on being done

My oral exam was on Friday. After Alex said "congratulations, you passed," he said I should take the weekend off. Which I proceeded to do.

Friday was kind of shot -- after decompressing with Jill and Meredith over sangria, I came back and *tried* to take a nap. It didn't work: I kept thinking about the questions and how I'd handled/not handled them. So I got back up, and had soup for dinner. It had to be soup because my voice was failing: after practicing my 15-20 min. talk twice, giving the talk, talking for like an hour and a half after that, and then decompressing, and then talking to Mum and Andrew, it was becoming painful to speak. So soup and internet tv: I watched the Medium and Desperate Housewives that I had missed earlier in the week.

Saturday was blissful. I woke up with nothing to do. I decided to take a walk through campus and down Palm Drive, to Anthropologie, where I proceeded to waste money. Shopping is therapeutic. I bought two sale things, and one thing full price (which I rarely do): but it's a flowy white shirt with yellow flowers, and how could I not? I decided that I can wear yellow as long as it's with another color that doesn't have a tendency to make me look cadaverously white.

Then I took my happy shopping bag with my parcels wrapped in pretty paper and went to Whole Foods: which is *also* therapeutic. I love trying new things.

And then I caught a bus back home, where I had time to watch Bill Maher and do laundry before taking a little nap and getting ready for dinner at Bridget and Nicki's.

Dinner was a dream -- Bridget and Nicki are delightful, and Nicki made *way* too much food, all of which was vegetarian and yummy. And between the steamed artichokes and homemade pizza and watermelon with mint, I got excited about returning to cooking. [Because food before orals was getting ridiculous: I relied upon cups of soups for evening study sessions at school, and by the 48 hours before the exam, I was eating bread with a hard boiled egg and tomato -- not together, just a whole tomato, a whole egg, and bread with brummel and brown, because what was the use of making egg salad sandwich if I could barely stand to eat, anyways?] I sorely needed the inspiration. So tonight I made green curry.

Today I slept till 10:30, went to the farmer's market with Jill, made lunch, watched Our Mutual Friend and took a nap, took a walk and caught up with Andrew, made dinner, started leisurely reading The Old Curiosity Shop because Dickens is my favorite, watched Desperate Housewives, cleaned my shower (it needed it: the homemade solution of baking soda, vinegar, and soap that Mum recommended worked wonders on the soap scummy layer that I had just about given up on -- thanks Mum!), took a shower, and now... I think I'm gonna eat some chocolate.

This is kind of how I feel (and probably what I would have been doing today if it had been just *slightly* warmer):

Till Friday

I just need to make it until 3:30 on Friday. Then I can begin drinking and forgetting the name of characters. Like Ivanhoe's love interest: Rowena. I never remember that name. Probably because it's so similar to *Waverley's* love interests (Rose, Flora -- which are kind of too similar, now that I see them together).

And then I can stop worrying about marriage plots and the development of the lyric and realism vs. naturalism... and start worrying about a dissertation.

"cactuses are dangerous"

FINALLY.

Christopher Walken and PLANTS

Apparently NBC was being an ass and made youtube take this down, despite the fact that NBC *doesn't* have the equivalent video up on its site. Yes, I looked. Because my oral exam is in ELEVEN DAYS, NBC, and I freaking need some GOOGLY EYES on some freaking PLANTS.

"spring break"

Andrew left today as his spring break ended -- and the apartment feels empty (as it generally does after he leaves). Despite my needing to read at least a 100 pages a day, we still managed to do things:

- Saturday, a St. Patrick's Day party at Alex and Kaitlin's, where one of K.'s coworkers gave me a Buddhist meditation chant to use in lieu of anti-anxiety drugs prior to my oral exam.

- Sunday, a trip into SF to meet up with Rachel, Josh, and baby Joel for lunch (at the most bourgie and yummy food court ever) and a walk, and a visit to the Zeum carousel.

- Watched Ratatouille.

- Watched Michael Clayton.

- Hung out on the lawn, had tea with Sara.

