Quote of the Day

David:

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

The Giving Tree

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

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

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

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

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

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.