Today I attended an event for new faculty. They did a number on us, getting us psyched to meet our "compulsively engaged" students, and really emphasized what a communicative community it is that we're involved with up here.

In intros we were supposed to say what we were teaching, so I mentioned that we are the only department in which the profs teaches 3 classes in a semester (which is true). I said this in a manner feigning indignance and everyone laughed.

I didn't really use the session to make more connections. After meeting Fred's friends and (finally!) the other new member of the department, and also having made a friendship that appears to be panning out from my computer class of a month ago, I wasn't so desperate. Still, I did meet a couple deans, two German professors, another biologist (my third - they're like weeds out here), two psychologists, a musicologist (who taught 2.5 classes - so close!), and, as mentioned, my newest colleague.

The only other thing of note was that when I started a conversation with one of the psychologists, who had spent several years in Baltimore, and she asked if I had a Baltimore connection, I mentioned that I had watched all 5 seasons of The Wire. This made my new colleague, whom I'll call Pauly, laugh.

After the session ended Pauly and I showed my anthropologist friend our ridiculously big....offices. Though she was stunned at the size of Pauly's, mine blew her away because it has a couch. She was nearly apoplectic with envy.

Aside from this event (from 9 to 2), K and I went for a run (or I did, K walked). I'm up to 26 minutes (2.6 miles). I'm also not sleeping well. It's odd. Usually when I can't sleep I've got something I'm obsessing about (like a paper), I'm too hot, or I can't get my over-energized legs to relax. I wasn't suffering from any of those symptoms last night, but insomnia laid her dreadful hand upon my soul anyway.

I think it's pre-semester jitters.