Coalition of the Thrilling

Shut It Down

2011-04-15T08:29:00.001-04:00

Over the past three weeks, I went back to the US for a marathon tour of law schools in New England, reconnected with tons of friends, more-than-friends, and frenemies, made what was probably the most difficult decision of my life, and then linked up with David and Emma in London and went backpacking in Turkey for a week. And at no point during this period of high-stakes decisions, interpersonal dramas, and novel desserts did I feel compelled to write about my day on the internet.

This is either a sign of maturity or a sign that my life has gotten so boring that I don't feel as sassy firing stories out into the ether, but either way, I think it probably means that it's time to shut it down. When I started blogging eight years ago - eeep - it was right after I left Fargo to go to college and knew absolutely nobody, and so nobody I knew read my blog, and it was a good way to brag and vent and process very new experiences to an undifferentiated mass of readers. Now, I think the only people who read my blog are people I know, and I feel weirder about bragging and venting to them, and the experiences don't seem so new, and in any case, the advent of Facebook and Twitter means that I'm more or less covered for my lingering fits of exhibitionist self-performativity.

I've been crap at blogging lately anyway, and I'd rather bow out gracefully than watch my readership continue to dwindle into the double digits. If I resurface and pick up blogging again, it'll be anonymously, and at a time in my life where it serves a purpose that picking up the phone and calling somebody can't quite serve. Until then, know that the glory days of this blog were probably my favorite experience that will never end up on my CV, and wish me luck as I drop offline and try to handle all this on my own. It's been all kinds of fun.

Mmmmmm

2011-03-29T19:37:00.000-04:00

You know who would risk missing a bus to New York and getting stranded in Cambridge for a Hubbard Park from Darwin's? This guy, like anybody who is reasonable and has good taste in sandwiches.

(I still managed to make the bus, which I am now on and about to eat my priceless sandwich and pass out, because I made every appointment and meeting today despite getting three hours of sleep, most of it on a pre-dawn Greyhound. I'm the definition of classy today.)

Game On

2011-03-25T07:59:00.000-04:00

This is the new obsession that is guiding me toward completion and publication of my DPhil. I feel like anthropologists have an unfair advantage in the crazy book titles category, although "Living with Crazy Buttocks" is obviously tough to beat. (That doesn't mean I won't try.)

This is the Wire, and We Are Now Down to It

2011-03-23T12:34:00.000-04:00

Visiting law schools next week was supposed to give me a solid month to make this decision, which I had kind of envisioned making while sitting in contemplation on a plateau somewhere in Turkey. And then that fell apart yesterday, when all of the financial aid information - and a new batch of deadlines - came through, which turned this into a $160,000 question that requires an answer by April 1.

Obviously, that's like super exciting, and a fantastic opportunity, but it took me ten minutes to decide what to put on my bagel this morning and you can imagine how I've been handling these developments. (I got approximately two hours of sleep last night, and when I spilled a spoon of basmati rice on my sock yesterday, I almost burst into tears.) I've developed Stockholm Syndrome with all four of the schools I'm still considering, and the thought of visiting all of them and then making a decision within 24 hours is kind of terrifying, especially when it involves a kind of financial commitment that makes me uncomfortable even when I'm playing Monopoly. The worst part is that I don't even get to have a revelation in a desert in Cappadocia, and will probably instead be making it on Delta - Delta - somewhere above the Atlantic, at 5am, while watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls on their awful in-flight entertainment and trying to get Rory Gilmore to help me understand how to pick schools before I land at Heathrow and have to phone it in. AWESOME.

The Acronym Game

2011-03-22T08:29:00.000-04:00

In one paragraph of my DPhil, I've managed to use LGBT, UN, UDHR, ICJ, NGO, ECOSOC, UNGA, and GEAR. One more and I would have a cubed hat trick.

Gross Adventures in Doctoral Study

2011-03-21T18:51:00.001-04:00

You know when you read a novel and it says that somebody smelled rotten milk and they retched? And you're like, whatever, plug your nose and I don't understand what the big deal is? Everybody just shut up and leave them alone.

I've never smelled rotten food and almost vomited before, mostly because I pride myself on having a kitchen where I notice when things have been neglected for so long that they are chemically transforming. The same is not true of the basement of my department, which is nominally used by an entire building full of faculty and students but doesn't seem to have anybody specifically tasked with cleaning it. And earlier this week, I opened the kind of gross fridge in the communal kitchen and literally almost threw up. (I didn't, because I have an iron constitution and also because I really wanted coffee and my tiny jug of milk was in that fridge.) It had kind of smelled weird before I left with my brother on vacation, but now it smelled rotten, mostly because everything inside was rotten. Like, there was my milk, but there were also four other things of milk, all of which had curdled, probably weeks ago. There was what appeared to be a piece of bread, which had been completely encased in fuzzy green mold. There was a package of salami labeled "April 4," which had begun to grow moldy, which led me to believe that it was not this April 4, and was possibly not last April 4 either. It was like a Steven King novel.

Except Kathy Bates did not break my knees and make me do it, I did it voluntarily, because I am apparently at the point where I will edit journals and do my taxes and scrape mold out of butter compartments and still think of it as a break from my work. And that is why I spent the next hour taking apart the fridge and scrubbing sheets of mold off the interior so that I can use it instead of walking to our apartment - literally 30 seconds away - for milk. It's probably good that I'm going to the US next week.

Fights in Our Household

2011-03-20T07:22:00.000-04:00

RT: "Ooh, sorry I wrecked your progress narrative."
DN: "AT LEAST I HAVE ONE!"

Caption of the Day

2011-03-17T20:21:00.000-04:00

Domestic Bliss

2011-03-17T15:50:00.000-04:00

DN: "I've always wanted to get the print edition of the New York Times! We could read it over breakfast in Stamford - you could read the arts and culture section, I could read the science and technology section, and we could burn the sports section for kindle in our fireplace."

The Decemberists

2011-03-17T07:55:00.000-04:00

I'm still a total sucker for the Decemberists, and actually really like their latest album, and was totally not ashamed to go into London last night for the sole purpose of seeing them at the Hammersmith Apollo despite the fact that nobody would go see them with me. And that was a good choice, because it is unlikely that I will get a chance to sing a cover of "Night Moves" with 5000 people ever again. (This still doesn't top Lily Allen's cover of "Womanizer," but it's up there.)

(Also, they closed their set with 16 Military Wives and I almost peed.)

Family Ties

2011-03-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

My younger brother is visiting and I was worried we wouldn't have enough to do, but then we had pies and went to see the shrunken heads and xylophones and bottled witches at the Pitt Rivers and then went to the pub. Ta-da! When it comes to food and weird things and beer, we are not so different, actually.

Slacker

2011-03-05T20:36:00.000-05:00

I know that normally my blog is like, "oh, LOL, I am such a shambles" and I'm like performatively overworked but this past month has actually kicked my ass, as evidenced by the fact that I've let my blog sit idle for the longest time in seven years. In the meantime, I got all my law school decisions and have run up a ridiculous phone bill talking to faculty and students and planning visits. I went to Johannesburg for a week to visit a friend and her family, launch the book I co-edited last summer, and go to a conference. I took a red eye back and made it to Oxford just in time to meet Brady and Emma and host a dinner party and go to an auction, then spend the weekend with Brady generally causing total chaos in London. I then realized I was supposed to be doing my DPhil, and did a bunch of other boring stuff including but not limited to writing two chapters, presenting my research to my department, finishing a draft of a book chapter, filing my financial aid forms for next year, and agreeing for some terrible and unknown reason to take on a week of full time work as an editorial assistant for a journal. In the interest of surviving the spring, I also planned a trip with my younger brother to Barcelona next weekend, and a trip to Turkey with David and Emma in a month.

There were things I meant to blog about during this - I got locked in my hotel bathroom in Johannesburg for 30 minutes and picked the lock with a piece of wire I managed to pry from the bathtub drain, and William Shatner is planning to release a heavy metal album, and David and I invented toaster pancakes - but I failed. Miserably. And my only hope is that when I start law school, so many comically terrible things will happen that I will be writing constantly.

Luckily This is Exactly What My Dissertation is About

2011-02-09T21:45:00.003-05:00

D: "There are ladybugs all over the house! And I can't kill them, because they're ladybugs!"
R: "Well, then we have to learn to coexist with them."
D: "No. I just have to dehumanize them."