- Ate out: Siam Royal downtown, Patxi's.

- Ate in: made sushi, lasagna, green curry, eggplant parm, corned beef (St. Patrick's dinner -- found out I can't process beef very well any longer).

- Had Saturday in Palo Alto (Patxi's, cupa) followed by reading on the terrace till the sunset, reading in the TA lounge together, watching Fight Club.

- Visited the farmer's market... read outside... had a dessert/wine night in the studios with Jill.

And somehow I still managed to read The Origin of Species, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Morris's News From Nowhere, some of Wilde's essays (including De Profundis), and at least start Hardy's Jude the Obscure (bad choice to be reading while Andrew left).

Eek orals are coming up.

But looking forward to Andrew arriving in mid/late may for his internship: yay to the last separation!

katha pollitt: new hero

About a week ago, Charlotte Allen proved once again that being a woman doesn't translate into understanding women's issues, by publishing a piece of drivel in the WaPo about how women are "kind of dim." It was poorly researched, poorly argued, and resisted considering any counterarguments. Unfortunately, there are never a shortage of women who seem to loathe their own sex.

So by taking Allen to task, Pollitt is officially my heroine of the day. The entire article is funny, articulate, and right on. It was hard to select just one chunk. Read the whole thing!

Why did Allen, by accounts a good reporter on religion in a previous life, write this silly piece? It's tempting to say she wrote it because she exemplifies the dimness and illogicality she describes -- after all, this is a woman who cheerfully claims not to be able to add much beyond 2+2. But I suspect that Allen, who works for the right-wing anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum, is just annoyed that so many educated middle-class women are cultural, social and political moderates and liberals. Democrats, in other words.

Girls swooning for Obama, Elizabeth Gilbert leaving her "perfectly okay husband" to eat, pray, love and write a huge best-seller, Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy smooching between surgeries, Hillary Clinton running for president instead of spending the rest of her life apologizing for her marriage -- it does indeed make a picture. But it isn't one of women's unique "stupidity" -- raise your hand if you think Hillary Clinton has a lower I.Q. than George W. Bush. What bothers Allen about this picture is that these women reject, with every fiber of their latte-loving beings, the abstinence-only, father-knows-best, slut-shaming crabbed misogyny of the Republican right.

A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can't imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. "Asians Really Do Just Copy." "No Wonder Africa's Such a Mess: It's Full of Black People!" Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation's clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media. I can just picture the edit meeting: This time, let's get a woman to say women are dumb and silly! If readers raise too big a ruckus, Outlook editor John Pomfret can say it was all "tongue in cheek." Women are dingbats! Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Here's a thought. Maybe there's another thing women can do besides fluff up their husbands' pillows: Fill more important jobs at The Washington Post. We should be half the assigning editors, half the writers, and half the regular columnists too (current roster of op-ed columnists: 16 men, two women). We've got those superior verbal skills, remember? Drastically increasing the presence of women isn't a foolproof recipe for gender fairness -- Allen is far from alone in her dislike of her sex -- but I have to believe a gender-balanced paper would reflect a broader view of women than The Post does at present.

belated: the just oscars

This is rather late, but I actually watched the Oscars this year, and had actually seen some of the films up for awards. I even organized our studios' Oscar Party (which some of us left, because it was too damn loud to hear anything). I was particularly invested in seeing Once get an award (especially next to that cloying, trite crap from Enchanted). And Juno (I loved seeing Diablo up there). And No Country for Old Men (LOVED it). So I was ecstatic to see all three do so well.

Two things gave me pause:

1) Steve asking me why the Academy had preserved the strange gender divide in awards (which I later saw Feministing question, as well).

2) My realization around the time that they announced Best Actor, that if someone wrote a screenplay entitled No Country For Old Women, it would probably involve a Golden-Girl-esque exploration of menopause, grandchildren, and, possibly, if it were a drama rather than a comedy, cancer. Which is bothering the *hell* out of me. Why don't we tell ourselves more stories about women (and not just young, pretty women) doing mythic things like stealing drug money and drilling oil fields? Why the hell *not*?

