Like a CEO

A new analogy for teaching and why we should get paid like a million dollars a class.
1. Each class is like it's own small company. You need to make promotional materials for it (syllabi, handouts, etc.), you need to do research about the product (read books), you need to incorporate that research into the product (lectures, discussinos) and you need to persuade your customers (sadly, your students) to buy it (tests, graded work). The ideas in the discussion and the lecture are unique therefore should be patentable (although there may be some legal business about patenting speech but if we get Disney in on this, I'm sure we can work around it). Oh, and you make copies yourself which makes you an administrative assistant to your own boss which is also you! You're a very, very busy person. You shouldn't take any unsolicited phone calls. Have them send the prospectus to your office and you'll take a look at it later.

Media

So the news of the NEA hit the University circuit. It's very funny to see your picture on your school's home page. They have a rotating set of "success stories" and every so often when I open the page to access school stuff, there's the picture Egg took of me staring back. Of course, I don't love the picture; though it's not terrible. I feel like I'm the same color of face & hair & shirt. Three interviews, one online piece & a oforum, one school paper and one city paper is exhausting. It's kind of fun too and I like this bit of fame. What I really like are the questions about poetry as if anyone cares. Maybe they do. At least the interviewers do. And so have a couple people who have contacted me who didn't know me and read about the grant. It's also kind of fun to articulate my project. It provides me a bit more clarity too. Now if I only knew what to do with the grant. Take a semester off? But then we'd stay here & I'm not sure how beneficial that would be. Spend it on a trip to Europe? Perhaps a bit of dislocation would help me write more regularly. Maybe I'll just go hang out in a beach house in Oregon. Yes. That sounds nice.
I sent the PR stuff to the U and to the Trib in SL so maybe they'll be interested. It'd be nice to have people who know me see me in the news. The best part: My students said congratulations when I walked into class yesterday. It's so rare for them to speak without being directly asked a question and a number of them, in front of everyone said how they'd read the piece in the paper. My intro students who I've taught for only a week. So sweet. Makes teaching a bit easier too. They seemed (of course, could have been purely the glow through which I say them) to pay more attention to what I had to say. I think I've been talking--including the 3 hours classes, the interviews, and the welcome back from break conversations--for the past week and a half straight. My jaw hurts a little. Perhaps that's a sign I should go write something.

I knew I was bossy but...

You Are An ENTJ

The Executive You are a natural leader - with confidence and strength that inspires others. Driven to succeed, you are always looking for ways to gain, power, knowledge, and expertise. Sometimes you aren't the most considerate person, especially to those who are a bit slow. You are not easily intimidated - and you have a commanding, awe-inspiring presence. You would make a great CEO, entrepreneur, or consultant.

What's Your Personality Type?

Is teaching like being a CEO? I suppose. In a way.

Updated

Dr. C added me to her blogroll so I thought I'd better return the favor and update. I have only updates because something about break has sucked the life out of me. It's been so great to be home, eat, hang out, drink excessively, write a little, see so many people that I adore, but, man, it's been nonstop. Tonight is the first night we haven't been out to dinner or over to someone's house in over 13 days. So many abundances that are so scarce in G.R. (where we're missing the Gerald Ford funeral--such pomp & circumstance.) I simultaneously can't stand the idea of going back and can't wait. It's so comfortable her and we have so much help with Z but life seems sort of suspended. Thank god I got the emails that I did so I felt connected to the ever-moving stream of things.
The good things are that I've heard from long and lost friends this break and am so happy to have reconnected. I have written enough that I'm not overwhelmed with that which I must write when I get back. I did what I could to balance the amount of time we saw everyone although we erred on mountain-side of sleeping-over just because it's so hard to move back and forth and so easy to just sit around here and look up at Mt. Olympus and drink 5 cups of coffee and then eat breakfast. My mom's house was great too. Everyone has been so generous with their space and food and time.
Christmas itself: eh. I'm grinchy. I hate all the plastic and the anticipation and the disappointment and the money spent. Who knew I'd become so much like my Reed College self--particulalry particular and a bit on the judgemental side. There was so much stuff for Z that even she who is always cheerful and patient started to shove aside one present for the next. Not my favorite kid behavior.
Progress:
My syllabi are about 75% done. I plan to finish them tonight or tomorrow. 3 is a lot of preps I just now realize. I really want these syllabi to have imagined every contingency but I know there will be details I missed. Still, I'm excited for the readings and I think the pace of the class will be much more reasonable this time semester.
I can't wait to hear from folks about their MLA successes. I hope good news for all of them although I think this was a pretty rough year. I feel I'm pretty lucky to have the job I have.