Unnecessary Roughness

2011-02-08T15:49:00.001-05:00

If it is possible, there are two last things on earth I need right now:

1) Having my blog hacked into along with my Gmail, so that it redirects everyone to sites for Viagra and cheap prescription drugs from Canada, and
2) A sudden meeting with my supervisor to go over drafts before I leave for Johannesburg in, oh, 36 hours.

(The first part I fixed after twenty minutes of troubleshooting, while the second is unexpectedly on the agenda for tomorrow.)

This is in contrast to exactly what I did need, which was to go into London today to get quiche, see The Children's Hour, and then have a debrief coffee with Emma. Elizabeth Moss was fantastic, and even though Keira Knightley doesn't really do anything except look wispy and alternates between carefree and solemn for the better part of two hours - so basically, exactly what Audrey Hepburn does in the film, slash every film she has ever been in - she totally pulls it out in the last fifteen minutes and goes absolutely buckwild. If I were Ellen Burstyn, I would have wet my old lady clothes.

My plan is basically to keep my head low until I get to Johannesburg, where I'm attending a conference but also - and just as importantly - hanging out with Sam and watching as many episodes of 7 de laan as I can before somebody notices and judges me. And if it turns out that my supervisor has negative feedback, I will just pretend she is Keira Knightley and tell myself that if Ellen Burstyn can handle it after all the horrible things she has done, I should be able to handle it too.

Take That, Pile of Three Ring Binders I Am Currently Buried In

2011-02-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

Like somebody playing rock and roll in reverse and hearing the voice of Satan, I've just realized that basically all I need to do for my doctoral dissertation is take the literature review from my old thesis and reverse it. Bam! 10,000 words! I feel like I should write a thank you card to myself circa 2008 and send it back in time.

Happy Together

2011-02-06T17:18:00.002-05:00

In the midst of DPhil hell, David and I have been trying to get out and go on dates on the weekends. This week is going to be kind of grueling and then I'll be in South Africa next weekend, so tonight, we went to see Happy Together at the Magdalen Film Society. At the end, David was like, "it seemed like they were not actually happy together." I nodded. And he added, "and they were pretty abusive." I nodded. And David was like, "well, at least we got free wine and I didn't really understand what was happening."

I really need to start reading spoilers before dates.

Why I Invite People Over for Dinner

2011-02-02T20:04:00.002-05:00

"I think I've had too much wine. Ooh, can I alphabetize your spices!?"

This Goes Out to the Chicago Manual of RUINING LIVES

2011-02-02T19:44:00.001-05:00

Editing footnotes is one of the things I always think I will enjoy because it requires relatively little brain power and I can do it to music without getting distracted. (This is relative - I'm not good at focusing under the best of circumstances, but let's be real, changing commas to periods is not quite the same as struggling to articulate a theory of human agency.)

And then I try to navigate the Chicago Manual of Style and try to format things with like thirty tabs open to help figure out how to format snarky asides made in footnotes or references to e-journals that refuse to do anything but look like a half-baked journal footnote or an overlooked hyperlink. And slowly, I lose the will to live. I've been working on this off and on all day and I'm about two hours away from replacing all of these references with one footnote that says, "I tried my hardest and concluded that if you have any questions it's probably best if you just call me."

Huntsman in 2010!

2011-02-01T06:17:00.000-05:00

Signs I have WAY too much time on my hands, and also why tabbed browsing will keep me from ever being successful in life:

Adventures in Basic Daily Tasks

2011-02-01T05:34:00.000-05:00

I got to the graduate student office to bang out a press release and a couple hundred words of my dissertation, saw that the alarm on the office was set, and was like, whatever, they gave me the code for the alarm earlier this year, I can handle this. And then I stopped, and I was like, Ryan, empirically, can you handle things like this? I shook my head no.

But I tried anyway. As I'd entirely expected, I punched in the wrong code approximately five times, started panicking and just pressing random buttons to clear the keypad, and set off the burglar alarm for the building, which happens to be where most of the professors in my department work. (In retrospect, I feel like this whole working in the department to demonstrate that I'm an attentive and competent student thing is going to backfire horribly.)

Egypt, 24/7

2011-01-29T14:53:00.001-05:00

For my second book, I'm going to write a collection called "People Who Erroneously Thought Appointing a Novel Pick for Vice President would Save Their Chances at Executive Office." It currently has two chapters.

Watch Al-Jazeera's coverage here: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

Tea(rs) and Crumpets

2011-01-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

I've just hit 70,000 words on my DPhil - all quantity, not quality, don't get excited, everybody calm down - but the best part is that thanks to Mike, I finally have a provisional title for my follow-up book, which is "Tea(rs) and Crumpets: What I Ate During My Dissertation." It will be a bestseller among the kind of people who would like a coffee table book showing literally hundreds of crumpets with Nutella on them and nothing else because I have devolved to the food level of a three year old. I need to find Gushers or I'm going to get scurvy.

A Night of Blackmail, Which is So Much Less Intriguing than It Sounds

2011-01-19T00:47:00.000-05:00

The fact that I can still trick myself into pulling all-nighters by promising that they'll only be half-nighters blows my mind. Hullo, 6am.

Back to the OX1

2011-01-17T12:09:00.000-05:00

We're finally back in Oxford after six weeks away, and I have never been so glad to come home to a drafty firetrap in my entire life. Against all odds, the tiny bit of milk that I forgot about in the fridge seemed weirdly fine after SIX WEEKS, and somehow did not smell at all, which makes me never want to buy or drink that kind of milk again. Our rosebush is alive too, despite not being watered in six weeks, and even still has a very sad looking flower growing on it. Hooray!

I'm anxious to get back to work, but have actually spent the better part of the day trying to internationally fax a set of police reports and documents to various airlines, airports, and police stations after realizing that it wasn't just my camera that was taken, but about $200 worth of other stuff, including emergency cash and - very weirdly - two Uniball Vision pens. (I like these pens too, but not enough to jack them from a stranger.)

The gaping hole in my very small pantheon of possessions has been filled by a modernist reproduction of one of the fat ladies of Malta, a set of very heavily glittered stacking dolls I picked up from the market in Budapest, and a mug from one of the law schools I applied to, which was waiting for me when I got back to Oxford. It's kind of interesting how the fat lady alternately looks very thoughtful with her hand on her head or very hopeless with her head in her hand, depending on whether I'm finally getting back to work on my DPhil or the umpteen publications I have ignored for the past two weeks or incompetently trying to file insurance claims, combine PDFs, and send international faxes. I've spent way too much time today looking at her suspiciously.

The Blog of Job

2011-01-13T16:50:00.000-05:00

We left Pisa and made it to Malta today, where I got to our apartment and promptly realized that somebody had stolen my camera from my checked luggage. It's not the worst thing in the world - I've had it for two years, and I had just uploaded all my photos from Italy and didn't lose any of those - but the staff of both airports and of RyanAir have literally been as unhelpful as possible, and it's probably not covered by my insurance unless I can hunt down the receipt. I probably would have handled it better, except that literally every person I talked to reminded me that this was my fault, seemed to neither be surprised nor care that my camera was stolen, and refused to take any personal details to contact me on the off-chance that somebody actually did find a camera. I'm bad enough at dealing with airports when I'm not paying to use my cell phone internationally to be belittled in multiple languages and dialects.

After a brief visit to a very dusty but helpful Maltese police station, we looked for lunch and realized that it was now nearly 4 and everything was closed, and ended up sitting on a park bench eating a greasy but kind of excellent chicken pie. The day picked up when we found cappuccino, went to the National Archaeological Museum to see the fat ladies from the ruins, and I got a duck salad. It took a sudden turn for the worse when I found out that my trip to Joburg was scheduled two days after a launch event I was supposed to help with, took a turn for the better when we successfully took a bus back to our apartment, and more or less evened out when Orbitz allowed me to cancel and rebook my flight for only $10.

And then I found out that they updated the zodiac, and it turns out I'm a Libra and not a Scorpio, which is awful. I will be robbed and mocked and coerced into eating approximately 75g of saturated fat in my lunch, but I absolutely refuse to acknowledge that I'm not a psychotic tempestuous narcissist. That will not stand.

From the Annals of Silver Linings

2011-01-13T02:16:00.000-05:00

David and I left for the Cinque Terre yesterday, which was beautiful except a) the train we planned to take had decided not to exist, b) when we arrived in La Spezia, we found out that half the route was temporarily closed because of landslides, and c) virtually everything was closed until early February for the holidays. Yay!

