September: Back to the Future! Or work, I mean Back to Work.

[September]

Days #99 and #100:  Academics love to debate the relative merits and work environments of their favorite coffee shops.  I'm no exception: at NohoCo, there's no wifi (and thus the urge to check Facebook is quashed) but it's relatively quiet and the tea is great.  At Haymarket, the wifi is free and the tea is super, but it's popular, so you have to suffer through everything from roommate interventions to the florid prose of a women's writing group at the table next to you.  Bruegger's is not a coffee shop, and their tea sucks, too.  They have free wifi, but is it worth it with the Eagles soundtrack you'll have to try to ignore?  Once the bagel has been consumed, it's not so conducive to hanging around.

Day #101: Roasting beans when it's 97 degrees out and the A/C is on the fritz makes Esselon Cafe's free wifi immaterial.

Day #102: My Almodóvar series continues with Entre tinieblas from 1983, which is Pedro's first real step into the big leagues.  Nuns with ridiculous nicknames, serious drug problems, and Carmen Maura being pawed by a tiger.  Loved it.

Days #106 and 107:  Catching up on more Spanish movies.  Las trece rosas (2007), based on the true story of thirteen young female Republicans imprisoned in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (and a good compliment to the novel La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón) and Mario Camus' Los días del pasado (1978), which is an incredibly subdued tale of a small-town teacher in postwar Spain and her connection to the maquis (resistance fighters) living in the hills nearby.  Camus is a prolific director perhaps best known for his 1984 film Los santos inocentes, but his work seems to dovetail with Carlos Saura's post-Franco films, so he's on my to-watch list.

Day #108:  Feels like the last day of summer.  Mulling over taking the air conditioners out.  Grabbed by Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, from the first page.  Dreaming that I've forgetten to show up to classes.

Day #109: I am consulted for a plot point on TV's How I Met Your Mother.  Call me Professor to the Stars.

Days #110-112:  The Rock Critic moves in.  The dog and I are delighted to have him here.

Days #113-116: Researching and writing a conference article on Catalan author's (Mercè Rodoreda's) 1947 short story about a concentration camp.  Interesting and draining work, with eye-opening revelations about the author's life and beliefs.  Also discovered that if you can get past kids named "Sierra" occasionally running around, Woodstar Cafe, along with free wifi, plays decent music (Neko Case, for instance) and has really excellent vegan chocolate chip cookies.

Day #117: Lady Gaga and her fire-breathing piano come to Hartford.  Not for the faint of heart or the fully clothed.

Day #119: Bike ride.  Fall in New England is... well, just see for yourself. -->

Day #121: The Almodóvar series continues with La ley del deseo (1987), which followed up his 1984 release ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (a dark film that puts Almodóvar's twist on suburban life in Madrid -- and, now that I think about it, has a Nazi storyline, too -- that I've taught twice now, so I skipped it this time around).  Watching Almodóvar's films more or less chronologically, I'm beginning to put the pieces together, finding a very cohesive set of themes that he's been hammering away at for decades.  In La ley del deseo, there's the creepy captor/captive theme (reappearing in Átame!), a hint of incest (Volver), transsexuality (Todo sobre mi madre), Antonio Banderas as a sociopath (Átame!, again, to a certain extent), and amnesia (Hable con ella), among the usual set of drugs, sex and the always captivating Carmen Maura common to most of his early films.

Day #122: Discovered a treasure trove of Hispanist-themed blogs, calendars of upcoming international conferences, New Spanish film festivals in the U.S. and notes on journals from the perspective of those on the receiving end of arduous reader reports that have expanded my bookmarks exponentially and may get me to start using my RSS feed again.  Thanks, Kirsty!  Also, finally finished Javier Cercas' new nonfiction novel, Anatomía de un instante, and I now know more about the failed February 23, 1981 coup in Spain and Adolfo Suárez than I ever imagined was possible.

Days #123-127:  Another great thing about sabbatical?  Long weekend vacations in the middle of the semester.