there is a very leggy translucent orange spider strutting across the wall in front of me as i sit at my desk. it crossed my table and then made for the electric socket and disappeared behind it. i am not sure what it intends and am wary that it might drown itself in the kettle or get in something edible. i put the cover back on my bottle of zoloft. i am not having a cheerful spider frolicking in my room, she says firmly.

when i came in from dinner someone was standing smack in the middle of our carpark brushing an extremely large and long-haired dog. massive white hair balls were drifting across the carpark like the fallen willow catkin in chinese poetry.

someone down the hall puts up a picture of lobster anatomy on her door. later that day, someone comes by with an orange crayon and relabels the gonopore of the lobster "special sauce." a sniggering crowd gathers outside the room. but then considering the parts of a crab we eat, maybe not that ludicrous after all.

"the relationship between man and yak seems embarrassingly one-sided," says michael palin (on the tibet portions of his documentary on the himalaya.) "yaks provide milk, cheese, butter, meat, fuel, fur, rope and transport, and in return they get a bell around their neck and a very silly hair cut." i am getting quite hooked on the series and am also reading his travel diaries on his website. they come in short 100~200 word installments, just right for a breather from working.

i think that's all the animal-related anecdotes i've got for the time being.

we have just got our 2005-2006 financial letters from the graduate school. they are pleased to inform us that english department stipends are going up next year to reflect the increased cost of living... by $50. i'm sure this is a great help to most of us. i, for one, know that my monthly rent is merely going up by $160.

i need furniture. where is stoughton, ma? von won't drive me to new haven, but he might be persuaded to drive me to this stoughton, ma. it sounds nearer. is it? can't read maps.

the room i will have next year is simply too small for real furniture. i'm either going to have a very small bed and desk and use the floor space for a low table and have my visitors sit around the table on zabutons, or else i'll forget the low table entirely and have a very large bed on which i'll do all my work and visitors can sit on the bed, like we do at addy's. which should it be?