Commencement!

Apparently, the best cocktail for convincing someone that Cambridge is a cool and desirable place to live involves Hi Rise, Daedalus, Veggie Planet, Diesel, Punjabi Dhaba, and Darwin's. I thought David would be impressed by the three course meal in my old dining hall, a day pass to Widener Library, and all the glory and splendor and preternaturally green grass of Harvard at Commencement, but it turned out to be the vegan peanut curry that did it.

And today, we're going to New Haven, where I am banking on used bookstores and the attention span of a magpie. Yay!

Our Slow Ascent to Fame

Lately, Brady's been assembling motley teams of theoretically intelligent people for trivia at Mercury Bar, where we've reliably come in toward the bottom of the pack but occasionally win for best team name. (Nobody understood "Elena Kagan's Ex-Boyfriends," although Brady has won for "Deport Justin Bieber" and tonight's winner of a round of free shots, "What Willis Was Talkin' 'Bout.")

Tonight, Brady, Emma, David and I totally took sixth place of fourteen teams, despite the fact that we were badly lacking in the categories of a) sports and b) team members who know about anything prior to 1984. We're steadily climbing up the ranks every week, so I think we're going to go back in June with our sporty friends and someone over the age of 25. (If you are 40 and I ask you what you're doing next month, please don't be offended if I promise to buy you sangria in exchange for information about Three's Company and the USSR.)

Maturity

I'm going back to Harvard for Commencement tomorrow, mostly because I feel obligated to go to the HGLC's annual dinner but also because I want to drag David along to show off the place where I spent very formative years of my life. (It'll be a little different because I'll be drinking wine in the dining hall instead of staring at a blinking cursor and eating stale bagels at 4am, but I'll take what I can get.)

I realized that it's now been three full years since I graduated, which was also the last time I went to the HGLC's dinner in Lowell. I was thinking about how much I've matured since then, and how I think I'm more self-aware and self-assured, and how I think I have a kind of direction in my life that I can be proud of, and how excited I am about moving to the UK with David next year, and I felt all warm and fuzzy inside.

And then I promptly walked into a door with a cup of coffee in my hand and spilled it down the front of my shirt, which would not have been so bad except I also spilled Thai on myself at dinner. I have very fond memories of packing up my room in the twilight hours after the HGLC dinner three years ago, and somehow, I'm currently sitting in my room finishing up my notes from the day, buying tickets, and packing before my bus leaves in a few hours. I think humility is an important part of maturity.

Love Hurts

I don't know if this is Kath Weston's fault or if I just love dinner parties with my nearest and dearest this much, but I badly needed Emma and Brady to hang out tonight for pasta with ricotta and broccoli, homemade bruschetta, and chardonnay. And it was wonderful. This is in spite of the fact that I badly stubbed my toe while I was putting the bruschetta in the oven, and only realized after I got back from watching Glee that I think I split my toenail and noticed a greyish crack on my pinky toe that is starting to seriously hurt. Regardless, the chardonnay is helping.

Return to Blogging!

I think I might start blogging again, and weirdly, it's because I feel like Facebook's new settings are cramping my style and I can't express feelings on Twitter. (It's still up for debate whether it's healthy for me to use technology as a way to express feelings at all, but there you go.) I think blogging might actually be healthier; I don't have the same expectation that everyone will read it, and I can freestyle a little better. I will think of it as Infinity Twitter.

This is objectively the worst time to start blogging again, as I'm supposed to go talk to a high school tomorrow (what?) and then a queer alumni dinner at Harvard weekend (yay!) and a ton of work during my last week of gainful employment (frown!). But I have a feeling this will be a useful outlet when I'm in over my head and need to yell things into the ether. (It's pretty reliably when I do my best writing, so here's hoping I pull through again.)

Rhubarb Crisp!

It was my eighteen month anniversary with David this weekend, and we spent the weekend lazing around and cooking and reading in parks. (This was mostly because I have something resembling the plague, but it was also very romantic.)

The highlight was when we made Mark Bittman's rhubarb crisp recipe from the NYT. You can tell from the photo that we cheated and added strawberries, but it was totally delicious. (I feel like you could add arugula and gasoline and this would probably be delicious. The trick is butter.)

If By Food Pyramid You Mean Food Plateau

Today was the kind of long day at work where I realized that my entire diet today consisted of carbohydrates, except for coffee and two glasses of wine, which was as close as I got to eating fruits and vegetables.

So basically, today was a total success.

A Time to Binge, A Time to Purge

Today was the 9th Avenue fair, and Brady, David, Lee, Leah and I spent a good chunk of the afternoon hyperactively flitting from stall to stall, eating fig and mascarpone in phyllo dough, guava and cheese and spinach and cheese empanadas, tofu and corn fritters, fried Oreos, and green tea cupcakes, and then iced coffee for the walk back up 9th Avenue. It was very kid-in-a-candy-store, if by "kid" you mean "graduate student" and by "candy store" you mean "Whole Foods."

Spelling all of that out is actually making me fairly nauseous, and the only thing militating against that is the idea that I'll be walking for god knows how far tomorrow at the AIDS Walk. If you want to sponsor me, you can donate by clicking here. I'd like to say there's still time, but the sad fact is that it's well-known that I'm a dismal fundraiser. I'm a much better walker.

Betty White! Again!

This weekend was David's graduation in DC, so it was two full days of roof parties and receptions and touring the EU Embassies, which left us precious little time to be at his place for Betty White on SNL. This was actually fine, because there are few things better than coffee, french toast, and 45 minutes of uninterrupted Betty White on a Sunday morning. And it wasn't until I got back to New York tonight that I realized that there are outtakes on Hulu, which have pretty much made my day:

My Life Would Be Easier if OCS Had Done This Six Years Ago

Tonight, I skipped the Time 100 - literally five minutes from my apartment, with an invitation from my roommate - to go hear a paper on historiography and social justice in post-apartheid South Africa and Israel. I didn't think twice about that until I saw the clip of the red carpet on the news tonight, and I still feel like I chose wisely.

Plus, it makes me feel better about the fact that I already know that Miley Cyrus' new single, "Can't Be Tamed," will eventually be the ringtone on my phone. I also hate that people are like, "this video is way too sexualized for Miley Cyrus," and my first reaction was "this is the first thing Miley Cyrus has done that I don't have to feel creepy or ashamed for watching."

Some people grow up and regret not becoming a celebrity or athlete, and I'm like, whew, thank goodness I'm on my way to becoming a legal anthropologist. I really dodged a bullet there.

Quote of the Day: Car Bombing Edition

R: "I think they handle domestic terrorism differently."
X: "Well, they should round up every white man in their mid-40s. And bomb Connecticut."

Flea Markets + Desserts = My Utopia

Since David just finished his thesis and I just launched into my last month of fieldwork, we're celebrating by making this a (relatively) low-key weekend in New York. Yesterday, we went to one of the last screenings at Tribeca with a couple of friends of mine, and spent today sleeping in and making banana pancakes, going to the market at Lincoln Center for strawberry rhubarb pies, wandering through Central Park to the Guggenheim for a date, and then coming back and making ridiculously heavy black bean and potato empanadas and generally vegging out in front of the TV. I'm kind of glad we didn't pick up dessert, because tomorrow is the New York Gourmet Food Truck Bazaar at the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market, and I plan to eat my weight in desserts from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. Honestly, being vegetarian is about the only thing that will keep me from gorging myself until I barf. That, and depriving myself of solid food from now until then.