And as an aside, what's with the turn toward the allegorical in Hollywood? Not that I'm complaining.

honey + chocolate

I just ate a choxie honey truffle, and I feel like a complete hedonist.

Except for the imminent return to reading Sybil by Disraeli -- which makes me feel like a masochist. Who the hell starts a novel with 1) a series of characters introduced too quickly and with too little development to remember them all, 2) a *horse race* that is *impossible* to visualize, and seems to compound the fact that we can't picture the characters yet, let alone an entire field of horses, and 3) a third chapter that is basically a history of Britain's monarchy and parliament since the Great Revolution?! *Seriously* Disraeli, you needed to read more Victorian novels: you would have gotten the *pattern* of a successful beginning down.

always with the zombie dreams

I woke up this morning from *another* zombie dream. In fact, I think I was in process with it when my alarm went off, and that I slipped back into it when I turned the alarm off. Meaning that I got to see the post-zombified world, and that I slept in. I assume this happened because I was talking to Bridget about weird dreams yesterday, and that I read a NYT review of Romero's Diary of the Dead film. This particular variation on the dream involved being with I don't even know who, in a house/hotel room, and gradually fighting off the approaching masses. Pretty basic plot line. Unfortunately, any children involved become zombies. I'm not sure what happened, but I somehow managed to avoid becoming undead. (I think it involved flying -- don't ask me why for this brief moment me and the other escapees realized everyone had wings -- and then realizing that flying was rather conspicuous, and that walking on the margins of groups was safer.) And I'm guessing that part 2 was what happened after: I remember going through a cafeteria line, and recognizing another "nonzombie." I don't think the post zombie world was all that different, except that people in public spaces were even duller, and, at least in the cafeteria line, made purry growly hungry noises. Which I also had to start making to avoid suspicion. Anyways, I remember getting a sandwich and piece of cake, and moving on. Then I was entering something like a hotel room (I'm assuming my apartment?), when a zombie from the cafeteria passed me, and I was flustered, and was kind of laughing about something, and he turned and said that I was giddy, and that I wasn't turned. I didn't have my room opened yet, so I booked it down the hall. He locked all the other doors -- and here my dream became textual, because I feel like I could *see* the word "click" on the page as he went down the hall to each door -- while I flew down flight after flight of concrete steps, trying to get some distance before he entered the stairwell. And then I woke up, luckily, because things weren't really going so well for me.

the wildcat from oregon

In The Way We Live Now, which is now my favorite Trollope novel, a young man (Paul Montague) is trying to extricate himself from an engagement because he's heard stories about his former sweetheart's former life in the wild west -- stories that don't jive with his current image of an ideal wife (ie, the innocent, inexperienced Hetta). So when he confronts the former love interest (Mrs. Hurtle), she explains her past conduct. Yes, she shot a man in Oregon -- but he would otherwise have assaulted her. Yes, she left her husband -- but he was drunk and mean and the laws of Kansas granted her a divorce. That was all by way of set up for the best line:

"She had at any rate saved him the trouble of telling the story, but in doing so had left him without a word to say. She had owned to shooting the man. Well, it certainly may be necessary that a woman should shoot a man -- especially in Oregon." (364)

Ha!

My favorite passage from John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, as he discovers music to be the remedy for his melancholy:

The good however was much impaired by the thought, that the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two semitones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out as these had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This source of anxiety may perhaps be thought to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. (119)

I used to feel like this about stories. Now I feel it about finding a dissertation proposal.

when jon stewart isn't on...

The weekend means that new episodes of A Daily Show are hard to come by. Fortunately, Andrew has pointed me toward something that is equally effective in making me laugh, although less effective in giving me a break from reading.

I give you... Dickipedia.

