Sunday 31 October 2010

Goals

I just hit 8,000 words on my DPhil (8%, for those of you playing along at home), and every time I feel deep despair, I think about how someday I could be an anthropology professor just like Betty White.

Tuesday 26 October 2010

One in a Million

D: "But it's my very favorite thing in the whole world!"
R: "You say that about everything."
D: "Yeah, well, I have a lot of favorite things."

Sunday 24 October 2010

We're Number One!

Emma was visiting from London today, and I made us vegetarian cottage pie tonight for dinner. Even though the meat was actually reconstituted soy proteins, it resembled cottage pie enough that I almost hurled our Pyrex baking dish to the ground in euphoria, like a football. Between this and not poisoning our lactose-intolerant dinner guest on Wednesday - or everyone, because I decided to cook shrimp for the first time on a whim and just slipped it in without telling anyone - I'm pretty proud of myself.

Saturday 23 October 2010

Quote of the Evening

"HOW MANY KIDS HAVE DIED IN THIS!?!"

- David, upon getting trapped in our duvet cover.

Thursday 21 October 2010

Jesus Camp

I tried to explain Easter to David this morning, and he was like, "wait, so you're telling me Jesus was REAL?" and now he's watching YouTube videos by evangelical Christians trying to piece this one together. It may be a very long day.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

DPhil Update

Argh, I'm totally terrible at blogging now that I have to cook and do laundry for myself again. (Cue Sarah Jessica Parker singing "It's a Hard Knock Life.") I've been moderately stressed with all of the pre-writing stuff I have to do for my DPhil - like, oh, sorting out all of my archival material, since the box I shipped it in apparently exploded and I received about 1000 crumpled, dirt-stained pages that are completely out of order or just flat out gone forever - but starting to get a grip on things. I wrote the first 1,750 words of my DPhil today, so, you know, only about 98,250 to go. At this rate, I will be done in like mid-2013.

I'll be a pro at cooking Indian and Thai food, though, which is how I've been spending most of my evenings since I got to Oxford. I'm storing up nutrients for the spring, when I will be subsisting on Sainsbury's Basic crumpets and the salt of my tears.

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Somebody Call David Axelrod

"Basically, we just need to trap all of the Democratic candidates in a mine for the next month."

Sunday 10 October 2010

Welcome Back, Fool.

This is the first all-nighter I'm pulling of what is hopefully my last year of my PhD. I've been spending the past week getting all of my stuff finished up, and tomorrow is the day that I'm planning to start working intensively on the dissertation to the exclusion of all of my other random projects. I'm religious about arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines, so I'm pulling an all-nighter to clear my plate before dawn.

I think I've said this before, but all-nighters are not as fun without genetically modified apples from 7-11, stale bagels, and a sunny yellow dining hall to work in. I keep getting up to get lukewarm coffee and then realize I have to make it myself and then sigh and sit back down.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

These are the Smartest People in the World

Yesterday, on the way back from Kate Nash, I saw a guy lying prone in the bushes being poked by a police officer and two men shouting into the entryway of Magdalen, "LAY HER ON HER SIDE, NOT HER BACK! ON HER SIDE!" This was before 11pm. On a Tuesday. I've missed you, Strongbow Kids.

Return to Ox

To the surprise of absolutely nobody except myself, everything after the roadtrip has been completely madcap - I got back, stupidly watched Live and Let Die until approximately 2am, woke up and went to my last day of work, frantically threw things into suitcases and fell asleep, woke up and hiked to the top of Lion's Head, had breakfast with Anna, picked up my luggage, and went directly to the airport to get my VAT refund and promptly spend all of it on wine.

This is how I flee a country.

I couldn't sleep on the flight and somehow watched both Sex and the City movies back to back. (This included loudly watching Liza Minelli's cover of Single Ladies six times in rapid succession, which the man next to me did not enjoy at all. Then again, he refused breakfast, so his judgment is clearly terrible.) I managed to stay awake for the trip into Oxford, picking up my keys, unpacking, and grocery shopping, which is pretty impressive. I forgot how easy it is to adjust to Oxford after you have a phone, bank account, registration for all of the various libraries, and a halfway decent memory of how all of the streets fit together and where to get coffee. (After my first arrival, I consider it a success whenever I don't have to nest in a bed of towels in a fifty degree bedroom.)