Reprieve from the Warden

I had agreed to teach a summer class, a World Literature Survey, to run from 7 July into the middle of August. I recently got word, though, that it was a few students shy of the limit, meaning it's been canceled.

(This isn't a problem I face often. I haven't taught a course that's been below the maximum limit in four or five years, and I'm usually stuck with more students than I'm supposed to have, as when I taught an intimate little graduate seminar with twenty-seven students. I've grown accustomed to teaching undergrad classes of sixty; in September I'll be teaching an upper-level undergrad class on the eighteenth-century novel to eighty, by gum. Don't these people know the eighteenth century is insufferably dull, unrelentingly boring, and irredeemably stultifying? And who knew it'd be hard to round up ten in a summer session?)

In most respects, this is a cause for rejoicing: I really need the time to work on my book-in-progress, Proper Words in Proper Places, which I'm supposed to deliver to the publisher in late October. (I should still be on track to finish on time — provided, of course, that a long and elaborate series of miracles happens in precisely the right order.)

In one respect, though, the cancelation is a cause for much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because we've now got a half-finished wall in our bedroom and construction going on everywhere. Last week, accounts payable went up by $3K and accounts receivable down by $5K. I may have to resort to wearing a placard reading, "Will Do Moose Stuff for Money."