On Cheney:

In 1963, with the draft board ramping up, Cheney enrolled in Casper Community College (one of the finest institutions of higher-learning in Southwest Casper), and received his first student deferment. Later that year, he got his second student deferment. In August of 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, escalating American military involvement. Twenty-two days later, Dick married his wife, and a few months later received his third deferment. In July, 1965, President Johnson announced he would double the number of the number of draftees. Cheney moved quickly, entered graduate school that year, and received his fourth student deferment. This was quite a sacrifice, as grad school is known to be extremely boring. Cheney received a “hardship exemption" in 1966 when he and his wife conceived their first child. By the next year, he was no longer eligible for the draft. It had been a long process, but Cheney learned a valuable lesson: if you get in a jam, you can usually get out of it by fucking somebody.

On Rudy:

In 1983, Giuliani was inflicted on New York, becoming the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Here Giuliani invented the "perp walk," the practice of parading unconvicted suspects in front of the media, which had been previously contacted by Giuliani’s office. Giuliani would often do this for cases in which he knew that there was little or no evidence, but did it anyway to mete out punishment to those he disliked...

Many psychologists believe the insatiable need to humiliate and degrade others in order to enhance one’s own image stems from deep-seated sexual insecurity. Given the sexual nature of sadism, it is unsurprising that, if conditions remain constant, the sexual thrill the sadist receives will diminish over time. Therefore in order to receive the same sexual stimulation, the deviant will seek to gradually but continually increase his power to humiliate and degrade.

Accordingly, Giuliani set his sights on becoming Mayor.

On Reagan:

After losing Presidential nominations in ’72 and ’76, Reagan finally out-dicked rivals Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush to become his party’s candidate in 1980. He kicked off his campaign by giving a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place three civil rights workers had been famously murdered in the ’60’s, advocating “states' rights.” Instead of starting a riot, everyone just elected Reagan President. Times had changed...

In the early 80’s, President Reagan illegally sold arms to America’s once and future dick enemy, Iran. Reagan used the profits to fund the Contras, Nicaraguan rebels. They, in turn, used the money to kill more Nicaraguans. Reagan then pretended not to remember what he did. His role in this act inadvertently led to the worst show ever created: Equal Time with Paul Begala and Oliver North.

He was nicknamed "The Great Communicator" for his uncanny and unique ability to communicate to the average person the need to kick single, black mothers off welfare.

And my *favorite* bit on Reagan:

His famed supply-side economic policies have been variously referred to as “Reaganomics,” “trickle down economics,” “voodoo economics” and “can you spare some change, sir?”

His inaction during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic also led to the “trickle down” of autoimmune disease, and, eventually, to the movie version of Rent.

meat: the personal is still the political

When I started grad school (read: started cooking for myself), I basically became a vegetarian/pescatarian. I think I bought one package of organic/natural chicken breasts from TJ's when I moved in, and then realized that I didn't like cooking meat. I didn't cut fish out entirely, but I'd eat it like, once every two or three weeks (if that). Sometimes I was more strict, particularly as saying "I'm a vegetarian" meant that I had a socially acceptable way of turning down meat products that I simply didn't want to eat. There are things that bother me about claiming or not claiming the label: I don't always feel as "strict" toward my eating habits as the label implies, and I tend, frankly, to feel like an impostor. Example: this past week, I went to dinner with my studio committee, one member of which is a fairly strict vegetarian, and we've discussed the ethical/environmental/religious concerns around eating meat in the past, and I completely admire his decisions. Well, the museum cafe didn't have the salmon salad that I had gotten on previous trips there, so I settled on a vegetarian salad. Naturally, they were out of avocado, and the only other protein-source the menu listed as an add-on was chicken (of course: free range, happy chicken, because we're at a museum cafe in the bay area -- god I'm going to miss CA). So I got the chicken on the side, and felt both good and bad about it. Good, because I *do* keep track of complete proteins (ie, making sure I have some combination of nuts/rice & beans/avocado/soy products/dairy, etc. each day), and on that particular day I was due for something. But still, bad.