Somehow, this did not stop David from hiking half the route and insisting on visiting all five towns - and not only visiting them, but going through all their streets with a Pac Man like thoroughness. (We also managed to find one restaurant we'd wanted to go to that was open, and had ridiculously good seafood risotto. They were like, "it takes 25 minutes to make," and we were like, hooray, please bring us a half liter of wine.) I'm all pastelled and cobblestoned out now, which is perfect, because we're about to take off for Malta for four days, after which we'll finally go back to Oxford and not be transient and have clean pants and reliable internet, which will be kind of thrilling in itself.

The Bois Do Bologna, and Other Terrible Puns About Italy

2011-01-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

This is about the first time I've had wifi since Vienna, save for the random spurts of connectivity that I've been able to hijack on my iPod to update the NYT Crosswords app so I have something to do on planes, trains, and buses besides re-read the one Nadine Gordimer novel I brought with me and become clinically depressed. Over the past two weeks, we've left Vienna for Budapest, and then flown to Italy to trek from Bologna to Florence to Pisa and then to the Cinque Terre tomorrow. It was freezing, but Budapest was tremendous - David and I spent two days there wandering around the city and going to the baths before Emma joined us, when we tackled Castle Hill and ate ridiculously well. (My favorite dish was what appeared to be an entire chicken encrusted in fried cornflakes, served on a bed of inexplicably green couscous. I thought it was awesome, and David thought it was gross, which is a reversal of how these things normally work.) After that, the three of us flew to Bologna and did all of the usual stuff in Bologna, most of which I did seven years ago and promptly forgot until I returned. Emma had to fly back to London to start classes, but David and I made it to Florence for two days, where we rented an apartment from this woman who a) thought we were minors and b) very clearly expected that we would burn down her apartment. (She had nothing to worry about, since our wildest night involved lying around the apartment drinking chianti and watching a BBC special on electric cars.) I expected Pisa to be the worst part of our trip because I booked us a double room in a hostel for 20 euros a night and we really had no idea why we were going to Pisa except that it had cheap flights to Malta, except that we randomly got upgraded to a boutique hotel and I just had a mushroom pizza that is literally the best pizza I've ever had in my life. It's also getting warmer as we head south, meaning that we have stopped piling on layers and trudging through snow and have started sitting outside without coats drinking wine at noon. Win!

Vienna!

2011-01-01T18:01:00.003-05:00

We're shutting it down in Vienna after a fantastic two days with Yussi and his parents, which began with dark orange hot chocolate and a visit to the UFO in Bratislava, clipped through St. Stephen's, a bunch of markets, a phenomenal exhibit on Picasso's political works (along with an exhibit of William Kentridge's work) at the Albertina in Vienna, and ended with a very late party for New Year's with punch and fireworks and a cheese hedgehog (which I will have at every party that I host for the rest of my adult life) that meant that we didn't do a whole lot today except schlep out to the palace for a tour, found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant for dinner, and went out for coffee before packing for our bus to Budapest tomorrow. And then it's only t-minus two days until we meet up with Emma in Budapest, and Team Fabulous rides again.

"I hope you know that as we visit a few castles, my expectations are going to change."
- David, after visiting Schloss Schonbrunn in Vienna

Goodnight, Moon

2010-12-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

We (somehow) made it to Bratislava this afternoon, met up with Yussi, got hot chocolate, and wandered around the city for a bit before hopping across the border to Vienna and meeting up with his parents for dinner. My body isn't sure whether it's currently 2:45pm Fargo time, 8:45pm London time, or 9:45pm Vienna time. All it knows is that it has gotten like 10 hours of sleep on the past few days, half of which was on an air mattress in Merinne's living room and half of which took place in any number of half-darkened planes, buses, and cars. And for that reason, I think I'm going to take an ill-advised amount of cold medicine now and sleep for twelve hours.

The Mediocre Race

2010-12-30T04:39:00.000-05:00

I love that no matter how much we plan in advance, every trip that David and I take is like an episode of the Amazing Race. The alarm didn't go off today and, by sprinting, we somehow made it on the Tube, the EasyBus, and our RyanAir flight to Bratislava, which is about to take off. We decided on the bus that we should make a checklist of all of the things we have to do on time and call this trip a success if we get anything above a 90%.

A Meme I Am Shocked to Find Does Not Exist

2010-12-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

By chance, Brady was on the same flight as David and myself back to Chicago, which would be fun regardless but was especially fun because the flight attendant was AWESOME. Her name is Maura, and she's with American Eagle, and she has a sassy Midwestern accent and does a dramatic reenactment of the flight safety procedures and tells people going to Cincinnati that she's sorry and she is literally the most fun flight attendant I have ever had. I Googled her name thinking that she had to be an internet phenomenon by now, but somehow, she isn't, which I can only explain by thinking that people who fly from Fargo to Chicago maybe aren't in a hurry to write about that flight on the internet. I assumed she would be on tee shirts by now. If you're on that flight in the near future, a) call American Eagle and tell them she's awesome, and b) bring a FlipCam.

So Long, Midwest

2010-12-27T16:55:00.001-05:00

The weird thing about Christmas is that it has slowly become less and less about actual Christmas and more about the weird traditions that have developed after I left for college - having my annual M&M Cookie at Atomic Coffee, going out for Gay Martini Christmas with my mom and Brady, buying my new annual pair of Sketchers, and the Yule Log that my friend's dad makes every year, which is delicious.

Now all of those are checked off the list, which means that it's time to start packing for our trip across Europe that starts tomorrow. I've come down with a terrible flu literally in the past twelve hours, which is probably some kind of divine punishment for letting my little sister talk me into watching Bridalplasty with her last night. Transitioning from being at home with my family and having a car, a kitchen full of food, and a bottomless pot of coffee in the kitchen to being transient in Europe with a backpack and bronchitis is going to be rough.

One-Upping the Virgin Birth

2010-12-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

Best Christmas sighting so far, at the thrift store in the old Pamida in Detroit Lakes, MN:

"Nativity Scene, 13 pcs. (Mary Missing.) $10."

Early New Year's Resolutions

2010-12-18T17:59:00.000-05:00

I just hit 50,000 words on my dissertation, meaning that I'm technically halfway done. (The "technically" is because I'm halfway done if I decide that I should attempt to submit something that is incredibly disjointed, missing a number of footnotes, and lacks any theoretical framework for large portions of the text. Realistically, I'm going to have to heavily, heavily rewrite and edit parts of this after I present it to my department and get their feedback about two and a half months from now.) Still, this puts me on track to have 60,000 words and about three chapters by the time I get back to Oxford, which would be a huge relief.

I realized I'm also nearing New Year's and have to figure out my resolutions for the upcoming year, one of which involves scaling back my use of Facebook and Twitter and using this blog more, since I'm increasingly realizing that I'm weirdly more self-reflective and less self-involved when I take the time to write like this than when I post brief and snarky posts directed to a semi-captive audience. (The other resolution I've developed is to begin assembling a dowry for myself, which was triggered by visiting New York and realizing that all my friends have spent years acquiring all the furniture and dishes and things they keep in their apartments, whereas I will be settling down somewhere in July with approximately two suitcases full of clothing, most of which I have had since my freshman or sophomore year of college. I think setting aside enough money to afford a bed and a set of dishes is probably a good investment.)

A Lot of Night Music

2010-12-09T19:22:00.004-05:00

As one might have predicted, I landed at JFK, dropped my suitcase at Brady's, and the two of us went directly to Splash for Musical Monday. We made it in time for two-for-ones and managed to catch four Patti numbers in the three hours we were there. It is times like this when I miss New York in an almost physical way.

The whole week was kind of fun and nostalgia-inducing like that, though. The next day, I went to Amy's for breakfast and went down to my old office to say hey to everybody, went uptown to Soho for a meeting and got the casing on my MacBook replaced at the Apple Store, had the veggie press at Grey Dog, and then saw A Little Night Music with my brother. (It was awesome, and I finally understand why people like Bernadette Peters. Since junior high I've been like, I don't understand, she sounds like a child, this makes no sense to me. And I saw her in Gypsy as Mama Rose, which was equally weird to me, but then I saw this production and was like, oh, it all makes sense now. Elaine Stritch was awesome, obviously, but struggled through a couple of parts - including forgetting the lyrics to Liaisons and having someone yell a prompt from off stage - and it was kind of hard to watch. I maintain that this only heightened the poignancy of the role. When in doubt, reach for Brecht.) And then we went for drinks at Eatery and caught up, which was lovely, because it always is.

