Starting with the root canal news last Sunday, the week has really gone downhill from there. I’m theoretically on semi “vacation” –the secretary at work keeps asking me “so how are you enjoying the vacation?” Well let me tell you, a vacation this is not. I’m working harder and more this week (and next) than I do in any two weeks combined during the regular semester. Not only am I having to give exams this week –3-4 hour marathons from hell running from one class to another (Last Tuesday I had eight different classrooms to sprint to repeatedly, spending 10-15 minutes in each sprinting from one student with a question to another before sprinting to the next class full of students) — but also all my MA students are done with their teaching and thus want to meet about their seminar projects/theses. So on tuesday, before the marathon, I had meetings all day straight. Again on Wednesday until 10 pm. Thursday, before a marathon, I had a 3-hour meeting with a grad student before a 5-hour meeting with my TA about a course for next semester. I’ve not gotten home before 9 pm all this week and that if I was lucky.

Then there is the kitchen light, or lack thereof. After my Tues-day-from-hell during which I’d gotten trapped by frantic students until the dining hall closed for lunch (two hours earlier than usual) and bought on the run a salmon sandwich that I had to toss after the first bite which was chock full of sharp bones, I arrived home absolutely starving at 10 pm. I went straight to my kitchen and flipped on the light. I then got treated to a strobe light show as the florescent light in the ceiling decided to give up the ghost. The kitchen is the only room in the entire apartment that is absolutely pitch dark without the light on. Can’t see your hand in front of your face dark. While I could feel my way across the room, I could not feel my way to finding edible food in it. (The fridge light long ago gave up the ghost and the damn thing is so old they don’t make lights to fit it any longer). Nor could I feel my way to finding the battery operated torch light.

On Wednesday morning early, before my all-day meetings, I climbed up the ladder and removed the long bulb. I managed to get to the ACE and get a replacement for it in the 15 minute break I had between meetings. It was way dark by the time I got home (again at 10ish). Still, I grabbed my baby torch and gamely climbed the ladder with torch in teeth as light and long fluorescent thing in hand. I couldn’t get the bulb to go into the whateveryoucallit (now, this is always a problem when you don’t have the word for something in english to be able to find it in hebrew). Anyway, bulb and frame thing did not seem to fit. Length was fine but those little prongs were not happy matches. I thought it was because I was attempting it by mostly braille (a torch in the teeth does not much light cast). Today, however, I finally had daylight and time at home to attempt to get light back in my kitchen. I climbed the ladder to the very top step you are not supposed to stand on because otherwise, being very short, I couldn’t reach. Me and the fluourescent wavered around up there for something like close to an hour and a half (with several descents, grabbing of the torch trying to see better and so forth). I still couldn’t get the damn thing to go in. I am either about 4 inches too short to get it in (and)/or the frame thing needs to be replaced. The scorch marks covering the frame thing indicating that there was something close to a fire happening suggest that the latter is probably a given. In the meantime, I was able to get back to the ACE and buy a baby desk lamp (the only thing that will fit on the bit of counter next to a plug) and can semi-see with it on. Well, kinda.

And I still haven’t even gotten to all the things I had waiting in the wings for this “vacation” and that people are now screaming for, much less to writing up any of my research. Or sitting down for five minutes rest.