The Presence of Absence

So this was the week where I had a couple hundred pages of very dense readings on the body and medical anthropology, which is so not my bag that it isn't even funny. (I would completely understand if my supervisor thinks I'm troubled, since I wrote volumes on resistance and violence and then was like, meh, bodies are complicated.) So I was struggling with this essay all day on Monday, got it mostly mapped out on Tuesday, and actually had a draft finished by that night. Typically, I bartend on Tuesday, feel too panicked about my essay, and resume writing from 11pm to 2am while everyone else goes to PopTartz. This week, I finally felt good enough about my essay to do both, possibly because it was already three times longer than it was supposed to be and I knew that if I added in an extra part about Donna Haraway's stuff on cyborgs, I would have to subdivide it into chapters. So instead, I went clubbing, where I promptly ran into everyone I've become romantically entangled with at Oxford within five minutes and twenty feet of each other BUT also danced and pretended like I still have a social life, which was worth it.

Want to know the worst way to wake up on a Wednesday? Get up and squint painfully at your alarm clock and realize that you will collapse if you try to go to the gym, you have an essay due that evening, and then check your email and find a message from your parents letting you know that your dog is probably about to die. And then take two Motrin with a bottle of water and climb back into bed, only to sit up two hours later not only still broken, but with two fewer hours in your day. Anyway, I proofread and polished all day, ran to a meeting and had a Krispy Kreme with sprinkles (which usually helps) and saw Juno again (which unfailingly helps). And then I read about legal sociology until I fell asleep on top of Emile Durkheim.

Thursday was slightly better - I got my itinerary for Israel, which is awesome. I'm going to be all over the place, and it was nice to finally be able to conceptualize the trip in an actual, day-by-day format. I was seriously tempted to celebrate by seeing Sandi Thom at the Zodiac, but my guilt complex kicked in and I went to LGBTSoc's pizza and wine night like I was supposed to. I eventually went back for a conference call that started at 7pm in North Dakota, which means that it starts at 1am in the UK. (I wasn't going to pass it up, though, because nothing fills me with as much joy as a dozen Midwestern accents on a single phone line, and I mean nothing.)

And today I've done nothing but read for tutorial and fall asleep conspicuously in the Bodleian. I just did jumping jacks to try to stay awake so I can finish reading How Societies Remember, which is stimulating, but not so stimulating that it wipes out about twelve hours of cumulative sleep debt. I think it's safe to say that I'm ready for term to be over, and then I can go back to blogging about interesting things. Or at least blogging. My standards get weaker as the term progresses, clearly.