Anyway, with my own fraught relationship to meat consumption, I was excited to read this article from the NYT:

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”

Not to get all Malthusian, but this, folks, is *not* sustainable. We've already gone from raising animals on pasture land to f-ing feedlots: what's next? How could meat production get even worse (in terms of animal cruelty, environmental degradation, etc.) in the name of efficiency?

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

And we're a notoriously unhealthy country... maybe it's a cause/effect, and not just a correlation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

Yes! When will the reduction of meat in one's diet have the same sort of environmentalist cache as driving a Prius?

The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Just... yuck.

Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources .

Come on, NYT, just say it: the reason the government recommends so much protein has a *ton* to do with the meat lobbyists. The food pyramid was always based on profits, not science. Much like everything else under the current administration...

I'd love to know when this mythology around meat started... when did masculinity and meat-eating become so intertwined that every fast food commercial invokes the link? When did it become acceptable for a *very* well educated 30-something living in SF to ask, in all seriousness, how a vegetarian gets enough protein? For a nation that avoids exercise at all costs, with a population that will drive across parking lots to avoid walking (or go in endless circles: waiting for a parking space right next to the door), how incongruous is it, that we're the ones worrying about getting enough protein?! We've got to fuel all that sitting that we do.

The article attempts to end on a high note, but considering all the subsidies wrapped up in meat production, and the effectiveness of lobbyists, and the downright moral blindness that our national ethos seems to embrace, I'm not feeling terribly optimistic.

studying the obvious

I want to get paid to prove the obvious, so that I can 1) find a job & 2) debunk Republican talking points. Apparently, despite economic models suggesting that giving money to the poorest among us would most quickly and efficiently boost the economy, there's a lot of resistance to upping food stamps and such. Not that this is particularly tied to the recent talk of recession: when's the last time *you* heard a Republican in favor of keeping social welfare programs well-funded (or even just adjusted to inflation)? I found a write-up at Feministe that's right on point in response to this heinous reasoning from Megan McArdle:

1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.

Wait: so people eating on $3 a day aren't hurting for food? I budget for over *twice* that, and I don't even buy meat (which is probably the most expensive food category: and would be more expensive if the gov. didn't subsidize farms that specialize in dumping lagoons of pig shit into our waterways, and releasing tons of methane (read: cow gas) into the air). Considering that *one* apple is over fifty cents here in the bay area, I'm thinking that it would be impossible to get the allotment of 5 fruits/veggies a day, unless all you ate was bananas, apples, and carrots (which, I expect, would leave you hungry &/or feeling nauseous). And WIC doesn't cover fruits and veggies (except fruit juice and carrots: you figure it out). Eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day to stay healthy! Feed yourself and your children with $3 per person per day! So with one hand the government giveth, and with its foot, it giveth you a swift kick in the ass.

And apparently (we're coming back now to the original assertion about obvious studies), folks receiving government aid aren't ignorant of what's good for themselves and their families: they just need programs to support those decisions. Some genius concocted a study that involved giving women on WIC one of the following: $10 for the farmers' market, or $10 for non-food items. Guess who fared better!?!? Watch the NYT pretend that these results are somehow a surprise:

After six months, women who shopped at the farmers’ markets were eating about three additional servings of fruits and vegetables a day, compared to the control group. Supermarket shoppers consumed 1.5 extra servings.

Well, knock me over with a feather!

It’s not clear why mothers visiting a farmers’ market wound up buying more vegetables than grocery store shoppers

Really? Has anyone at the NYT ever like, seen the produce at Safeway? The stuff shipped and waxed within an inch of its life? Or then gone to a farmers' market, where all is sunshine, heirloom tomatoes, and ten different varieties of peaches and nectarines (with samples)? Huh. Yeah, I guess it's "not clear."

but some women told the researchers that the produce sold at markets seemed to be fresher and of higher quality than supermarket offerings. Many shoppers also said they enjoyed the pleasant community experience and the chance to interact directly with growers, the authors noted.

Hey, let me save you the trouble next time: you give me money for research, and I'll (oracle-like) tell you what any rational human would do.