All in all I'm looking forward to 2007.

17 months

Dear Z,
You flew with us across the country to visit your grandparents and aunts and cousins. On the flight, you played with Dora toys and bricks and you drew with your pen and crayons and whatever else we’d let you draw with. No pen, any crayon, any pencil is safe around you. You’re pretty good at drawing on only paper though the couch and chair cushions have suffered a bit at your artistic strokes. On the second, shorter flight, you fell asleep in your dad’s lap right at 8 o’clock our time, your normal bedtime.

Yesterday, I put you down for a nap. You lay down with your bottle and blanket. You like your blanket on the side of your face, gripped in one hand, your other hand tossing your bottle back like a proper cowboy slogger. On my way to the bathroom, I stopped in to check on you. You weren’t asleep. You were sitting up poking your toe with the nipple of your bottle saying bob, bob, bob. On my way back from the bathroom, you had collapsed forward-face on top of your foot, on top of your bottle.

You have been sick on and off for a month. This has messed up your usual perfect sleeping record as well as your champion-of-the-strange-food-eating habits. But when you’re well, you still eat onions and pickles and you still hate mashed potatoes and guacamole. The last two items make us wonder how very adopted you must be. You like steak and fish and sausage and bacon. Your grandma laments you’re not a vegetarian like she is but if you keep not liking guacamole she’s not sure how you’d survive if you go that way anyway. Perhaps on black beans.

Right now, you have convinced your aunt Joy to feed you Honey Nut Cheerios one by one. Sometimes you take it and put it in your mouth. Sometimes, you just open your mouth until she inserts a Cheerio vending machine style. Sometimes you take one and chuck it across the room. This game could last until lunch. Joy’s dog Sadie loves to lick your ears and wishes you would slide a Cheerio her way—but unlike Cleo this dog isn’t allowed to eat every and anything you give her.

You wear a lot of hemp pants. Your grandma hemmed them for you and now you don’t look like an unbalanced yogi. At least not so much. You resemble most one of the Teletubbies—you particularly like to reveal your tummy as if there’s a TV in there. And we watch. Who knows what that belly button may do?

You’re working out spatial relationships. You just sat down to sit on Joy’s lap. Sadly, you were about two feet away from the lap Just like with steps, you turn around to sit down and then crawl backwards to get over the danger parts.

Speaking of characters, you drag your blanky around like Linus. You always know where it is and point your way down the hall, up the stairs, or toward your crib until we follow and get it for you.

Since you’ve been back in Salt Lake you’ve played Little People with Lil and Maestra, the Great States game with Cam, Nick Jr. on the computer with Grandma and Grandpa. Shopping for you for Christmas, your Maestra, grandma and grandpa and aunts have raised the holiday retail numbers to come in above expectation.

You say Box and Dog and Hi and Mom and Dad, or rather (da da da da) and a whole lot of almost words that I refuse to credit to your knowledge account. Your dad, however, is convinced you also say bottle, blanket, chocolate, shovel (Thanks Michigan!), kitty and diaper. You know the words but your tongue hasn’t quite caught up. When you’re happy and playing by yourself and discovering how to open and close doors, playing with lids, and sorting change, you say “Ahhhhhhhh-uh, ahhh-uh.” Ahhh (low pitched and long), uh (highly pitched and short).

Re: the capping. We think you have a promising career as a Laverne and Shirley type: you put caps on bottles, quality control, and your dad likes beer—a natural career choice we think. You also do a mean Schlamiel, Schlamazel Hassencratz Incorporated while kicking her Teletubby legs.

You’re a very busy baby. Even when you’re sick. Happy Seventeen Month birthday. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. May the next year bring you even more love, if that’s possible, and a lot more health. We love you, mom & dad.