The next day I got that ridiculous vegan oatmeal date scone at Whole Foods that I eat when I feel good enough about my body that I give myself permission to consume a small cake of oil, went into work again because I wasn't really sure what else to do, then went up to Columbia and poked around the law school before going to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to catch up with Abby, and then for beer at Valhalla with a friend of mine, and then for gay Thai with Brady, and then Bartini with Brady and Lee et al., where Bebe was performing and I got myself some cheek kisses and skinny vodka and Red Bull cocktails that I felt filthy ordering but were actually pretty good. And now I'm rocketing toward DC to spend time with David, in a replay of pretty much every weekend from mid 2009 to mid 2010. Somehow, during all of this, I managed to read Lefebvre's The Sociology of Marx, Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, and a few essays on development anthropology, so it's not even like I was a total slacker between the rediscovery of my favorite pastries and the singing off-key in bars.

I can't decide whether all of this means that I have to move back to New York in the fall or if it means that I have to perpetually be on the brink of moving to New York. It seems like a win-win.

Musical (Su)ndays

2010-12-05T10:08:00.001-05:00

The only really unfortunate thing about my flight back to New York tomorrow is that I'm going to get in too late to rock over to Musical Monday at Splash, meaning that I am probably going to go a full calendar year without shrieking when Donna McKetchnie does her insane neck rolls during Turkey Lurkey Time. BUT. The realization of that fact has not stopped me from watching some of the Musical Monday staples all morning. Seriously, this is what my procrastination has become.

BEA AND ANGELA. This is a Brady and Ryan staple. We have perfected the dance from 2:05 onwards. (Whoever choreographed it is absolutely terrible.)

"And as for pimps, pimps is something you don't need to get your daily business done." This is my motto, and I wish to have it on my grave when I die:

In this perpetual favorite, watch for the Patti LuPone swing-and-miss at 4:27. It is classic.

This was our apartment's anthem last year. Note all of the subtle chess imagery. Art!

I still flip out every time I see this, and it makes me wish I were a gay man in the 70s just so I could belt it in a very loud club without people staring at me, like they do in, say, a bar:

This was actually my favorite movie for most of high school. I had two copies of it on VHS.

Someday I want my face to be as expressive as Lucie Arnaz's:

And, of course, Annie, which always causes Emma to actually clap her hands in excitement because it comes on five minutes before we're planning to leave and we all have a few glasses of wine in us and basically shout it at strangers:

Add a -40 Windchill and This is My Upcoming Christmas

2010-12-04T07:30:00.002-05:00

I actually think this is way cuter than Teenage Dream. I'm a sucker for reappropriated duets.

Queer Thanksgiving

2010-12-01T21:56:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite made-up holidays we started during undergrad is Queer Thanksgiving, where everybody just brings whatever they feel like bringing and it ends up being a weird, fabulous potluck where people leave with stomachaches, just like normative Thanksgiving. I write saccharine posts about this every November, so we will just leave it there.

But Gay Thanksgiving is obvious enough that it has been autonomously started by thousands of people, and in the absence of Queer Thanksgiving, I was kind of excited to have a Gay Thanksgiving tonight. I threw together some stuffed peppers - I will be eating a giant mass of stuffed pepper filling for approximately a week, and also my kitchen looks like someone detonated a bag of couscous - and hustled over to our Gay Thanksgiving.

It was totally charming, and kind of exactly what I needed as I wind down this term. When you spend all day deleting and retyping single paragraphs, seeing humans whose company you enjoy is surprisingly reenergizing. Within five minutes, a stranger was like, "hey, we met like five years ago in your undergraduate library," and I was like, "behold, the magic of Gay Thanksgiving." I also took a ten minute break from my otherwise sterling vegetarianism - which has exceptions for seafood, novelty, or meats consumed while abroad - and ate a slice of turducken. I ended up catching up with people for like four hours before walking home in a food euphoria and then it began to snow, and I was like, oh, my faith in made-up holidays is totally restored.

Vag Magazine

2010-11-27T10:22:00.001-05:00

Emma has gotten me hooked on the Upright Citizens' Brigade's "Vag Magazine" webisodes, which are a sendup of feminist magazines and are tremendous. I watched all six episodes back to back after David and I got back from the Christmas Market yesterday, where I was sprayed with fake snow and developed mild frostbite after being too busy to buy a coat, hat, and gloves after throwing mine out during our bedbug infestation last spring. Fennel is possibly my new favorite TV character. (Sorry, Eric Stonestreet.)

This is what I miss by not Googling "vag" periodically.

Finishing the Hat

2010-11-23T11:44:00.001-05:00

I've been listening to the Sondheim on Sondheim soundtrack on a loop for approximately the last twenty-four hours, and it is getting to the point that I'm going to have to thank Vanessa Williams in the acknowledgments of my dissertation. Nobody told me you could do Sondheim mash-ups. IT IS SO GOOD. I'm running on a deadline to finish my first two chapters, so it's totally possible that she will be the only thing keeping me awake as day breaks tomorrow.

So Begins Phase IV of Operation: School Until I Die

2010-11-22T09:52:00.002-05:00

"Oh, sweetheart, you don't need law school. Law school is for people who are boring and ugly and serious. And you, button, are none of those things."

I'm apparently all of those things, because I just got the green-light for law school. I'm trying not to watch Legally Blonde all afternoon. And failing.

A Brief, But Long-Coming Rant

2010-11-19T17:27:00.002-05:00

Is it a good sign if you can't explain a piece of queer theory that you're writing to someone over dinner? Is that a bad sign? I DON'T KNOW. I thought I knew exactly how I was wrapping up this journal piece that's due at the end of the month, but it turns out that when I try to explain these ideas out loud, and somebody is like, "give me an example," that is suddenly impossible. (I almost was like, "you don't need an example, just think in abstract and unverifiable terms." And then I hated myself deeply and so I resigned myself to rewriting it.)

I've been staring at a blinking cursor and three documents full of disjointed paragraphs that now have next to nothing to do with each other and do not make a coherent argument no matter what order I put them in. I also made a really good frittata. I'd call it a wash if the writing I have to finish by the end of the month wasn't very, very close to giving me a nervous breakdown.

Obnoxious DPhil Update

2010-11-14T10:49:00.002-05:00

25,000 words down, 75,000 words to go. As long as I don't think too hard about how much of that is actually usable, that's semi-encouraging. More importantly, it legitimates me watching four hours of queer cinema tomorrow night, which is really all I need it to do.

This is What We Call Declining Quality

2010-11-01T13:35:00.000-04:00

I just sent in my first set of weirdly scattershot paragraphs to my supervisor, with a note saying that I realize that it's all over the place but that I think it's productively all over the place. (When I wrote up my MPhil thesis, I basically wrote the first two chapters meticulously, then ended up scrapping them entirely when I ended up writing about something completely different. I think he understands why I'm taking this approach.) But although the transitions are weak, a lot of the ideas are there - and there were over 10,000 coherently structured words on the page, which puts me at 10%. I hope it's okay that the death knell for this blog will probably be its slow decline into percentage points, until it can be replaced by an illustration of a thermometer and then finally a blank page that just says 404 page not found. That is when you'll know I'm a doctor.

Goals

2010-10-31T14:47:00.002-04:00

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.

One in a Million

2010-10-26T13:13:00.000-04:00

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."

We're Number One!

2010-10-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

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.

Quote of the Evening

2010-10-23T18:26:00.002-04:00

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

- David, upon getting trapped in our duvet cover.

Jesus Camp

2010-10-21T07:26:00.001-04:00

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.

DPhil Update

2010-10-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

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.

Somebody Call David Axelrod

2010-10-13T06:53:00.000-04:00

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

Welcome Back, Fool.

2010-10-10T18:39:00.000-04:00

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.

These are the Smartest People in the World

2010-10-06T20:26:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-06T13:19:00.001-04:00

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.)

Camping!

2010-09-24T00:40:00.000-04:00

It's been a hectic last week of finishing up work in South Africa, which is why I'm kind of glad that I agreed in advance to go camping along the Garden Route this weekend. There is something kind of liberating about throwing two pairs of underwear, a toothbrush, and three bottles of red wine in a backpack and being like, peace, and see you on Monday. (And then it will be like, BAM, last day of work, BAM, flee the country, BAM, arrive in England, all before Wednesday. I am not prepared for this whatsoever.)