Wordsworth: on mountains

I finally read the entire Prelude (1805).

This passage *almost* makes up for the 200 pages of self-indulgence that is Wordsworth writing the blank verse epic of his own life:

"while the Flock
Fled upwards from the terror of his Bark
Through rocks and seams of turf with liquid gold
Irradiate, that deep farewell light by which
The setting sun proclaims the love he bears
To mountain regions."

Studying for Orals

Favorite exchange about my orals reading list:

A: So why do you have The Golden Bowl on your list?

B: Well, I just read it last year, and I liked it --

A: Let's say I were to actually ask you that --

B: Ah! (gives Real Answer)

If only every question could be pitched first at the level of conversation, then at the level of the exam...

For Merrie

Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures - I Can Has Cheezburger?

Wintering in Madison

Tomorrow I have to head back to California, but I'm hoping it will be easier as this is the *last semester* of being long distance. Despite the weather (bitter cold, to mild and rainy, to snowy -- the last being actually rather enjoyable, especially when you're walking around the capitol building), it's been a good place. Andrew & I did a lot of baking, cooking, working, walking around the park & State St, watching tv & movies (most recently, a documentary on Helvetica & tonight, Citizen Kane followed by How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days (quite the combination)), and just spending time together. We did make a couple of ventures out with friends, but I rather liked all the alone time after the constant socializing at MLA. And before going back to Stanford, where I imagine I'll be doing a lot of: sitting and reading, fretting over orals, and spending far too much time composing what should be short and simple emails to advisers.

This has also been the visit in which we discovered the Hilldale Mall. Which has a Sundance theater (where we watched Juno and No Country for Old Men -- both of which I *loved,* but especially N.C.f.O.M.), a Macy's (where I bought my first new coat after 4-5 years of the same camel colored Gap gear, which Merrie now has an exact replica of, making for some rather awkward moments when we find ourselves getting dressed in the *same things* when at home together), and an Anthropologie (where I found a wool cardigan I *needed*, but was still a bit spendy despite being 50% off). I'm thinking of trying to apply to Anthropologie after I move here: I feel as though nearly everything they sell I'd want to design and create if I knew how to do so.

Today, as it was my last full day here, we needed to find something to do. Luckily we have some happy, future-oriented, couple-dom things to do: start apartment hunting, & figure out the location and date of our wedding. My dream apartment would be: on a quiet side street in the Willy St. area, the top floor of a Victorian style house (of course) with a turret and wood floors, interesting details, lots of sun, and under $950 a month. I'm not sure yet on the dream wedding. I can see either: at an orchard in Oregon, or a combination of Heaven's Gate & the UW Union here in Madison. Or if we were to get married earlier, possibly using this old church that's now a restaurant. Too many decisions.

Gorging on the DVR

Things I have watched:

-Most of the BBC Bleak House

-Zodiac

-Every new Law & Order

-"A Daily Show" with Jon Stewart going it alone without his writers (and elucidating the situation)

-Keeping the Faith

-New Hampshire results: I'm glad Hillary got it. I don't agree with everything that Steinem said in the NYT today, but after reading it, I did want to see Hillary continue in the running.

-Lots of Project Runway.

-Basically all of the most recent Next Food Network Star.

-Cashmere Mafia. And then tonight, we saw an ad for a show on NBC, also about successful, young, sexy business women. And the title? Lipstick Jungle. The Onion should probably hire whoever at NBC came up with that title.

