Where did September go?

Unlike summer when there's time for vacationing on Spanish islands and visiting European cities, life during the school year is much more mundane. Aviva and I have been busy teaching our respective classes (hers on love, mine on madness), planning and/or writing our respective dissertations, and trying to keep the house in order. The Friday before last, we aborted a plan to go out for dinner and instead spent the better part of the evening mopping up water from our basement. The after-effects of Hurricane Katrina produced heavy rains that caused flash flooding and, unfortunately, water tends to seep through the basement floors of our 1920s house. This past weekend, I tried to regain control of our garden, pulling up foot-tall weeds and dead annuals, while Aviva tried, for what seems like the hundredth time, to convince this contractor to finish fixing our garage gutter. About a month ago, he removed the gutter, which was resting precariously on our cable line, promising to return within a week to finish the job. Unfortunately, it's still sitting in the yard where he left it. I wish all contractors were as reliable as my father, who would never forget to show up at a client's house even once, let alone put her off for weeks on end.

Today's household drama involved the stove, which has been slowly losing its ability to heat up to the specified temperature. We'd temporarily solved the problem by buying a thermometer and over-setting the stove's temperature. In other words, if a recipe called for the oven to be at 350 F, we set it for 500 F and checked the thermometer to determine whether it was hot enough. Not exactly fool-proof but all our food seemed to turn out ok. Well, this evening, I came home from the gym to find Aviva looking very forlorn, trying to cook pizza in an electric frying pan. Apparently, the oven finally gave up the ghost, refusing to heat up at all and emitting this loud beeping noise. Although the pizza turned out surprisingly well, I think we'll finally have to break down and buy a new stove. Once Aviva returns from NYC, where she'll be attending the first annual television festival, we'll head off to the department store and look for a stove that fits within our budget!

In other words, the last few weeks have gone by in a blur. In addition to house business, I've been getting another class up and running. Although the class is similar to one I taught last year, I'm using a slightly different format--we meet more frequently, the class is capped at only ten students (instead of the usual 15), and I teach in a "smart classroom" that includes computers, a projection screen, and all kinds of audio/video equipment. Although the students are sometimes distracted by the computers, it's nice to be able to switch from DVDs to VHS tapes, from Powerpoint slide shows to images on the internet. In any case, it's all working out just fine and I've got a nice bunch of students who, for the most part, seem really invested in the course. We've spent several weeks looking at some historical trends in the representation of madness, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous novella, "The Yellow Wallpaper", and excerpts from The Snake Pit and Girl, Interrupted. Tomorrow we'll begin a section on "madness and possession." Let's see what they have to say about The Exorcist. . .