The Circle of Friends Blanket is taking shape. I'm knitting the 3rd and 4th columns at the same time and twisting the yarn color changes in the back. While it is a taking longer to knit 2 at the same time than just 1, I won't have to seam them together! (Although there are just as many ends to weave in!) After these 2 columns, I will knit the 5th, 6th, and 7th columns simultaneously.

In life news, I went to the dermatologist on Monday for my mole check up (which was supposed to be in October, but you know what a hassle it is to get the referrals and make the appointments). But anyway, here I am in this little room with the doctor and a nurse, and I'm in my underwear because she has to check all the moles. So that's one level of embarrassing. And it can only get worse, she checks my butt to see if there's moles (which there aren't) and discovers the horrific bruise from my "trip" down the stairs last week. Needless to say, the embarrassment factor couldn't have been much higher. Yippee!

On a less embarrassing note, today was the first day of classes, and I managed to wing my way through the intros and presenting the syllabus. Many of the students seemed a bit scared by the syllabus (it is daunting when taken in all at once), but at least half of the students have been in my classes before, so I'm hoping they stick with it. The class was actually so full that one girl had to sit on the floor! I think it is going to be a good semester. Instead of a big lecture course, I have a small seminar class and I hoping that by the third week the students will be in charge of leading discussions and running class. And while February and March will be tough months for the students, by April the class will be a breeze (3 class periods for a movie and discussion, 2 class periods for poster presentations).

Of course, lots of stuff for job 2 just reared its ugly head today (I've been trying to ignore it otherwise). I have a meeting tomorrow with the new professor I'll be working with, and I'm a little nervous, but I'm hoping that afterwards I'll have a good idea of where the semester will be headed.

This waking up at "normal" hours is making me very tired (along with my self-imposed ban on Red Bull and limiting caffeine intake to 1 Coke a day... which is down from my normal Red Bull in the morning and 2-3 Cokes during the day). So it's off to bed for me!