Wind It Up

Now that everything's out of the way, I've got plenty of time on my hands to freak out about how quickly this year is coming to a close. Example? Yesterday, I realized that it's June, and I was startled.

The upside is that things are wrapping up nicely, and I'll mostly be in Oxford for about two months except for the occasional trip to London to get visas and passport stuff figured out. Milos and I hosted our last Queer Studies Circle yesterday, and I guiltlessly watched a double-header of TransAmerica and Chasing Amy and didn't think about work at all. (Unsurprisingly, TransAmerica is way better when you're not watching it on an airplane at a 45 degree angle because the person in front of you insists on reclining all the way and the woman behind you insists on having a baby on her lap that you'd prefer not to accidentally push back inside of her by reclining yourself. It turns out Felicity Huffman is not actually lurking in shadows for the entirety of the film, and her mother in the film is a disturbing shade of orange, not a disturbing shade of green. Fascinating.)

We also chose our rooms for next year, and as I checked out my choices, Lisa was like, 'so, do you want the secretary's room?' and I just blankly stared at her. It turns out that the whole 'flirting with homelessness thing' was kind of a blessing in disguise, because the secretary apparently has a room in the college if they want it. (This year's secretary didn't, which is why I assumed that I'd be at the mercy of my very low ballot number.) It's not huge, but it has a little kitchen, its own bathroom, a tiny fireplace with delft tiles, and my desk overlooks Broad Street. (It's in a turret, too, so I can check that off my list of things to do before I die.) And best of all, I'm smack in the middle of Oxford across the street from the Bodleian, two minutes from my gym, and two minutes from Starbucks, and ten minutes from both the Tylor Library and the Social Science Library. I'm sad that I won't be living with everyone from the Grad Centre, but I figured that I'd see them more often if I lived upstairs from where everyone eats lunch and hangs out in the afternoon than I would if I lived in a tiny attic room on Winchester Road, or if I lived in what are apparently our gigantic suburban flats up in Summertown. (If I'm wrong, I'll be in the market for a lot of ferns.)