2008-05-21 - 12:27 a.m.

Got a bonus at my day job. Leaving for Greece tomorrow. Turned in final grades for the other job at 7 tonight. A lot of A's, a handful of B's. One F for a girl who stopped showing up after the fifth week, and she was one of the better writers. Got asked to read at the Baltimore Book Festival in September. Scares me pretty good, but I said yes because I know I'd regret it if I said no. Five minutes each for the six or seven teachers from the college where I teach. Five minutes goes pretty fast.

A partial list of things packed for trip to Greece:
- A pair of shorts I've never worn
- Two issues of The New Yorker
- Jim the Boy by Tony Earley
- The Human Stain by Philip Roth (have never actually finished it!)
- Sunglasses that do not fit my personality and that make me look vaguely like a drug dealer from maybe thirty years ago
- A Sharpie, a mechanical pencil, a regular pencil, a pencil sharpener, a black Uniball pen
- Trojan Magnum condoms (when I was a kid, to call them "condoms" meant you were weird because nearly everyone called them "rubbers" and there's still a twelve-year-old part of me that still says "rubbers" whenever I say "condoms")
- A giant bar of chocolate
- A pair of jeans that the dryer didn't quite dry
- A small bottle of Tylenol PM, six caplets of Benadryl in protective foil tray, and one tablet of Xanax FedExed to me by a friend who became a better friend the moment she sent the FedEx.

So we're off at 10 a.m. tomorrow. I think I'll try to eat some octopus.

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