Parting Shots

2010-09-22T18:31:00.002-04:00

Today, Ma looked at me and said, "I'm actually going to miss you. You're a very easy person to be around. And you're not full of shit at all."

I need to record this for posterity because want somebody to read it at my funeral someday.

The Current

2010-09-21T05:59:00.004-04:00

I can really only vouch for their programming from about 2am to 10am CST - boo for the many time zones between the Twin Cities and Cape Town, but yay for Lindsay Kimball - but I've been rediscovering how much I love MPR's The Current. It's my go-to radio station whenever I'm working on a big writing project, and everyone should go stream it for free on iTunes and donate to MPR, because it is fantastic. (Probably even if you're not an expat who only has half a Liz Phair album and a handful of Gregory Douglass songs on his work computer.)

An Inexplicably Penitential Thing I Will Probably Never Do Again

2010-09-20T04:12:00.003-04:00

Watching the Constant Gardener and Hotel Rwanda in the same weekend is probably among the worst ideas I've ever had. If you ever want to feel intense despair, I highly recommend it.

(Diamonds Are Forever was on afterwards, and that didn't even help - I just sadly thought that I should probably rent Blood Diamond one of these weekends.)

In Which I Earn Back Pretty Much Exactly What I've Paid in Insurance Premiums This Year

2010-09-17T04:46:00.004-04:00

I finally went to the doctor, and it looks like the bone dislodged at some point between the x-ray and the appointment, leaving nothing but very bad scratching in my throat and a bunch of muscles that are perpetually contracted, strangling me but giving me a sort of impressive looking neck. We found this out by attacking me with a tongue depressor and, after that failed, feeding a camera through my nose and down to my voice box, which is weird and unpleasant but now checked off of my bucket list. The doctor shrugged and asked how late I usually eat, and I told him I usually drink coffee and have toast right before bed, and he explained that my throat wasn't healing because acid crawls into the base of my throat when I lie down. Lovely.

So now I'm on a low-acidity diet, eating and drinking nothing for three hours before bed, and doing shots of Gaviscon after every meal. The really notable part about the whole experience is that I've been so worried about getting a throat infection that I failed to notice that September has flown past, and that I have just under two weeks left until I leave South Africa. I thought about that yesterday and panicked thinking about all the stuff I have left to do, and then Anna asked if I wanted to roadtrip through the Garden Route over the long weekend just before I leave, and I was like, yes, definitely. I'm going to tell people my flirtation with death has made me appreciate things like roadtrips.

Bloodlust

2010-09-14T06:46:00.004-04:00

I got an awful night's sleep last night, and woke up about a dozen times to a mosquito that repeatedly tried to fly in my ear and my mouth and kept trying to suck blood from my face. I woke up this morning and saw it on my ceiling, and I savagely killed it - like, half-naked, with a noise, and with actual blood on my hands. I felt so invigorated that I got up early and jogged to work, and have been flying through my projects all morning. This is not a healthy way to finish my PhD.

Dear Everybody I Know Who Thinks the Free Market Efficiently Delivers Health Care:

2010-09-13T04:25:00.006-04:00

I went to the hospital as instructed this morning, and was told that the doctor could see me for a consultation about removing the bone fragment from my throat on Thursday. I asked if they had anything earlier, and the receptionist was like, oh, are you busy on Thursday? And I was like, oh, no, I'm free on Thursday, it's just that there's a bone lodged in the lining of my throat, which I prefer to keep clear for such functions as "eating" and "breathing." The doctor is solidly booked, and the ER can't look at it unless it's actually an emergency, so I set up an appointment for the end of the week. (Remind me to bring this up the next time my grandma rhapsodizes about privatized medicine and how good it is at not rationing care.) In the meantime, I'm waiting by my phone for any cancellations and self-medicating with a small stockpile of Coke Light that I picked up outside the hospital. The bubbles are my last hope.

Life Imitates Art

2010-09-12T16:27:00.003-04:00

Tonight's James Bond movie on eTV is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is triply famous for being the one where James Bond gets married, for starring George "Who!?" Lazenby, and for being based on the book by the same name, which I incidentally finished reading this morning. I'm not even ashamed that I plan my Sundays around these anymore.

Algebra!

2010-09-12T05:41:00.001-04:00

I remember approximately nothing from high school algebra, but a Saturday in the office - being in pajamas the entire time = 0.

Adventures in Respiratory and Skeletal Health

2010-09-11T08:40:00.005-04:00

Ugh, it turns out I have a bone fragment lodged in the back of my throat. Of all the ways I could potentially spend my last two weeks in South Africa, the prospect of throat surgery is somewhere at the bottom of the list, around, say, getting carjacked or losing my passport. I can allocate approximately twenty minutes to throat surgery, and anything greater than that will cramp my style.

(On the upside, I looked at the x-ray at the hospital, and I think doing yoga over the past two months has really helped my posture.)

Medical Slapstick

2010-09-09T10:12:00.006-04:00

I have this persistent lump in my throat, and I'm kind of concerned that it's a fish bone from a sandwich I had about a week ago. It doesn't hurt, and I don't think about it most of the time, but there's a lump very low in my throat that I don't remember having there prior to spitting out another bone from this sandwich.

Apparently, it could be a phantom bone, which allegedly happens when you swallow a fish bone and fuck up the lining of your throat a little. (I learned this from Yahoo!, where the barely-insured like myself get all of our foolproof medical advice.) After a week, though, that's starting to seem implausible and I suspect that there's just a tiny bone painlessly but sort of worryingly hiding in my throat.

I plan to do shots of lemon juice tonight to see if I can soften the bone, and if that fails, I think I'll finally go to the emergency room tomorrow to see what they suggest I do about it. The saddest part is that, as embarrassing as that would be, it would probably rank third on my list of mortifying ailments that I've had to go get fixed in a foreign emergency room. I'm at the point where I count my blessings when I don't have to ask a volunteer to translate my problems into Dutch.

Quote of the Day

2010-09-08T15:52:00.001-04:00

David:

:-d
:-d
:-D
i got so excited i caplocked

The Giving Tree

2010-09-07T04:19:00.003-04:00

I'm sorry, I know this is old, but this is my favorite by far - any reference to Boo Radley is instant gold.

Back on the (Eskom) Grid

2010-09-06T08:21:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd be posting all kinds of whimsical updates from my roadtrip, but then that didn't happen - partially because of spotty internet access, and partially because I preferred to sit outside and read novels. (I finally had time to read the Mail and Guardian from cover to cover, a bunch of Namibian dailies, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, American Pastoral, the Yiddish Policemen's Union, Eva Luna, and Rubyfruit Jungle, which I am a terrible lesbian for not reading years ago.)

It was a fun trip, though - I went to Victoria Falls and took a boat trip out to Livingstone Island, went into Botswana for the day to take photos in Chobe, spent a day in Zambia, and then caught a very long, hot, and crowded bus trip to Swakopmund in Namibia, where I went sandboarding and quadbiking and splurged on kudu steak and kabeljou to supplement my backpacking diet of oatmeal and pasta with veg. I also ate a kind of gross amount of German pastry while I was there - the town is super-German, so I figured I might as well binge-eat apple strudel while I'm there.

It was really sweet getting back - I hadn't seen Anna for a month because her trip to Canada overlapped with my roadtrip, so we caught each other up on the happenings on our respective continents, made dinner, and watched the South Africa-Australia rugby match with Ma. It gave me the warm fuzzies, and makes me a little sad to think that I'm leaving for London in just over three weeks.

(That said, David and I just closed on this adorable flat on the top floor of a house down the block from the anthropology department, making our move back to Oxford suddenly seem very immediate and real. The fact that I'm getting all sentimental over conversations about whether or not David should bring a printer for the apartment probably means I'm ready for the move.)

Do It, Rockapella

2010-08-25T17:45:00.003-04:00

It's been a hectic week of frantically transcribing interviews, putting together law school applications, and working on the book - and then today, it finally hit me that I leave for my roadtrip tomorrow. Oops.

I think it's a good time for vacation - for a variety of reasons, I've been on a very unsatisfying Type A bender that mostly involves being self-critical and pushing myself too hard for no apparent reason. This is exactly when it becomes a good idea to go sit in the Namib and hang out with yourself for a week or two until you can behave again.

