10:32 p.m. - June 20, 2002
Bull dykes & squirrely T.A.s
Things I learned today:
1) Fedoras are hot in NE DC;
2) Fedoras are out everywhere else;
3) No need to wear underwear, not even boxers, unless you want your tanks to swim in sweat. Same principle must apply to women, given the number of belly-button boobs I saw today.
Important lessons.
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My office is in a modern building but am compensated with a view.
I also have a T.A.! I've been a T.A., but never had one so this should be fun. He's the wrong gender and entirely too squirrely for me, but he doesn't seem so bad.
Charlene, the transition assistant, is a bull dyke. Laughs a lot and seems genuinely affable. I like that. She says I'm far too young looking to be a professor; at first, she thought I was a student, a fairly common occurence. When I taught at Santa Cruz I was routinely asked What Are You Doing Here when I'd use the faculty prep room. Here, it's a bit worse since the average age seems to be calculated in eons, and I stick out. There is another young prof down the hall from Tulane and turns out we both did a program at Cornell when we were in high school the same year! We're going to hang out tomorrow night.
There's lonely, and then there's lonely. I'm the latter. I'm in this condo complex in Maryland and it's difficult to get around without a car. I'm going to inquire into alternate accomodations because I need some human interaction. Usually I relish being alone but I'm not enjoying this so far; there's a grocery store 1/2 a block away and a few stores, but there isn't a place to hang out and chill. Sunday's taken care of, though--2 blocks away there's a beautiful church that looks like a postcard and I haven't read the historical marker yet but it's old, old, old. Hell, everything east of California is old.
I dislike not having people I know close.