Halfway

I'm halfway packed. Still need to collect Z's nebulizer, her clothes, and her blanket, but even most of the ski-ware is packed. Egg's bringing his skis but if I ski, I'll rent because I hate my boots anyway and my skis are just plain old skis. Not orange Screams like Egg's.
Today, poetizing with poets.
Tomorrow, we fly.
Workplan for home visit: write review, develop course description for Studies in.... Course, write novel, new book of essays, old book of essays and new book of poems about plastic. Oh, and prepare syllabi for three classes--adv. NF, adv Poetry, and intro to CRWR. Sound like a break? It does to me. I figure if I work from 10-2 3 days a week, I can get most of that done. And, compared to teaching, it's not real work.
I can't wait to see my mom and sisters and my niece and nephew. And spend time with Zo. Ah, 4 weeks of break. May I luck into as much again.

Thought I was going to make it

but I'm not going to make it this final week. Last week, it was 40 degrees warmer than it is right now. Last week, my students were congenial and present. This week, the emails promising absences are mounting. Last week, I was ready to throw all my clothes in a bag and get on an airplane. This week, we're realizing that Z won't sit on our laps for 5 minutes, let alone the many-lay-overed plane ride ahead. Last week, I had visions of writing and reading and sleeping in. This week, I realize that there are only so many days til Christmas and shopping hasn't even begun. Last week, I was all hepped up on pure, natural adrenaline. This week, I'm pretty sure someone has been putting quaaludes in my coffee, making me simultaneously, artificially wired and tired.
Oh, it has snowed over 3 inches just since I've been on campus for a final last week:
Last week, I slept in my own bed. This week, the floor of my office beckons. They pretend to have snowplows in this very snowy region but Salt Lake would never let the roads be so slick and dangerous. They are plow monsters in that city. If I survive the flight home, I promise to complain less next week.

Extra Credit

Yes I'll give you extra credit. No, not for putting a title on your paper. No, not for putting your name on your paper. Not for listing the criteria of the assignmnet and drawing arrows to your writing that show exactly how you met that criteria. No, not if you write which genre your piece is in. No, not if you show up on the last day of class. No, not if you make me a CD but I really would like one. No, not if you feed my cat over break.
But yes if you make sense of something that did not make sense to me before. Yes if you read your work aloud in class. Yes if you tell me that I confused you all semester but that that confusion is beginning to take hold and make sense itself. I'll give you extra credit for getting rid of every time the word "tear" appears in your poem. I'll give you extra credit for deleting the last sentence of every story you wrote. I'll give you extra credit for explaining why your story is not a poem and your essay a story. I'll give you extra credit for using the word snake and ripple. For Tucson and strawberry. For synaesthesia by choice not by grammatical mistake.

Ways in Which I Am An Asshole

A preThankgiving poem:
1. I can never hear the age of someone who had recent success and not calculate my age and success (or lack thereof) in comparison. Then I subtract years for my "rich" (as in untoward) past, my "real world experience" (I managed computers) and add successes such as got the oil changed, made breakfast, and washed all the dishes. For example: Parker Posey is older than I. By a bit. She's been in many movies. I've published some poems. She's being interviewed on Fresh Air. I am listening to Fresh Air. If I was on Fresh Air, I wouldn't say "you know" and "um" so much. She has been typed as Indie Actress. I haven't been typecast at all. My movie career is still wide open.
2. I must recount to Egg every time I wash a dish. Make note of it. Register in the Championship Spouse contest of which I am most certainly a winner because not only did I wash that dish, I made sure he noticed.
3. I noticed, but did not mention, that he changed the shower curtain, the lightbulb and Zo's sheets, therefore not adding points to his Championship column.
4. I'd rather be baking pie than teaching today. I love to teach but I haven't been able to cook all semester because of my late afternoon, early evening questions. And those pies aren't going to cook themselves. And, if Egg goes about cooking them, a) he'll get Championship points and b) they (the pies, not the points) could turn out weird. My students should add this class-having to their list of their own jerkish traits.
5. I am also mad at the students who walk in the crosswalk. And those who walk outside of it. I'm annoyed by cars when I'm in the crosswalk. But I've written of this before.
6. I am glad the in-laws are coming so Zo, she-who-must-always-be-carried, can be carried by someone else.
7. I am secretly looking forward to Zo not letting them hold her, or at least, not when I'm around.
8. I am a huge hypocrit because I decry those mamas' babies. And Z isn't one. Usually.
9. Because I'm going to have my students write an I'm-an-asshole list and call it a poem.
10. Because today, of all days, I will give them rules and then proceed to break them (the rules, not the students.)

