Tuesday

Peter's at Sandra's playing with the kids, and I have been working at home today, mostly on a book review of Imagined Diasporas, by Pnina Werbner. It's very good, but dense. This afternoon I want to spend some time making a wish list of acquisitions for my new courses. This will be fun, as finally I'm spending someone else's grant money! Woohoo! The university hasn't employed a Middle East specialist before, so the collection is weak and unprogrammed in that area. It's a big task, but I've got a plan: a list of topics (overviews, economy, political systems, kinship, gender, belief systems, popular culture, ethnic minorities, language, social movements, life cycle) with major backlist and current works for each. I'm not even thinking about what this may cost.

Friday's foray to the art sales wasn't as much fun as I'd anticipated. Peter and I went at 4:30, just as Ron's auditions were beginning. The benefit auction works were still being hung, but we poked around anyway and didn't find anything that made my heart leap. The student sale did have lots of fun things (piles of linocuts for $7 each!), but everything was on the floor and I couldn't put Peter down. That made going through things very awkward. I tracked down an illustrator a few years ago by asking the drawing prof to recommend someone, and my lovely linocuts for Peter's room may come about this way. The ones I liked on Etsey have sold, and the creator doesn't do commissions. I was disappointed by that.

Otherwise, things are going well, I guess. Ron's mum is in the hospital (a few hours away) and we are concerned about that. Peter is getting over his cold. I'm sleeping somewhat better, but still stressed and tired. I need to get this review done, then back to my henna practices article. Ron's schedule is getting busier and busier, and there are more and more evening meetings and shows. That is our life, I guess.