said that i need to post some "rules of engagement" on my office door and on the facebook page where students have registered their "man crushes" on me.

at the outset of class, one of my grad student pals confessed as she totally rushed the podium while i was setting up the .ppt, "i'm kind of a stalker." to which i replied: "i'm kind of a heisman trophy."

just you ask miss bird what kind of stalker i am. ask kristin about how we spent saturday and sunday mornings pretty much throughout high school cruising homeland looking for her boy. i know all about stalking. on-line and in front of the white house.

two students in planning went to the supreme court on monday to hear the supreme court case on race-based configurations of K-12 school placement. so, at the outset of class, i asked them to talk about their time there and why they felt it important to go to d.c. to watch a supreme court case. it was so unbelievably odd to hear them talk about my old hood -- our old hood -- on the hill while i sat in a classroom in michigan. ( i miss you too miss bird. so much. i miss our merry little street. i miss marcus eng and exotica. i miss the baptist parkers and skeletor. i miss the epplis and joyce. i miss the keefes and greg. i miss the bike room and the laundry. i miss your phone calls to 311 and our annual snowy hamburgers).

at any rate, today we continued our conversations on urban gardens and food security. at one point, joe, a student i quite like, rejected the notion proposed by the radical marxists and black liberationists i had them consider in the readings. he explained, "we need not live 'off the grid,' we need to work on the grid. it was really nice as he said it.

i understand that most of my crankiness may be attributed to the full moon. i figured this out during yoga tonight with julie.

i booked my tickets for d.c. today.

best line on nip/tuck this season: "you're the prettiest girl i ever kissed that didn't steal one of my organs."