The All Clear

Zoe's been given the all clear by her doctor. I'm not sure what that means but I think it means we won't have to beg and plead that she not be admitted to the hospital. I fear we sound crazy when we object, but she always sounds bad-congested, wheezy. Everyone says so. She has been diagnosed with recurrent respiratory something or the other. The almost-asthma that is not asthma. So she sounds like she breathes rapidly and thickly so often that we can tell when she's getting better and when she's getting worse. That we know how many ribs to count per reticulated breath and whether the nose flares or not suggests that we know, or at least could tell this week, that she seemed to be getting better not worse. And the hospital, from our experience, doesn't really help. It's good for monitoring but that's about it. Still, it was pretty awkward trying to tell the doctors that we didn't agree with them. They're a powerful force. I feel crappy even writing about it. But next week, when we take her in without a cold (if there's any justice at all) and the doctor hears her loud breathing even when 90% healthy, hopefully he won't panic next time.

The Woods Decay

And decay and decay. And then they fall.
It's my birthday. I love my birthday, especially since now I've started counting backwards.
Best Birthday present:
Thirty-one Flavors flew to see me.
Best Surprise:
Finding out last Thursday that I was awarded an NEA grant.
Best Celebratory Wine:
Justin, Cab. Also, Sebastiani Simi Valley. Other wines, not as good, though well drunk.
Worst birthday present: Zoë presenting with pneumonia.
Better birthday present: Zoë waking up this morning singing instead of coughing.
Best asker of wtf regarding my tepid response to the news: A tie between Margot and Dr Write
Number of people who thought the NEA, in this case, stood for the National Education Association: 2
Number of people who teased me for getting a grant only graders 1-12 can get: 2 (31 and Egg)
Most Ecstatic: My mom.
Most able to see why it would take me awhile to be happy about the news: Fellner
Most immediately happy and proud: Egg

Birthday plans include: not much. No sleep for listening to make sure Zo would keep breathing.
Birthday dinner: steak and mashed potatoes although I suppose I should start worrying about plaque in my arteries though I plan to use more of that red wine stuff to scrub them out.

Most grateful: me, for the grant and for Zoe seeming to be on the upmend.

Certitude

I shouldn't blame my students for wanting ever more criteria. I explain to them over and over again about hooking in to the larger context, about self-effacement, about satire. But they would please to like a formula.
I do not blame them.
If, I were writing a novel, which I do not claim to be for fear this would amount to something, but were I to were, I would wish to know if page 35 is too soon or too late to have a clue to the puzzle.
I would also wish to know if Adam Gopnik, who wrote I thought quite amazingly about Darwin, was right when he said that story is pushed up seemingly unintended and natural from description. I'd like to describe some pouter pigeons. Who knew they actually pouted?

Late October

Two points. Or rather, one point and one question:
I really don't hate grading. I just wish it didn't take so long.
I'm going as the forest floor for Halloween. Zoe will be a squirrel. Or a chipmunk.. I'm trying to talk Erik into being a forest Satyr (name pun) but he's insisting on wearing a toga. I think a toga and some hooves would work. I really wanted to rehash my Lemon Fresh Scent costume but Erik gave it away at a party on Saturday. I also liked last year's Whitman themed "Stucco'd o'er with quadrapeds" but nobody got that.
Here's the question: Have I been the forest floor before?

Students and Irony

I'm teaching a course where the New Yorker is our primary text. Nay, it is our only text, our model, our muse. It's a little bit of a canned idea, but it exposes students to readings that they'll be able to continue to access even after class. One of the reasons I went to grad school is so that I could have people direct me toward readings. The New Yorker, as conservative and cheeky as it can be, serves as a good bridge from interest in yourself to interest in the world.
As my students turn in their "Shouts & Murmurs" and their "Talks of the Town" I find something so off about them. They're generally written well and the students try to reach for erudition and SAT vocabulary. But what their pieces lack is any sense of irony whatsoever. When they review, they loved it. When they self-reflect, they mean it. Earnestness runneth over. How do you teach irony? Should you even teach students the cynicism that irony requires?

Doing enough?

