I'm worried that I was dressed inappropriately today, but by the time it occured to me that I might be, I was late for my train.

Here are the specs: sleeveless black cashmere turtleneck, bias-cut grey skirt hitting just above the knee, and tall black knee boots. No tights or stockings.

I'm always a little uneasy about the sleeveless tops, especially the fitted ones, but I get warm when I teach and one of my rooms is REALLY overheated. I usually wear such tops with wide-legged, Katherine Hepburn-esque trousers, which I feel balances things out--and I've worn the skirt and boots before with long-sleeved tops and felt completely comfortable--but somehow I think that this particular combo crossed a line, showing too much skin or something.

As if that weren't enough, I then caused a mini-riot in one of my survey sections when, in an attempt to make something out of a student's comments, I wound up describing two characters, IN A SHAKESPEARE PLAY, as "the kind of people who are always throwing key parties." (I was actually looking for the term "swingers," but couldn't come up with it in time. Not that it would probably have been any better.)*

But hey: I have to amuse the troops, right? Especially when I've apparently already been pegged as one of the department's hardest graders?**


*The comment made sense in context, but trust me when I say that these are probably the last characters most people would ever imagine as extras in The Ice Storm.

**I heard this from a long-time lecturer who also holds an admin post in the department--we were identified, by students who have had us both, as "the two hardest graders." The comments he heard weren't complaints--just matter-of-fact observations.