Credit to an unrelenting case of “advanced pharyngitis,” the Winter 2011 semester has gotten off to as wobbly a start as any I can remember. Work and teaching are fine, but nothing after two weeks has become routine. What day is it, anyway? For a full week, it has felt like the guest and its phlegm have been doing all of the raspy, nasally talking. Even as it is now making its final stompy parade across my sinuses, that it is exiting with such drama (i.e., force and turbulence) has made it impossible to sleep, and, consequently, almost impossible to dream about what it will be like when it has parted.