Oh it's just crazy here. Grading, of course, but also benchmarking and assessing and developing curriculum. Is that service? Maybe. Our department meets weekly for faculty meetings. Does that count as service? Not so much? Should I go and teach a class in the public schools? Isn't that too much service? Probably. Guest writers and student readings and tryiing to figure out if I'm a committee person or the do-it-myselfer. Most of the good do-it-yourself gigs are already filled so I'd need to come up with an entirely new project and probably find new funding for that. Which is so unlikely.
Poetry Night is tonight so I cancelled class which runs straight into the events (encouraging but not forcing my students to attend), I'm picking up Zo, I'm running home to clean the house for the babysitter. I'm bringing the programs to the reading. Does that count as service?
Perhaps one day I'll read a book again. Or write a poem. A very very short book. And a very short poem.
Really, all is well. Erik and I and Zoe had a great weekend going on long walks, driving to Saugatauk for the Oktoberfest, watching good/bad TV, meeting our neighbors again for a strange party where the moving folks invited the new folks over to meet us. It lasted from exactly six o'clock to seven o'clock. We were invited to bring wine if we wanted so of course we did but we were the only ones drinking. We are also one of the few with only 1 kid. Everyone has 3. I think it's a rule for our block. Erik and I might have to move before the neighbors turn the screw.
OK--here's a fun question: what books would you teach an advanced undergrad creative nonfiction class? An advanced undergrad poetry class? I'm thinking 5 or 6 books for each. Michael Martone, Lawrence Wechsler, Lauren Slater for the first and Frank Bidart, James Tate, Terrance Hayes and Paisley Rekdal and Olena Kalytiak Davis for the poetry. Any ideas? Warnings? Must do's.
And, if I do ever get to read a book of my own, what should I read. I'm reading Jim Wenderworth's essays right now... (where's the mot juste, Jim? Where?) Where's my French? Where?
OK. Must pick up Zo and not forget the programs. Man, service is hard work.

Working out just like I planned

I knew I would still be able to write when I started teaching. A three/three course load is generous in its own way. Right after I had Zoe, I taught two classes and edited Quarterly West and went on the job market and still wrote. How would this be different?
It's not. I wrote 2660 words today.
That's a lot for me.
Just because they were all comments for student papers doesn't mean they weren't writing accomplishments.
Anyone know of a journal that would like to publish the musings of an Assistant Prof on her students' poetry?

Fourteen months

Zoe turned fourteen months old last week. She also went to day care for the first time and finally got her year-old shots. She got over one cold and seems to have contracted another. She slept for 14 hours last night.
Because I spend less time with her than I used to, or maybe because there are few people to distract me, or, more likely, she's getting even more interesting. She loves her blanket. She finds it whereever she left it last and picks it up with her teeth, carries it to the next corner of the living room, lies down on it and makes some throaty, hurrah noise in the back of her throat. She crawls around on the back deck and climbs up the stair, then back down, then follows Cleo to where she's eating grass, eats a little herself and crawls back to the stair. She can sit on the stair for five minutes, watching the squirrels torture Cleo.
She has one of those shape boxes where the plastic shapes go in through their proper holes. She knows the holes and shapes should match but she doesn't turn them around until they do match. She gets mad and lifts the lid and puts the shapes inside that way. She closes the lid up to see if I watched.
She drives us crazy with her button pushing. Thirty one wrote one of her first posts about it. I tried to listen but, oh, what harm would a six-month old do to a remote, a phone, a computer. Answer: I got a new harddrive last week and she changed a something on the remote that I can't undo.
She was great at daycare even on the first day and had a babysitter on Thursday and Monday--who both said they'd come back.
The best thing: she understands what we're saying. She doesn't obey "don't put that in your mouth" but she laughs maniacally when we tell her no. If the phone rings, she crawls over to it. If Box wants to come in, she goes to the door. If I turn on the computer, she rushes to it, punches a button and the whole screen goes blank. I tell her no. She laugh. In fact, here she is now: zFEWx]\//
She stands for almost a minute at a time. She may walk soon. She may actually have to put on some shoes.

