Teh craziness

Oddly (or perhaps predictably?) I've found myself wanting to blog lately, just as my life has turned waaay crazy with pressures of every stripe. Unfortunately, I don't really have time to give any of my envisioned posts the attention they require. This is why they invented random bullets, no?

• We're moving in two weeks. TWO WEEKS. I only just began packing boxes to mail two days ago.
  
• I start teaching again in a little over a month. I'll have something like 150 students and no TAs. They will all be writing at least two papers, plus exams. Remind me why it was the right decision to go back to my job?
• I want to write some kind of tribute to Phantom Scribbler, whose blogging somehow (I mean in ways I both can and cannot articulate) made a real difference to me these last two years. Instead--suffering from a fear of embarrassing her as well as myself--I'll just leave it at that. Thanks, Phantom!!
  
• We're having a yard sale tomorrow, selling most of the bigger toys we've bought for my daughter while here. She'll be with friends during it, but I'm really worried she's going to freak when she eventually sees that certain items are no longer around the house.
• On a different note: I had an analytical NPR moment yesterday, while listening to Bush respond at the press conference to the question of whether he feels at odds with democracy in going against the will of the people in his Iraq policy. His answer was: though he like everyone else wants to "be loved," he doesn't make decisions based on their "popularity," but rather is guided solely by "principle." He repeated the word "principle" several times. My brilliant insight: By rhetorically reducing the idea of representative government, of democracy itself, to a "popularity" contest, and to the desire to be loved, he basically skirted the question (no surprise) while effectively giving democracy the finger. And to suggest that leading solely by "principle" is a good thing, that having principles in and of itself makes one capable of leadership whatever those principles might be, strikes me as highly, and dangerously, undemocratic.
  
• Enough of that. On a lighter, but for me equally fear-inspiring note, even though it's also a good thing: I finally started trying to get a publisher for my book, and how have at least one editor expressing serious interest and wanting to see the whole manuscript. You'd think that by now (and I'm not even going to say how many years, off and on, this project has been on my plate) I'd have a complete manuscript to send. But, alas, there's that darned introduction to write, not to mention fine tuning of two of my chapters. So, on top of moving and preparing three courses, I have to finish my book. In the next month.
• Did I mention the craziness of my life right now?
  
• I think I'll stop there, though, believe me, I could go on and on.