Goodnight, Moon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.