The Holiday Wrap-up

The Oregon Christmas extravaganza:

Mer & I greeted Andrew at the airport, and arrived home in time for buffalo roast. The next day I took off from alpaca work, instead being lazy (until I felt guilty for being lazy and, to compensate, helped make pizza for lunch). Since we had the house to ourselves, us kids watched Superbad in the afternoon: hilarious. A sugar cookie baking and decorating session took up most of the evening. In the days before Christmas, we went into town for Crazy Pepper and Christmas shopping, took walks in the snow, explored the woods & logging road (complete with snowball fights), ate cinnamon rolls & holiday cookies galore, and caught up on Degrassi episodes. And in the midst of all this, Mum & Andrew & I played a number of Scrabble matches. The Saturday before, Andrew & I joined up with Mer, Mer's friends, & Lindsey for a bar-hopping night, going from Full Sail, to the British themed pub, to Jack's (where our clothes picked up the worst cigarette smoke). The 23rd was calmer, as we visited with Dad, hung out with my grandmother's side of the family, and hid away inside from the rain. Christmas Eve involved holiday movies, a long walk with Andrew to the corner store via the irrigation canal, prepping sandwiches, and celebrating with Tim's side of the family. Then we kids opened a gift each (Mum's secretive knitting & sewing projects! & a joke played on Andrew), and sat into the evening drinking ridiculous tropical drinks thought up by Andrew and eating leftovers.

Christmas morning was slow going -- Mer didn't wake up till we were all *quite* ready to start with gifts. Always fun! I'm still enjoying chocolates, my new pajama bottoms, my clean teeth, new body lotion, and softest socks ever. Andrew got his bathrobe which refuses to fit into suitcases. After gorging on gifts, we kids headed into town early to meet up with Dad (to hang out and exchange gifts), and then to reunite with Mum & Tim & Grammy at the Hood River Inn. The buffet was amazing -- too many things to sample -- and the desserts almost did me in: I had about ten different bits of dessert, all involving chocolate. Eating three courses over a span of two hours is also a convenient way of spending time with family. My favorite part of the evening came after we had all gotten home, and we kids & Mum felt the need to exercise off our ridiculously huge dinner. We ended up taking a walk in the snow down Miller Road, and then trying out Tim's vintage sled & toboggan. We didn't always end up going very fast (ok, half the time Mer and I were "rowing" ourselves down the hill with our hands), but it was a beautiful snowy night, and we were laughing. The sled was hands down the winner for sledding on an icy road covered in fluffy snow.

The 26th was sad, as the day after Christmas always is, and because it was time to pack up and head out.

MLA in Chicago:

Andrew & I took a red eye into Chicago, grabbed under two hours of sleep in the hotel, and then the madness of MLA began. We held down the Stanford Hospitality Suite with Jill, and I think it was a success overall. We hosted breakfasts and lunches in the suite, listened & chatted with our interviewing graduate students, welcomed professors who stopped by and offered advice to our candidates, took our people out for dinner (Italian food and then sushi), and then celebrated at the end with a small pizza party in the suite. Jill & I managed to attend one panel per day -- I especially enjoyed the one on George Eliot and Victorian ideas of "Englishness" (not so much the one on Victorian attitudes toward the body). On the final day, after breakfast with Jill, Andrew & I explored downtown a bit, had Thai food for lunch, and then caught an earlier bus to Madison. My feet were simply too tired to troop around a museum for an hour after lunch... must go back sometime soon!

The New Year in Madison:

Strange to be back, as I haven't visited since last spring break (and then, only for one week). Sometimes I get flashbacks to when I was here for the summer I was studying for quals...

New Year's Eve: Andrew & I slept in and then went food shopping at TJ's: very successful trip! We baked an awesome dinner for our quiet night in: olive & rosemary bread, salmon in a lemon & white wine sauce, spinach and zucchini. Also: the herb olive oil at TJ's really *is* worth the $5. For dessert, chocolate lava cake.

New Year Day was quiet -- we took a *frigid* walk in the 7 degree coldness that is Madison in January, baked a loaf of chocolate babka, and watched the last of "The Next Food Network Star", which Andrew had DVRed.

Today we took another walk, as Andrew had to meet with his adviser at school. This time I was prepared, adding another pair of socks and another layer of shirts and scarves. I hung out with Vanity Fair in the Union for a while (I love that they have a gas fire there, very cozy). Andrew & I searched in the stores on State St. for a new coat for me... and then searched the West side mall this evening... and now we have resorted again to the internets. Sometimes I wish I could sew.