Adventures in Currency Exchange

2010-08-19T07:55:00.003-04:00

I spent 45 minutes this morning at ABSA getting US dollars for my trip through Zimbabwe. I had to go to a special branch, bring my passport and airline ticket, fill out forms with my addresses in the US and South Africa, withdraw cash from an ABSA ATM and bring the receipt for the money along with the money to the teller, sign a receipt, and then go out to the ATM another time because they also need a receipt for the money used to pay the commission and fee.

In the US, it takes less work than this to get a gun. (I thought about mentioning this to the teller, but thought better of it.)

There Was Something in the Air That Night, The Stars Were Bright, Tumelo

2010-08-17T04:06:00.004-04:00

I know I shouldn't be spending any more money ahead of my roadtrip through Southern Africa, but yesterday, I bought a ticket to Mamma Mia! - mostly, because it's supposedly a "proudly South African" take on the musical, from the sets to the costumes to the performers. I can't tell you how embarrassingly excited for this. It has everything I love - Swedes, camp, reappropriation, and absolutely no plot whatsoever. I live for things like this.

525,600 Minutes, or Something

2010-08-15T08:34:00.003-04:00

I was planning to hunker down and work on a couple of projects yesterday. Instead, I agreed to roadtrip through the wine country with Roxanne and a couple of her friends and start drinking immediately after breakfast.

By the end of the day, I had accidentally tossed back like twenty half-glasses of wine, eaten what had to be like two dozen pieces of sushi in Obs, agreed to go on two fieldtrips (to take salsa lessons and get baptized as an Anglican), and unexpectedly gone to a documentary about game parks and the eviction of the Masaai at the Labia, which is obviously now my favorite theater. I transcribed zero minutes of interviews and made zero changes to my CV. I'm not good at math, but those things somehow balance out to a successful day.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Ryan.

2010-08-12T16:12:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, Ma and Anna were both out of the apartment, making it the first night I had been entrusted to take care of the place alone. I thought I did a really good job - I fed the cats, watered the plants, gathered and washed the dishes, made myself dinner, swept the kitchen, and put in laundry. And then I read a few journal articles, rewarded myself with Borges, and fell asleep.

So you can imagine how terrifying it was to wake up to something crashing downstairs and the cats freaking out at 3am. As this happened, a series of thoughts rapidly flashed through my head, beginning with the thought that I really don't want to die in a burglary. I realized that all of my pants were in the laundry. I realized that there are bars preventing me from escaping from pretty much any door or window in the apartment. I realized that I don't know what the equivalent of 911 is in South Africa. (I do now, because I looked it up over breakfast this morning.)

I'm not much of a praying person, but God, if you're listening, all I ask is that if I go downstairs at 3am, there are only the number of cats that there are supposed to be, rather than every stray cat in the neighborhood fornicating with slash murdering each other all over the living room. That's all.

Embarrassing Moment

2010-08-10T17:33:00.003-04:00

Okay, so this is only embarrassing because I never get homesick - I attribute this to a couple of things, including the fact that I haven't lived in one place continually for more than nine months in the past seven years, or the fact that I've never lost a friend or family member and still think of the universe as a place where everybody is around when you finally make your way back to them. I can psychoanalyze this to bits.

I can also psychoanalyze the fact that I just heard "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and became cripplingly homesick for the first time that I can remember. Like, why am I here, and why would I ever give up those Tuesdays singing with Brady at Marie's kind of homesick. It's a scary feeling when you think you're immune to it. And I hate that of all the things in my life that could make me feel that way, it was Andrew Lloyd Webber who did it.

Photos from Kirstenbosch

2010-08-10T03:20:00.004-04:00

I'll put more of these on Facebook, but this is why I love botanical gardens:

Hiking!

2010-08-09T12:00:00.002-04:00

Today is Women's Day, so I don't have to go into work - and because I didn't leave the house yesterday and am starting to go stir-crazy, I paid an obscene amount of money to take a cab to Kirstenbosch today to run around and play and take a ridiculous number of photographs of trails and flowers.

I accidentally ended up on a hiking trail, which is typically how I end up on hiking trails. (Once, I climbed Devil's Peak in a polo and khakis, alone, with a bag full of books and a muffin but no water, map, or cell phone, because I decided to do it and then my taxi came while I was in the bathroom. Another time, I got lost in the woods in Germany for almost four hours because I couldn't read the signs and I was going to a chapel that was hours away, until I was found by a kindly jogger. I wandered through a Filipino rainforest for two hours because I wanted to hike from Sabang to the Underground River, and was like, I can definitely handle the Jungle Trail, and the Monkey Trail is for losers, and I ended up scrambling through a ravine, falling down a hill, and fording a river. In most of these cases, the thought of my own death crossed my mind.) This time, it put me high above Kirstenbosch, looking down on the basin of irrigation water, going the wrong way around the edge of Table Mountain, and realizing that I was now on a mud trail that may or may not have been a real trail. So I turned back, found what did appear to be a trail, and spent a little under two hours traipsing around along the base of Table Mountain on the Silvertree Trail.

I have a propensity when I'm trying to stay alive to talk to myself. I did this for most of the Silvertree Trail, until I realized that just ahead of me, there were two British hikers, who could probably hear everything that I was saying. I remember saying "I think I smell a gorge!" at one point, and realized they were ahead of me right after a bird made this loud noise and I shouted back, "you shut up, I'm going as fast as I can!" When bored, I sang Poker Face a la Leslie Knope. I think I also told Robert Frost to go to hell at one point. And then they laughed at me when I passed them, probably because I was blushing very, very intensely. Hiking is no fun when other people are actually around.

Date Night

2010-08-06T16:34:00.003-04:00

Tonight, I went out with my high school girlfriend, who's now an anthropologist here in Cape Town and who I haven't seen in about seven years. I rushed out of work just after five, slightly late for our meeting and disheveled from a day of meetings and editing, and she saw me and broke into a smile. "You look pretty much exactly the same," she said. "That's because my haircut makes me look like a teenager," I replied. And she said that we're getting to the age where now that's a compliment, and we laughed like old people.

We sat down and got mojitos, took turns doing the obligatory summary of the past seven years of our lives, and then talked about the friends we'd stayed in touch with or lost track of over the years, about barefoot anthropology, about sex panics, sewage, and witchcraft, about how much we love shitty television - I was like, "I watch Gossip Girl" and she was like, "I watch Merlin, on the CW," and I was like, whoa, you win - and then we had breakfast for dinner at a vegetarian cafe and talked about how bad we were at constructing sandwiches from a menu. I didn't realize until afterwards that we had talked non-stop for over five hours.

I feel weird saying this for a variety of reasons, but it was probably one of the best dates of my life.

Waiting for Godot

2010-08-04T15:54:00.005-04:00

I missed Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot when I was in Oxford and it was playing in the West End, and then I missed it when I was living in Hell's Kitchen and it was playing on Broadway, and then I got to Cape Town and it was playing at the Fugard, and I went last night and got a student ticket in the third row for $20. (Sometimes, being terrible at life is just being awesome at life in disguise.)

If you're in Cape Town, you should definitely see it - it's a good production, and the Fugard is beautiful. At the end, Ian McKellen was really close to the front row bowing, looking pretty much directly at me, and I was like, oh my God, I'm staring directly into the face of Magneto. When I was six, this totally would have made me wet my pants.

Licence to Kill

2010-08-02T04:35:00.003-04:00

I remembered yesterday that eTV is showing Bond films every Sunday at 8pm, which brings back all sorts of wonderful memories of Bond marathons being aired by TBS pretty much every Sunday of my young adult life. Yesterday, I rewatched License To Kill, which I love because Timothy Dalton is about the least suave James Bond there has ever been. When he dives out of airplanes, he flaps like a bird. He frequently lands on things with a dull thud. When he says really bad one liners, he says them awkwardly, like he is embarrassed to be reading them. He gets sweaty a lot and yells at people, and regularly hurts the feelings of his androgyne sidekick. He's a man of his time, in that he's sort of a cross between Roger Moore and Gerald Ford.

It's also generally a good movie to watch with people and laugh at. A young Benicio del Toro plays the slimy henchman, and if you watch the credits, someone named Sheila Goldfinger did the jewelry. I've already blocked off my schedule this weekend to watch Goldeneye for the seventh or eighth time. (When we saw Alan Cumming at the National Equality March, I wanted to be like, "I loved you as Boris Grishenko!" but was torn between that and "your role on the L Word routinely made me uncomfortable!" and I ended up being quiet and behaving myself.)

