Stuff, and not going to the cinema.

Today I got caught up in stuff - those petty tasks for classes that individually should take no time at all, but which have a tendency to collect at the end of the week like fluid in an unhealthy joint, and are equally difficult to get rid of. Educational technology is supposed to make me more efficient and save time and effort, but in fact it seems to add hours of work to my week and (I suspect) makes students more dependent, creating a vicious circle.

By early evening I was desperate to unstick myself from my computer and get out somewhere. My colleague had said I should leave my grading and class work behind and go out and see a film - and I thought she was right. I haven't been to the cinema for months. I can't even remember the last time I went. Yes, I can. It was in Boulder, sometime last year. I went to see the film Babel before a party I was reluctant to go to. But when was the last time I went just because? I think it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when I first arrived in Boulder over two years ago.

I used to go to the cinema all the time, and never had any problem about going to see things on my own. I loved it in Edinburgh - going to see some obscure film at the Filmhouse or Cameo in the middle of the afternoon, a film with an audience of four or five people, and coming out to the shock of daylight outside when you were sure it should already be night. I saw a film called Suture. I didn't know what a suture was.

And in London, I used to go to the Sunday double bill at the Everyman in Hampstead. Or not always to double bills. I saw Magnolia there, and O Brother Where Art Thou.

These days I seem overcome by inertia, though. This afternoon I looked at what was on, and decided to go to see either Wristcutters: A Love Story at the Mayan, or Sharkwater at the Esquire. They both started at 7 p.m., but I failed to get up and leave my house on time. So then I decided to go to the 7:15 showing of The Darjeeling Limited at the Esquire, since I remember being fairly well amused by The Royal Tenenbaums (same director) in Kobe a few years ago. I still didn't manage to get up and go in good time, though, and part way there I realised I was late for a film I didn't even particularly want to see, and I filtered myself off into a coffee shop where I spent the evening getting through a pile of grading that I had, conveniently, not left behind after all.

It wasn't the most exciting way to spend a Friday evening, but it has at least reduced that horrendous pile of papers a little.

I used to have problems getting out of my house because of an invisible octopus that would wind its tentacles around my ankles and pull me back. Now it's a sluggish and suffocating quicksand (slowsand), and it isn't half as amusing.

Never to reach 415

You survive all those years not getting eaten by a porbeagle or wobbegong, and then some idiot drags you from your comfortable seabed and celebrates your (now defunct) longevity.

Spirituality from a teabag

The tag on my teabag says "An attitude of gratitude brings opportunities."

Even my tea thinks it has the right to interfere with my careful cultivation of negative psychic tensions.

It should read "An attitude of gratitude can lead one into platitude."

zoo

I took a run to the zoo. Today the weather was unusually clouded and murky, and everything looked more mysteriously beautiful than it does in our everyday glare.

Inside the zoo I visited the coatis and the slender loris, and then stumbled upon an area I've never found in my several visits. Yes, it was Outsize Bird World. And in it was a pair of secretary birds, perhaps the most unlikely looking birds I've ever seen, an amalgamation of chicken, pheasant, seagull and hawk stuck unconvincingly on top of a pair of heron's legs and dressed in knee-length black trousers.

If I ever try to make my way back there, I will no doubt find that they have disappeared without trace.

Negative psychic tension

I've just come back from a yoga class, for which there was a substitute teacher today. The class was fine except that right at the beginning, while we were supposed to be concentrating on regulating our breathing, the teacher told us to keep repeating to ourselves "I deeply wish to release any negative psychic tension." Once she'd said this a few times I'd lost all ability to focus on my breath and was convulsed by extremely negative psychic tension and the urge to run screaming from the room. This is just the kind of thing that made me resist taking up yoga for so long. Since I've started, though, I've been fortunate to have teachers who keep the spiritual stuff to a minimum, letting me get from yoga what I want from it: flexibility, focus, and less physical tension.

I was also reminded by this little mantra of Harry Potter: "I do solemnly swear that I am up to no good." I spent the rest of the class reflecting on the fact that the Harry Potter incantation at least shows a sense of poetic metre, something completely lacking in "I deeply wish to release any negative psychic tension."

To compound this, the teacher later told us to ask the universe for what we need, because the universe would provide. I'd like the universe to take care of some of my grading and class preparation this afternoon, but unfortunately I suspect it has more important things to be getting on with.

Marinading my trousers

I did nothing of any particular import today, and it was great. After spending the whole of my non-teaching Friday yesterday doing things for my classes, today I had time to breathe. I keep promising myself a real day out somewhere, but perhaps it is just important to have a slow-paced day with slow-paced thought and an afternoon nap in the middle of it.

In the morning I took my bike out for the first time since moving to Denver, and went down to the Farmers' Market at Cherry Creek. I met up with one of my new colleagues there, shopped, and then sat and talked over tamales. I came home and marinaded my trousers and spent a long time cooking myself dinner.

I'm writing this entry in English English, because "I marinaded my pants" would sound eccentric.

Just before the semester began I went out on a desperate hunt for something to supplement my meagre wardrobe of work clothes, and as usual had difficulties running to ground anything long enough that wasn't made for somebody much larger than me, quite the opposite problem from the one I had in Japan. After trying on every pair of trousers in Tall Girl (I've unfortunately yet to discover the whereabouts of Just a Little Taller Than Most Stores Make Clothes For Woman), I settled on my present pair as the only ones even barely acceptable. But as I've worn them, I've found that the fabric - a mix of artificial fibres - has a mild but strangely unpleasant smell that haunts me through the day. I keep washing them in the hope that it will get better, but it never does. I was going to buy an essential oil to add to the washing water today, but then was too horrified by the price of such things. So instead I have marinaded them in a mixture of clove oil, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and bay leaf. Who knows what effect it will have?

It reminded me, though, of a time when I unwittingly marinaded myself. In London some years ago my landlady was having her bay tree cut back severely, and I collected branches of leaves and put them in my bath. It was wonderful. But when I came out and was sitting in my room, my then familiar - my landlady's cat - got visibly confused as he sniffed at my leg - "It's one of my humans. But it smells so good! But it's one of my humans, isn't it? No, it must be food if it smells like that." He made to take a bite of my shin, and jumped in surprise as I interrupted him.

This evening I took those things I bought at the Farmers' Market, which included fresh tortillas and roasted chiles, and made - for the first time in weeks, it feels like - a good dinner: mushroom, courgette and bean burritos with both tomato and tomatillo salsas. I have enough salsa to last me for days. I got red wine, too. There hasn't been enough of that of late - or if there has, I haven't had time to appreciate it. Tonight I have the time, though I know tomorrow I will have to start worrying about the coming week and the things I need to do. But for tonight...

"A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and..."

Wait - isn't something missing?

Oh no, there you are! Just in time. Come in, come in! Have a glass of Stump Jump. A burrito too, if you want one. How are things going?

Bad carma

I got my first parking violation ticket. So harried again this week I completely forgot to move my car for street-sweeping day.