To Complain

I wasn't going to post until I had something positive to say. But everything seems to be skewing negative. Maybe it's me but I went to this gourmet food store I'd been waiting to visit called Art of the Table so I could buy expensive cheese and baby-sized veggies. There were but a few types of cheese. There were no veggies. It was one of those gourmet stores that had a lot of jars of jam and mustard and all the cloth napkins and placemats one could imagine. It also had wine which made up for some of the disappointment--but everywhere here has wine. There's an anti complaint at least.
We got more bad news last night--Erik's mom and step-dad are moving to the 3rd worst place on the planet, after Vegas and Phoenix. They're moving to St. George. Where the Mormons pretend they don't gamble and everyone golfs. Where there is no water. They're moving to an off-the-grid solar-paneled luxury home. They're leaving the most amazing house--up a little tiny canyon, tucked so deep that everyone who drives by is either a neighbor or people going backpacking for six days. From this canyon home you can see across five other canyons, deer scratching for brush, moose. In the winter, Erik and his stepdad would hike up the trail behind the house and ski down the ridge. You could watch them turn from the living room windows. It was a twenty minute drive to downtown SL.
They're moving to where there's no snow, no water, no restaurants. Now, we have to do the couples-from-different-hometown thing and alternate holidays. We were planning on coming back home for a month or two this summer but now that we don't have a retreat to visit, I don't know if we will. I'm not going to St. George in July--at least not for more than a couple of days.
I shouldn't complain about it--they've been so good to us and I suppose we deserve what we get, having left ourselves. But the idea of going back to that beautiful house and to the mountains was one of the ways I was keeping going. I'm still looking forward to going home to see my mom and sisters and my friends--all of whom I miss more than I even thought possible--but it won't be like I'm dividing my home between SLC & GR. It will be more like a visit. I won't be able to pretend that I don't really live here. Maybe that will be good, in the end.

In lieu of a real post

Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC

"Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long, I'm glad to be back" Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos. But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last!

What's Your Theme Song?

I feel better already.

First Days

What I wore on Monday: beige suit, black tank, chunky choker necklace.
I never wear jewelry. Effectiveness? Unknown.
The first class was Intermediate Nonfiction. I'm pretty excited about it because we're using The New Yorker as our exclusive text. Though I hope to be critical of the magazine, mostly I'm just excited to teach what I read every week anyway. The class went OK but I let them go a bit early because I thought we'd be in the computer lab and we weren't until Wednesday so my "go research what you don't know" assignment had to be a take-home one. The students were pretty quiet which was a bit disappointing since I thought I was pretty "on" but who knows.
I used Middlebrow's Science Fiction defamiliarization post in both the Int. Nonfiction and in Intro CRWR. I said "make the stone STONY" with the exact right amount of inflection.
To Intro (which are both on Tues & Thurs) I wore the outfit Egg's mom bought me from J Crew. Vest, long-sleeved wrinkly shirt, brown, above-the-knee skirt. With cowboy boots. Very fun class. I had them go and find something in the building that they didn't know what it was and come back and write an exquisite corpse about it. Students in this section, which is downtown, were great. I teach one more section of it this afternoon--I hope these main campus students are as fun.
I'm already beat but I attribute that to the newness of everything and the commuting between campuses. And the threat of weekly faculty meetings. I think the classes, once they get going, should be great.

Other news includes: more bats. We're moving. (Not really. Called a bat catcher. This will cost mucho dinero).
Electrical work--also mucho dinero.
But, we will have a bit of extra money--if nothing goes wrong this time--because we think, according to mucho paperwork, that we've sold the house. We close on the 19th but they want to rent from us from Thursday on. Sad and good news. I miss that house so much. Plus, there were no bats there.

Food front: Still grim. We've eaten at Big Bob's Pizza--weird sausage; Tokyo Grill Sushi--slow service, weird mayo in many of the rolls, fish a bit warm; the BOB--downtown building supposedly full of restaurants but each time we go we end up at the Bobarino. I had very bad sandwish of blackened (with thyme & cayenne) ahi, mango slaw, and some aioli that I couldn't discern. Yuck. There's an Indian food place that Zoe and Egg loved but I thought was mediocre. I'm being difficult but still. I like to eat out and I'm being thwarted. A place called Rose's had OK food but the food was made better by the location: upon Reed's Lake. We'll try this Tapas place next. And a place called Leo's.

Number of new acquaintances: 42
Number of new friends: 0.
Number of Bats: 2 or 4 depending if the bats left the first night or hid until the next night.
Number of Service techs called to fix house: 3 (plumber, electrician, bat catcher.
Number of Restaurants eaten at: 14.
# of restaurants loved: 0.
Number of sisters visited: 1.
Number of times said sister will have visited by Labor Day: 2.
Number of times Zo has climbed the very steep, very hardwooded stairs: 1,000,000
Number of essays or poems written: 0
Number of poems due by Sept. 1: 1

I have office hours now in my very swanky LEEDS building office. Since no one will visit today, perhaps I'll get some work done.....