Epic Win!

Today, I mailed off a copyright agreement to a journal, picked up six cupcakes for Brady's birthday, finished all my projects from the first week of work, and - wait for it, wait for it - SIGNED THE LEASE. (We signed that, plus a rent stabilization form, plus a statement promising that I don't have children, plus a statement promising not to eat lead paint, plus a waiver related to maintenance work, and at least two or three other documents.) This took an hour, largely because our landlady accurately noted that we had written the date "9/11" approximately one million times. This turned into a 45 minute discussion about 9/11, then national security, then privacy, then healthcare, then Iran, then abortion, then back to healthcare, then back to privacy and civil liberties. When a break unexpectedly surfaced in the conversation, she slid another form in duplicate across the table for Brady and I to sign, as I sat too terrified to agree or disagree with anything because the lease was still unsigned and I was still hostage.

But I'm moving to Hell's Kitchen on September 15th. And that called for margaritas. And that is why I just got home after my first week of work.

Ring the Alarm

I got to work early this morning and nobody was there, and instead of just going into the office, I stood outside for forty-five minutes looking anxious because I was afraid I'd set off some kind of crazy alarm and force a mass evacuation. I made the mistake of blurting this out when the first person arrived, thereby winning the award for most awkward new employee ever. (I didn't force everyone to flee the building, though. Success!)

Arrival Narratives

Today was my first day of work, which is also the first day of fieldwork for my PhD. It struck me that most field notebooks start with some kind of arrival narrative where the ethnographer is lonely or ill or disoriented, while I arrived and received my new email address, a code for the bathroom, and directions to the office coffeemaker. It also made me remember how much I missed being involved in queer activism, and made me realize that there might really be something to this whole studying up approach. When your biggest dilemma on your first day is that you could only find a vegetable sandwich at Subway for lunch, you are probably not doing so bad.

Never Say I Didn't Give You Anything

David's visiting for the first time since we left Oxford, so this has been a fairly jam-packed weekend of cooking and culture, both high (the Howl Festival and La Boheme at the Met) and low (binge-watching the entire first season of Summer Heights High). But to tide everybody over, here's the fractional turtleneck, as promised, from last week's Choice Cu*ts:


Bonus: Where's Waldo? Hint: He is throwing his hands up like he just does not care.



(Thanks to MissMaro.)

Blind Item

The details are unimportant, but I just spoke with somebody who was like, "lots of people like your project, including this person whose name you might know," and I almost blurted out "I do, because I've memorized all of her commercials and came this close to listing her as one of my interests on Facebook!" before managing to restrain myself. Still, file that under people who pretty much single-handedly salvage a bad day.

Boy on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I've spent the better part of this afternoon working on my first set of reports for work, trying to transfer funds from my massively uncooperative bank in the UK to my bank in the US, trying to figure out flights, hotels, and registration for this conference in Detroit at the end of October, getting documents faxed to finalize my lease for mid-September, and figuring out the logistics of getting David to NYC and finding one or both of us places to sleep in three different apartments over the next week. I don't have a reliable internet connection, so I've mostly been popping out to cafes whenever I need to check on something and then darting back to the apartment to call and yell abuse at my bank. The net effect is that I'm not only on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but so caffeinated that it's going to be a doozy when it happens.

(I think I've got the housing figured out, at least. Indefinitely subsisting on the $300 in my bank account and slowly realizing that this conference in Detroit is going to cost twice that amount are proving more daunting.)

Muppet Cupcake Tragedy

Sigh. I kind of hoped that by the time I was almost 25, I'd be able to walk past a bakery without looking in the window, being like, you guys, that cupcake has a Day-Glo Muppet dinosaur coming out of it! and bursting in to buy and eat it immediately. That is a mistake, especially when you have just eaten a metric ton of curry and rice it is made of solid marzipan. It hurts because I'm quite possibly in glycemic shock, but it also hurts because I have clearly learned nothing over the past, oh, 22 years of my life.

PS. Emma and I decided to apply for the Amazing Race. Details forthcoming.