Rock and Roll, It's... Tuesday.

Because Tuesdays are when everyone on the Rhodes goes to the Turf and when LGBTSoc has its weekly drinks, it tends to be my night on the town every week. (And this is the perk of being a graduate student and being able to wake up at 10 or 11 on a Wednesday morning. Or 1 in the afternoon.)

But yesterday night was jazz and cocktails, one of the biggest draws on the MCR's calendar. They hire a jazz band, make sexy cocktails that nobody has heard of since the Wilson administration, and generally make it a classy affair. Clearly, this takes precedence. I showed up and reluctantly decided on an El Diablo (it was tequila-based, which is a bright, bright red flag, but it was one of the only cocktails that didn't have something weirdly savory like basil or sea salt), but then dodged that bullet when I changed my mind and ducked out for a few minutes with Brian and Chase to go over and see the incoming scholars at the Turf.

I met one of them. Check!

For the rest of the time, I caught up with everyone - like, everyone - who I hadn't seen since I got back to Oxford. I sat with Brian and Chase and talked about how-we-met narratives and Middle Eastern anthropology and Sarah Palin. I saw Leana and got to hear about her trauma rounds in South Africa, which sounded sufficiently traumatic. As we were being jostled around in the stairwell, Taylor and I talked about the difference between having to be in the middle of nowhere and choosing to be in the middle of nowhere. And I gave a lot of man-hugs and overzealous embraces and it was great.

But then the Turf closed, and I remembered that Debs was coming back to visit before going to York for her PhD, so I popped back to jazz and cocktails to see her before it ended. The band was just finishing at that point, and the cocktail bar had closed, so it turns out that I got all glammed up in my jazz and cocktails attire (copious midnight blue and black and silver! minimal buttoning and rolled-up sleeves! ankle boots!) to go across the street to a pub and drink cider all night, then roll upstairs at 2am to watch the presidential debate. But by every objective metric, the night was a success. (My metrics include: it was like a This is Your Life of my favorite people, I inherited a bunch of peaches from the cocktail bar, and I learned a little bit about tax policy. Not bad for a Tuesday.