Next week is the last class, but I won't be lecturing. There will be cupcakes, poetry games and final manuscripts due. It will be fun, but it won't be ordinary. So today was kind of it. My last chance to teach for a while.

God, I think I'm going to stand up there on the last day of class and cry like a baby. I am already getting maudlin every time I think about it. And yet, what can I say here that I haven't said a thousand times already? I love teaching, I love my students, I love my class.

I keep trying to think of it as a great opportunity to have had, but it doesn't work. I just think, man, it's almost over. When will I get to do it again?

So, I got my Niedecker paper back, finally, and I got an A. Yay! I worked so hard for that damn grade.

On Friday my final paper is due in that class, on Elizabeth Bishop. There's an overwhelming amount of Bishop material out there, but I decided to focus my paper on one of the "unfinished" poems found among her papers. It was published in the New Yorker, and reprinted in Best American Poetry 2000. It's an explicit lesbian sex poem. Of course it is.

Laurie and I spent last Friday in the labyrinth that is the UC Berkeley library, but all of the books on Bishop were checked out. I did find some articles online by searching some databases you can only access from a UC Berkeley computer. And I found the very issue of the New Yorker (February 2000) that the poem was first printed in. (No ancillary commentary, though.)

I am slightly nervous. I don't want to turn this into an "Elizabeth Bishop: Big Lesbian" type of paper, which is where all the relevant commentary seems to be coming from. And I get nervous about doing original thinking, as you well know. It's also exhilarating, knowing that this poem is a mystery, a puzzle that I can work towards solving. I've already discovered some interesting patterns within it, and I'm starting to be able to locate it in Bishops body of work.

To sum up: I've got some ideas fluttering about in the Brain o' Mo, and I've got a week. Something brilliant may well surface.

A new Albertsons supermarket opened by my house. As an American in 2001, it takes a lot for me to be impressed by a store. But this supermarket is impressive.

First of all, it's huge. I mean... it's huge. Imagine the biggest grocery store you've ever been inside, plus a decent sized drug store, plus a bank, plus a drycleaners, plus a Starbucks café (complete with tables and chairs) right in the middle of it all.

I went to the supermarket because I wanted to check out the new Starbucks. It was already closed by the time I got there, so I just started walking around.

There are request forms hanging in the aisles, where you can request any product that they may not carry. There's no magazine aisle: there's a reading section. Automatic misting machines are installed in the vegetable section. There are full sized wedding cakes in the cake section, which has some type of fog machine going on. And, I kid you not, there's a walk-in beer cooler. A huge walk-in beer cooler.

It was overwhelming, really. I went in to get a cup of coffee and I left with two cases of Diet Coke, Ritz crackers, cookies, fifty cents worth of cream cheese, a bag full of fresh broccoli and some sushi. I went home and opened the bag and thought, "Sushi? Cream cheese? What just happened?"

Then I ate the sushi. Mmm, it was good.

I don't have any money right now (oh, the familiar refrain of the graduate student) and Christmas is coming up, but I made a big purchase today. I bought an espresso machine.

I feel guilty about spending money I don't have on something that I don't need, but it was an impossibly good opportunity. Today was the last day that Starbucks employees get 40% off everything. (They do it once a year, for Christmas.) On top of that, my manager was willing to sell me a floor model, which got me an extra 20% off. On top of that, it was on sale. So I was able to get a pricey espresso machine for next to nothing. I guarantee you that would never happen again.

When I thought about how much coffee I drink now, the expense became wholly justifiable. This is the kind of thing that really does pay for itself. If I drink fifty lattes, it's paid for.

And now I have a pretty shiny black espresso machine! With a bitty steam wand and everything. Even after I bought all the accoutrements (and there are a lot--I didn't even have a coffee mug) my total was fairly low. That's because I get free coffee, and my manager gave me a free pitcher, and I got 40% off everything else.

Of course, this means that I have to go to the grocery store tonight and buy some milk. I'll probably walk out of there with ten pounds of baby carrots and a weed whacker.

"I felt so bad for this poor bird with the traumatized look on his little face, I just gave the thumbs up sign and figured, well, what the hell. "