Well. I am tired. My back is still tired from yesterday's yoga and this afternoon's yoga but I'm getting stronger. I wrote emails back to people who had fantastically generous commentary to offer about my my fairy tale pieces last night at my workshop. And yes, I'll be doing more of those pieces soon but tonight I got sidetracked thinking about Benjamin and the aura of art and the photograph and language, so much I miss thinking about. So I'm thinking about it.

I'm also planning a trip home to Tucson, hopefully early enough in August that I won't miss the entirety of the monsoon. I can't tell you how much I miss that. There are simply no words.

Mr. Serrano looks a little bit perkier just being up higher where his leaves get more light and air! Fingers crossed. Those pictures of plant viruses scared the shit out of me when I found them while procrastinating yesterday.

But speaking of procrastinating, I am not doing it! Today I am writing! Slowly but writing!

(trust me, the feat deserves those exclamation points)

!!!

Good News: Volunteer mint came along for the ride with morganlf and bellwethr's lemongrass! I got a good whiff off my fingers today so the mystery plant has been identified for its unmistakable minty-ness. And I was right about the look of the leaves. It's nice to be right sometimes.



I don't know exactly what variety it is yet but it has really cool textured leaves and the tiny one is growing in an awesome spiral. And I think there's more than enough space in the pot to accommodate both mint and lemongrass! At least for a while. Or so I hope.



Bad News: Mealy bugs and possibly another bug colony found our strawberries. We pruned away affected leaves and fruit and have our fingers crossed but may have to resort to more serious controls.

Even Worse News: Mr. Serrano hasn't been happy for several weeks now. For a while it was just a few yellowy spots on a few leaves and a pretty adamant refusal to set fruit after the first three peppers, which never got very big. But now the spots are everywhere and the leaves are seriously droopy. The plant isn't dropping leaves yet but we're worried whatever I picked up at the nursery (and I went to a good nursery!) may not have been disease resistant. The spots are possibly bacterial but more likely viral and in either case there won't be much we can do if it gets worse. There wasn't much we could have done even if we had caught it sooner. I was ok with losing the plant this morning but now I'm sad again. He was so big and lush and happy and made such a big comeback--reaching another foot on top of the height in that last picture. But now Mr. Serrano just looks so feeble and sad. We've lifted him up for more light but I'm still really worried.

Potentially Worst News: We may not have separated the tiny pepper (the one we got at the farmer's market right after we moved here last fall--our first edible plant in the balcony garden) from Mr. Serrano soon enough. It looks like they may have been cross-pollinating and yesterday we found a few yellowy spots on Tiny Pepper too. That one still seems pretty happy and we've moved it away but we don't know what this is or how it spread so I'm worried. I love that pepper plant and was so proud when it overwintered so well and came back bigger than ever this year!

I know that plants don't last forever and many are supposed to die after only one season. But I hate to lose them this way. Tiny Pepper should be strong enough to survive it but I'm still worried.

But More Good News: My basil seeds took off more quickly and better than I ever could have anticipated. I need to sow them in rows instead of holes next year since they're too densely packed now and I'll have to keep thinning if they're going to avoid choking each other. But they're happy and healthy for now. So that is exciting. I tasted some of the thinned bits even though J thought I was crazy and they were good. And we ate a bunch of tomatoes the other night--also quite tasty. So there is hope for the garden yet.

Dissertation time.

The Verizon crap sorted itself out. To celebrate not having to pay my bill this month (even though, yeah, it's not like it's free money) I ordered myself two yoga dvds I have been coveting for their sheer versatility and the customizability of their workouts. I put off buying them for at least a year because I already have some dvds and recently I've been doing more yoga in the bedroom (i.e. without the tv) but today I caved. I justify the expenditure as part of my feel-good-while-writing-the-dissertation plan. Plus Rodney Yee hasn't been doing that much for me lately. And I was really excited to see that Shiva Rea does Moon Salutations as well as Sun Salutations because I used to love those back when I did yoga in Tucson. And most of what I do in class here is saluting the sun.

