It is muggy hot today here in Ytown, and I just spent hours and hours being oriented as new faculty to the university (new full time faculty, that is, I’d been teaching part time here for the past couple of years) and filling out form after form after form after…yes, form.

Tomorrow is the English department’s beginning of the year workshop, so it will be another day of meetings and seminars.

Saturday is the Northeast Ohio MFA program’s student orientation day, held at Kent State, another day of panels and discussion. Afterwards, the Oakland Center for the Art’s Annual Open House.

I will thankfully have Sunday to reconstitute myself and try to focus for the first day of classes. I’m teaching four courses, two freshmen writing courses, and two introductory fiction writing workshops for undergraduates.

Continuing to work on the third novel, inch by inch it feels like, some days.

I’m reading Edward Carey’s novel, Observatory Mansions, which is really quirky and strange and lovely. I hope I like it all the way till the end.

And now I need to eat, and relax, before tomorrow begins.