Angsty Yowls of the 49th Parallel

2010-07-31T17:14:00.003-04:00

I'm making a mix for Anna's upcoming trip to Canada, and managed to put together a whole mix tape of travel-themed songs by Canadian artists using nothing but my iTunes. Some were easy, like Amy Millan's "All the Miles," the Weakerthan's "Relative Surplus Value," Po Girl's "Movin' On," etc. Others were harder, but still kind of hint at the theme, like Broken Social Scene's "Windsurfing Nation," KD Lang's "One Day I Walk," or Rufus Wainwright's cover of "Across the Universe."

Others are obviously just inappropriate. Tegan and Sara are not literally singing about taking someone anywhere, Avril Lavigne's "Sk8r Boi" is not primarily about skates, Alanis Morissette's "Hand in My Pocket" is not really about hailing a taxicab. It's a long flight, maybe Anna will fall asleep before the end of the CD.

Panic Fun

2010-07-30T16:52:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was a kind of draining, stressful day. Today, I agreed to join a team for a trivia fundraiser that will possibly be conducted in Afrikaans, got started on the process of applying to law school in the fall, set up drinks and dinner with my ex-girlfriend who is somehow an anthropologist in Cape Town, and sort of impulsively booked a half dozen tickets to backpack through Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and Namibia. One or all of these plans will backfire, but for now they seem pretty fun. I also bought Turkey Lurkey Time for my work computer and listened to it on a loop as I edited all day. I'm really grasping at straws, here.

Status Update of the Month

2010-07-29T03:43:00.002-04:00

Brady: Tickets: $40. Blue Moons: $12. Donna McKechnie telling me after the show that her neck and shoulder problems are a direct result of Turkey Lurkey Time: Priceless!

I know I post this about every three months, but it's impossible to stop watching. Donna McKechnie's neck is surreal.

The One Where a Creature Bursts from Dian Fossey's Stomach, Killing Everyone Present

2010-07-27T03:32:00.004-04:00

We finished watching Avatar last night and I made some offhand remark about liking Sigourney Weaver because she's such a versatile actress. And then we tried to think of other things Sigourney Weaver has been in, and could only remember Alien and Gorillas in the Mist. We also realized that Avatar is basically just what you get when you combine Alien with Gorillas in the Mist.

(Later, I remembered Heartbreakers. I still think she deserved an Oscar for that.)

Photos!

2010-07-26T11:10:00.005-04:00

This is the view from my bedroom. This is unlike any other view I have ever had from any of the many other bedrooms in which I have lived, which tend to have a) tundra, b) the upper portion of a tree, or c) a couple fighting across the street.

And this is the view from our patio, which looks out onto Signal Hill and the City Bowl. See that, in the distance? That is where I trudge to work in the morning.

BEHOLD, THE WHEEL OF EXCELLENCE.

And Mike and Anna, whose facial expressions do not do justice to how excellent the wheel actually was. I'm still recovering.

All the Gin Joints in All the World

2010-07-26T06:52:00.007-04:00

Anna's birthday party was on Saturday, which meant that I spent Saturday and the early portion of Sunday being swept along from dinner at Grand Daddy to drinks at Buena Vista to dancing at Casablanca. Casablanca was excellent - there were tons of people, Anna and I did shots of Jagermeister at midnight, and then they played Single Ladies and I pretty much gave up any pretense of dignity. (I gave it up with my yoga instructor, who is blonde, German, and insanely fit. The whole time I wanted to be like, "Simone! Simone! Look at my posture! Note how my back is straight as though there is a string going from my spine to the ceiling!" but I stopped myself.)

I barely ever go to straight clubs with straight friends, and it was kind of fascinating watching everyone flirt with each other in a kind of sexual roulette all night. One of my friends was like, "I think all the guys are really into this girl because she's a little crazy," and I was like, "yeah, that seems plausible." About two minutes later I looked up and the friend was dancing on the bar, which had been doused in liquor and set alight. I was like, "oh, heterosexuality," and then Poker Face started and I went totally buckwild.

Yesterday, the craziest part of my night was watching half of Avatar until the power went out and Ma and I conspiratorially ate half a bag of cookies in the dark while Anna tried to get a hold of the power company. I like my weekends like that.

By Popular Demand

2010-07-23T04:06:00.002-04:00

I look like someone from the Street Fighter B team.

Hair Fail

2010-07-22T09:04:00.005-04:00

I had a brunch meeting with a colleague in Rondebosch today, and since I was already there, I thought I'd look for bookstores around UCT, and then I thought maybe I'd grab lunch, and then I decided to stock up on toiletries, and then I realized I should probably go grocery shopping, and then I saw a haircut place and was like, "well, my hair is getting shaggy, and I might as well get it cut since I'm out and about." (If you give a mouse a cookie, etc., etc.)

I'm usually not at all uptight about my hair. My hair has been the color of a fire truck, it's had blond highlights that made me look like a sick leopard, and once, I insisted that if I was going to go as Batman for Halloween, I had to dye my hair black so I would look like Bruce Wayne when out of costume. (I was a little Type A, even as a child.) Generally, I can cut my hair really short or let it grow freakishly long and out of control, as David somehow tricked me into doing last year by telling me how great it was that I looked like a lion. It looks fine at pretty much every stage in between. I'm not that picky about these things.

HOWEVER.

Until today, I just assumed that haircuts done entirely with clippers only existed in prisons, the military, and Britney Spears' home when she's going through a rough patch. I was like, "I just want like a half inch off the top, and to get rid of the shaggy parts around my sideburns." And then the guy nodded thoughtfully, pulled out the clippers, and shaved a giant stripe down the side of my scalp. After three or four of these, he was like, "does that look okay?" and I looked up and thought, no, no, that most certainly does not, but you can't really ask him to paste your hair back on your head at that point. You're basically in it to win it, and I decided that whatever lofty and opaque vision he had for my head would probably be better than whatever bastardized compromise he'd have to make if I flipped out. So I was like, yeah, fine, but that's about as short as I want it.

And then he proceeded to shave off pretty much all of my hair - which, when you think about it, is probably about all you can do when you cut hair by running a clipper over someone's head. As Anna put it, the upside is that I probably won't need another haircut this year. The downside is that the gel I bought beforehand is probably the worst $10 I've ever spent in my life.

Will Run for Cake

2010-07-21T14:37:00.002-04:00

My biggest accomplishment today was surviving my run, which was actually more like a trot. (Anna kicks my ass at yoga, but I realized today that I run like a fucking gazelle.) We're near the base of Table Mountain, so the route is positively stunning as the sun is rising, and it felt fantastic to just run after being cooped up behind bars, gates, and electric fences for the past month.

And then I went to work and had carrot cake for breakfast, in what is perhaps the best illustration to date that I run because it feels good, not because I'm trying to lose weight.

Run Baby Run

2010-07-20T16:42:00.002-04:00

Anna and I vowed to go running tomorrow morning, which will be painful seeing as a) I haven't gone running since the unseasonably warm beginning of December, b) I had a lamb sandwich and two pieces of chocolate cake for dinner tonight, c) I didn't bring running shoes, just my Sketchers, and d) I won't have Garbage screaming in my ear to make me run faster. The only thing spurring me on is that I want to return to the UK with a single chin.

Ryan Wins the Night

2010-07-19T17:57:00.004-04:00

IGLHRC finally won ECOSOC status today on a 23-13-13 vote, which was an epic win for everyone back in New York, and also the world. (The way that these battles for ECOSOC status have played out since I worked on this at ILGA in 2006 has been fascinating and disheartening and maddening - in equal measure, and often simultaneously.)

On top of that, it was Ma's birthday today, and when I asked for birthday suggestions, Anna said that chocolate was always a hit, particularly when people knew to go for quantity rather than quality. My brilliant idea was to go to this boutique bakery in town to get her a very, very chocolaty birthday cake. That way, it was festive, it was an instant party, and it was something she really liked. HAT TRICK.

And it would have been brilliant, except that said bakery is closed on Mondays, which I learned when I got there and stood with my face pressed despairingly against the glass, looking past the "CLOSED MONDAYS" sign, the chairs upturned on the tables, and the dark till at the bakers going about their business in the back. What was brilliant is that I called as soon as I got to work, and I convinced them to give me a dark chocolate cake if I could be there before 2pm. And so I did, and gave them 180 rand in an alleyway in exchange for this gorgeous dark chocolate cake with glitter and fresh rose petals sprayed around the top. It was among the best pieces of cake I've ever had in my life, ever, and not just because I bought it like it was crack.