Oh god I miss Tucson. They are having monsoon thunderstorms daily right now and I'm so jealous I can't talk about it. If I do make it home later in August I'll already have missed them and that isn't fair.

But I just figured out my volunteer gig starts later than I thought so I am supposed to be working for this next half hour. I don't know why it takes so long to start but after hours of thinking I finally started today and it seems to be working. At least a little. Fingers crossed.

[End Transmission]

Morning yoga makes me happy. Morning coffee makes me happy. Even thinning basil seedlings makes me happy. Time to work!

I figured out how to work the free wireless at the public library: BAD. And I didn't eat enough for lunch so now all I'm doing is fantasizing about fresh veggies and cheese and the white bean hummus in my fridge. And thinking about how we have nothing for dinner tonight even though I go to the grocery store every other day.

It's also nearly as cold here as it was in the fancy archives and I didn't come prepared so that isn't helping my productivity. I'll have to head home in about half an hour.

I've been living in a large and dark dissertation-sized hole this past week after a work-free holiday weekend so you'll have to excuse me. You don't really want to be hearing from me much right now. All I have to offer is a ( big rant about the jackassery of Verizon Wireless )

Good news is that I free-wrote a page of not-utter-crap and am trying for more today. And I've made dissertation writing group plans with friends. And I think I also forgot to mention that I joined a writing group of people I volunteer with and I'm workshopping some of the fairy tale poems next Monday.

Also, another volunteer plant popped up in our garden! I think it came along for the ride with A&K's lemongrass? So I hope it's something exciting. More on that later.

Yesterday we went to a bbq with my cousins and then went to J's cousins' house and saw fireworks. They live right across the street from a high school that sends up a HUGE show. I seriously thought the house might go up in flames. The corn salad was a big hit with both sets of cousins. I added jicama and black beans to the recipe and it was delicious.

Today we went to



THE BEACH!

I made a sandcastle:



And J made a sand pyramid, complete with individually stenciled bricks:




We were the hit of our little patch of beach for a while, at least among the small children. Then later, just as we were getting ready to pack up, one of those bratty five-year-old boys you just *know* had already consumed four pure sugar slushies and picked three fights by 2 in the afternoon ran up, took one look at J's pyramid and then looked up and smiled this maniacal smile--and then smashed it. And then he smashed my castle. And then he ran off only to whirl back a moment later so he could jump up and down on the spot where they'd been for a while. I mean, we knew they weren't forever. We figured they would have been smashed eventually and probably wouldn't have gotten to go to their sandcastle peace with the tide. We thought about smashing them ourselves. It's not like we camped out next to them to guard them. But still, to watch them get smashed with such gleeful and willful disregard-- We could have tried to say something, I guess, and might have tried if there had been a parent for the holy terror around. I mean, what if we weren't well-adjusted twenty-somethings but instead another kid who'd worked hard on something only to have it smashed by that brat? If I was a parent, I'd want that kid's parents to teach him that smashing stuff just because you can isn't ok. Sure it's a sandcastle, but smash your own damn castle! I bet he's the kid who steals another kid's toy and breaks it, then throws it at the other kid just for good measure, like it's the other kid's fault.

Anyway. We had fun at the beach. And I guess bratty kids is what you get when you go on a holiday weekend. Now I kind of want fish tacos.

Happy three-day weekend to all! At the inspiration of jazzyp, I am making what looks to be a super tasty grilled corn salad--a double batch with lots of extra veggies and black beans, one to take to a bbq with my cousins and one to take to J's cousins later. Our balcony is covered so we can't grill the way I'd like (with charcoal) or even with gas. We tried two experimental cobs on J's good ol' George Foreman to go alongside our tasty fajitas last night but grilling cobs two at a time all the while fighting the slant of the electric grill just isn't worth the trouble. The taste wasn't even really that of "grilled" corn (no offense, George--I know you and your YouTube surrogate said I could do it but it's not the same). So I'll be faking it and it'll either be roasted corn or skillet toasted corn salad. But it'll still be tasty.

