oh, the grad student life

girls flirting with the social hour bartender


social chair making milkshakes


volunteers making milkshakes


milkshake table and t-shirt sales

what is that, a passionflower?

David just sent me the CD he burned for me of the digital photos from our trip to Italy. I did a really terrible job with the camera this trip. I'd like to think that it was because I kept running out of batteries, but that's probably not true...



I have inserted the few photos that I really liked below, under the appropriate days.

to beard or not to beard

Nick before


Nick after

an evening at the theatre

Slow start to the morning after a full evening last night. Once I got back from Firestone yesterday I was having peanut M&M's cravings, but the snack machine in the basement was sold out. I ran into Nick when I was about to walk over to the Wa, and he offered to drive me instead. We turned the trip into dinner, and I got a sandwich and drink as an appetizer to my extra-large bag of M&M's.

When we had finished "dinner", it was still only 7:30, so we decided to see if we could make it to the Princeton Rep production of Merry Wives of Windsor. After a fair amount of getting lost, we did make it there just in time, and found seats in the amphitheater just a few moments before it started. Unfortunately it wasn't very good, despite the fact that they had 8 professional actors in the cast. We nearly left before intermission, since Nick was falling asleep, I was getting bitten by bugs, and half the time the actors were projecting their lines into the set instead of out to the audience. But we stuck it out. It improved a little, but not by much--it ranks among the unfunniest comic productions I've ever seen. I don't think I'll be going to any more of their shows.

After that I hung out at the D-Bar for a bit with Nick and Elliot, chatting with a girl from Comp Lit named Katherine, and two guys who had something to do with the GSG, one named Jason whose name I keep forgetting. He was a bit annoyed. I think that was the fourth time I had been introduced to him. Oh well...

hot. hot. hot.

Woke up feeling more or less energetic, and headed over to the Porter's Lodge to borrow a vacuum cleaner, forgetting that the Lodge opens later on weekends. Once I found the door locked the pace of my day slowed a bit. I chatted with some people who were wandering round, looking for Procter Hall (an cheery old engineering alumnus dressed in a white-and-blue seersucker summer suit, who had just had his 67th reunion, accompanied by a couple from Hawaii, the wife a Punahou alumna and the daughter of the engineering alumnus' best friend). I checked my e-mail. I did the dishes. I tidied up my room.

Finally I headed out, making a brief stop at the U-Store, since it was so hot, and had lunch at Panera before going to Firestone. I'm nearly done with the History of Suicide book, but I'm still not sure what to make of it. It was printed by a respectable university press, so it must be fairly good work--but it reads like the author just dumped the contents of his file cabinet on suicide into a box and left it to his secretary to connect all the facts in chronological order.

I guess what I'm saying is that it has a lot of details but the point of it all is hard to see (the point being, that there is none?). I feel like it could have done with a lot more endnoting and a much simpler main narrative. Perhaps this is because I'm concurrently reading Grafton's book on the history of the footnote. I think I prefer the short, elegant text which is heavily footnoted/endnoted to the dense sort of format that the History of Suicide employs.

Anyway, enough procrastinating, back to my carrel...

blogjam

I was in spring-cleaning mode today, I guess--yes, I know it's not spring, strictly speaking, but it is the season of rebirth for the academic year, if not the calendar year--and so I've just deleted the other minor blogs I had hanging off this site which I wasn't really writing in. Somehow it seems less negligent to not write regularly in two blogs instead of five, silly as that sounds.

the people ride in a hole in the ground

Yesterday, en route to cat-sitting for Jeris, I got so engrossed in Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister that before I knew it the conductor was towering over me wanting to know whether my ticket had been for Newark or New York, and I got that sudden rush of adrenalin from (1) being caught without the right fare, and (2) having just missed my stop. Argh.

I got off at Penn Station in NYC, and bumbled my way down the street to the nearest PATH station, where I wandered about confused for a bit before finding my way onto the next train for Pavonia. Pavonia. Isn't that a strange name? It sounds like a place where the main feature of the landscape is pavement. Which isn't too far off what it is, actually.

Anyway. I had a nice time playing with the cats, Ingat and Prada; I watched the DVD of Chocolat, and chatted with Kekoa on the phone. But then when I heard something get knocked down in the next room, I went in to find that the air conditioner unit was leaking all over the floor!

A puddle had grown to cover almost a quarter of the room, slinking under the TV stand, side-table, and bed. When I stepped on the wooden floor tiles, little fountains would jet from between the cracks. The cats thought it all very amusing, and walked about in it, to my dismay. I moved all the furniture away from the dampness, mopped up as best I could, and went down to the front desk to request a handyman.

Later in the evening while the cats were cuddling up to me on the sofabed (though really, being licked by a cat on your nose is not a very comfortable experience) I turned on the TV again and watched whatever was on: an irredeemably sordid, hollow movie called Last Tango in Paris, which unfortunately had very little to do with tango, or Paris, for that matter. The only thing I can say in its favor is that I think I might now have a better idea of the cinematography that Strictly Ballroom references; I think a lot of the director's irony must originally have been lost on me.

sushi filipino-style

Slogged through the intro to Chartier's book while having a pot of post-prandial chamomile tea at Small World Cafe. I'm really out of practice reading this theory stuff. It will take a while to become reacquainted with the tortured syntax.

My treat for the day was sushi at Sakura Express, where Murat introduced me to the sushi chef, who is Chinese-Filipino. I had two tremendously large special rolls, which slithered across my styrofoam plate colorfully garbed in orange roe and yellow-green avocado. Well, it's not Van San Kan, but it's the next best thing.

booklog

Just finished reading The Elsewhere Community. Have now picked up three different books, to be consumed in parallel: History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, Chartier's On the Edge of the Cliff, and Grafton's The Footnote: a curious history.