And on top of THAT, I finally picked up a wireless router after being in this apartment for three solid weeks (technology: 20, Ryan: 1), and even if it took me three hours to set it up and configure everything so that I could actually pick up a signal across the apartment, I did it, and here I am.

Hits and Misses

2010-07-19T03:42:00.002-04:00

I uniformly failed at the plans I had actually made for the weekend (to finish a journal article that has now been ruining my life for the past two years, to pick up a wireless router so I'm not AWOL all weekend, grocery shopping for fruits and vegetables to stave off scurvy for another week, etc.) but I did succeed at other, less critical but still important things. I went to yoga, and felt that all weekend. Anna, Mike and I went to the Waterfront, where we rode the Wheel of Excellence (because I insisted, because I'm twelve and because you can't pass up something with a name like that), got a drink, and then sat in a bookstore to plan our respective trips to Canada, Switzerland, and through Namibia and up to Victoria Falls. I finally watched Up in the Air. I sorted out my library of PDFs so I can actually find things when I have to start writing in October. I went for a long drive down past Camps Bay, which is beautiful and where I have to spend a weekend sometime when it's warm out. I finished a pile of books for work, finally read Camus' The Stranger, and started reading Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, because it was on the bookshelf and because I should oddly probably read it for work and my PhD. As far as failures go, it was an epic success.

Come Rain or Come Crime

2010-07-16T03:41:00.002-04:00

I was leaving the house this morning as it was drizzling when Daleen stopped washing dishes and looked up.

"Are you planning to take a taxi?"
"No, I was just planning to walk."

She thought for a second, and was like, "I think you should wear a sweater." I was already wearing a zip-up sweatshirt, so I said I thought I'd be fine, and she was like, no, you also need a sweater. I ran upstairs, put on a sweater, and was like, "okay, see you tonight!" and she stopped me again.

"Don't you have a windbreaker?"
"No, I'll walk fast and beat the rain."
"You need a windbreaker."

So she ran upstairs and got a windbreaker, and I put it on, and I looked like a marshmallow trudging off to work. And she nodded with approval and said, "there, now you'll stay safe."

It wasn't until I left the house that I thought, dry, or warm, maybe, but I don't think layering keeps you safe. And then I realized that she was probably halfway trying to keep me dry and halfway trying to pad me for if I get stabbed. She thinks of everything.

Compound Adjectives

2010-07-15T07:39:00.004-04:00

I don't know what's more embarrassing - that I'm getting my PhD and I had to have compound adjectives explained to me by my boss, that I'm learning grammar from what looks suspiciously like a Geocities website circa 1996, or that this is apparently a big enough problem at Kent Law that they need this resource. All of these things make me sad.

Coping Mechanisms

2010-07-14T05:59:00.002-04:00

I realized yesterday when I was at Clarke's that I've spent twice as much on books as I have on food since I got to Cape Town. Partially, this is because Daleen is a phenomenal cook. (Yesterday, she made bean soup, mutton, meatballs, rice, carrots, squash, and potatoes for dinner. Today, I took my two-day old pasta and damp roast vegetables out of the fridge and my stomach burst into tears. It knows what it's missing.) But partially, this is because I've tracked down a bunch of books that are a) published in South Africa and way easier to get here than in the US or UK, but b) still ridiculously expensive. I basically need to get a library pass to UCT soon or else I won't be able to afford food and then I'll have to eat better. Wait, what?

Plugging In

2010-07-13T04:54:00.007-04:00

I've been terrible at updating anyone on my life since I got to Cape Town, mostly because the flat doesn't have wifi, and I've been tearing through my research projects at work to finish in time for me to take a week of vacation in Namibia in September. I'm planning to crack this weekend and buy a wifi router for the flat, mostly because Skype would go a long way in helping David and I work around two 9 to 5 jobs and a six hour time difference. And with that, I will probably be online more, and puttering around in a cardigan with cats at my feet and a cup of tea and a novel in my hand significantly less. (My feelings about this are mixed.)

The last week has been excellent, though - we did the Fan Walk for the semi-final between Uruguay and the Netherlands in Cape Town, which involved a lesbian bar that everyone basically had to rip me away from because I had an Amstel and they played You Shook Me All Night Long and I was like, no, get away from me, this is my home. I went out again when two friends of mine from college were in town, where we somehow ended up going clubbing with two Brazilian guys, evenly splitting the conversation between English, Spanish, and Portugese, and worrying that the less-balanced one was going to die of a heart attack somewhere around his sixth whiskey and Red Bull. It was fairly epic. A couple nights later, I tagged along for the going away party for the woman who rented my room in the flat before I did, who is going back to Montreal. At least three people were like, "you also have a Canadian accent," and I was like, no, nothing quite that sexy, I am tired and there has been champagne and my vowels are getting away from me.

Mostly, though, I've just done a crazy amount of work that I didn't have the uninterrupted time to do in New York, often while sitting in front of the space heater and watching Oprah with the cats and my host mother, Daleen, while she knits sleeves and says things like, "I'm as full as a female badger." Most of you can probably understand how happy this makes me.

Relief

2010-07-05T17:45:00.003-04:00

Jesus, I am so glad I no longer go on first dates. (It's probably because my relationship is founded on early date suggestions like, "how about we go shopping in the red light district and see if we can run into the guy you're seeing?" or "how about we accidentally crash a faculty lunch in the history department and have sandwiches anyway?" or "how about we ride a mechanical bull and draw on each other with magic markers?" The point where a long-term relationship developed is somewhat unclear.)

Swoon!

2010-07-05T15:49:00.006-04:00

While I'm in Cape Town, I'm renting a room in a flat owned by a friend of a friend and her mother, which kind of reminds me of the setup I had that blissful summer in Brussels when I ended up having two fabulous gay foster dads by accident. I tagged along with Anna for yoga and salsa over the weekend, and she's totally fantastic. Her mother, who's a retired teacher, is this really kind, warm woman who makes homemade jam, knits, bakes, and makes clothes, but also really likes extremely violent Steven Segal films and says "fuck" occasionally. I'm obviously head over heels about this woman.

This morning, I walked downstairs and she looked me up and down and said, "I just made Anna a pair of jeans. When you get tired of those jeans, I will make you a new pair. Okay." and then she went to make toast. Swoon.

Oh, Joni

2010-07-03T07:52:00.000-04:00

Joni Mitchell's "Blue" is like the best soundtrack for nomadism, ever.

Ow, Ow, Ow

2010-07-03T07:33:00.003-04:00

I just tagged along to Anna's yoga class in a big industrial loft in Woodstock, and now every part of my body hurts but I do feel newly energized about this whole becoming fit in South Africa thing. The problem is that I think there might actually be something medically wrong with my legs, because I've never been able to keep them straight, even when I was a child. Rickets? Scurvy? Unclear! I'm hoping that doing yoga every weekend and practicing will help, because something tells me that if I have scurvy, the next three months of meat and potatoes are not going to do much in the way of bone density.

Cape Town, Ho!

2010-07-02T11:39:00.003-04:00

I made it to Cape Town! On Wednesday! I'm usually more on the ball about running off and exploring right off the bat, but I postponed that to get 27 hours of sleep over the past two days. It was magical.

I've still had time to get unpacked and settled - I'm living with a friend of a friend and her mother, and they are both totally lovely. The mother is also a fantastic cook, and I've eaten enough chicken pie and bobotie that I think putting a moratorium on my vegetarianism was a very good idea. Also, I was like, "I will jog in Cape Town, and I will come back looking fantastic!" and I'm beginning to realize that I will instead stay indoors, not job, and eat a great deal of white rice and potatoes. The silver lining is that this is probably a good way to ease back into living in England. The flat has a small barrel of instant coffee and a cat named Violet who has become my best friend, so I'm pretty much set. I do not require much to be happy.

When I tore myself away from the house and walked into town yesterday, I managed to pick up a phone, buy toiletries that I forgot or that exploded in my suitcase, and go to a book launch of Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance at Book Lounge, which I managed to finish a few hours before I gave it away and hopped on the plane. Otherwise, I've been trying to figure out what to do about internet, as it turns out that my room in the flat does not have it. (I somehow totally neglected to ask this question when I was inquiring about the place. Oops.) I'll be online at work, so it would actually be a kind of nice incentive to hunker down and get some writing done at home, but it makes Skype with David considerably trickier, particularly when it's combined with the seven hour time difference. I suddenly feel obligated to put "long distance" from New York to DC in scare quotes.