2014

2014 is the name of this WordPress theme,* because it was in this year that I put up the site.

In 2014 I taught at Yale, I stopped teaching at Yale, and I gave talks or did seminars at MLA, C19, ACLA, MSA, Stanford, Penn, Bates, and a few places that will remain nameless as convention requires. I spent a week in Delaware and a week at Penn State. I got a job. I moved to England. I made many lovely new friends, and lost one very dear one. I taught Middlemarch. I taught Tender Buttons. I learned a new meaning for the word “bureaucracy.” I learned that, like the honey badger, the Brighton and Hove buses don’t care (that there is a pedestrian crossing). I came to owe my colleague Sam the internal organ of his choice or black market value thereof after he helped me put together a horrible Ikea bed that cost us a solid four hours and perhaps a few tears. I became incredibly wistful for broccoli raab.** I visited Dresden and Prague. The vast majority of what happened in 2014, I did not see coming in the slightest.***

Hello, 2015.

*Of course, I could change it.
**If you are tempted to weigh in with some bullshit about purple broccolini, let me stop you right there. No.
***Again: Brighton and Hove buses.