I'm also making Tollhouse bars because J's cousins will weep if I don't bring cookies but those speak for themselves. But first we have to go to the store for more eggs since we used them all up this morning making lemon-blueberry pancakes and a super-tasty veggie scramble. Yay for holiday mornings.

Belatedly, here's our recently transplanted tomato, adopted from morganlf and bellwethr--




And here's a close-up of its first ripening tomato because I am proud--




So proud that we promptly ate it a few nights ago atop cheese ravioli with chicken and spinach and sweet onion + requisite garlic--




And here's a baby tomato just for kicks.




My lemon basil and dwarf fineleaf basil are also sprouting away in less than their usual 7+ days but they'd barely show up in a picture yet so you'll just have to wait.

It is a strange evening. But I finished another poem. I mostly finished it last night, all but some of the gluing. ( ramble ramble )

* * * * *

[looking so]

Out of disappeared
when, now I
wicked fair, she
found--not dead
beautiful but deep-laid
in looking so.

Dream: having
turned had, help
a spell floated
far. Fire started
to fall in
hunched eyes.

Shut, the maid
lay in feathered
beside. Her
eyes sank down
pillars of silent
and grew thick
the hedge of too much.

* * * * *

Well, I was all proud of myself last night for not having been beaten to a pulp by the revival of my yoga class after its month-long hiatus. I had an awesome workout and still felt awesome afterwards. Then I woke up this morning stiff as hell. I know it makes sense but it still sucks because all I want to do right now is crawl back into bed. I'd probably do it if I didn't know all that inactive supine time would just make me stiffer. But I also woke up with the sinus headache FROM HELL this morning so hooray for me. I don't know how you can get a headcold in this heat but I seem to have caught one. A nasty one, quite possibly. That just seems to be my luck.

I still barely got anything done yesterday when I went to campus to work before yoga, so the plan for today is to walk up the street to the indie coffee shop and suck down some green tea, hopefully iced, then walk the next block to the public library and try to put in a couple of solid hours of writing (or something vaguely like it) there. I just can't afford the gas to the fancy research archives more than once a week, probably less, when I'm supposed to be writing and not researching anyway. Plus my fellowship is over and they could care less if they see me.

For weeks now I've been hoping there's something magical in the air of the public library because I never seem to be able to get enough done at home. I remember public libraries being magical when I was a kid but that's a story for another time. For now it's time to beat down the headache with denial and get moving. Then home for yoga to work out yesterday's strain and prep for tomorrow's, then a nap. Then I'm going to bake some magically minty brownies for J's cousin's birthday. You know you want some.

This is for all of the people that I love who need it. And for me.


blessing the boats

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

-Lucille Clifton


Now off to the beach!

It's been an intense past two weeks. I am too tired to talk about it. Instead I will just document the fact that I am taking the morning off and going down to walk along Venice Beach. I know I just got back from a "vacation" but don't get me started. I'm still exhausted and various sources of tension have done a number on my upper back and shoulders that you wouldn't believe. So although I have been doing almost no working for at least two weeks now I am officially doing no work and avoiding my computer ENTIRELY until I show up at 826LA at 3pm to help lead a kids' book club. At which point I still won't be working, which will be lovely. We're reading books from the Time Warp Trio series and I'm actually kind of stupidly excited. Except if there aren't any girl protagonists in the trio I'll probably throw a little hissy fit inside my head on principle. Anyway, I am doing nothing until then. First I am doing nothing by finishing yesterday's efforts to ensure no mildew spores remain in the pea planter we're now going to use for our adopted tomatoes. Because gardening is therapeutic. Then I am off for coffee and reading things I want to read or writing things I want to write or just doing nothing and doing it by the beach. Then Jon Scieszka Fan Club, then transplanting the tomato. I also bought two new kinds of basil seeds (lemon and a dwarf variety that's supposed to love containers) and I might try to plant some of those. K from back home is putting a seed package together for me for next year (Thai and lemon basil, lettuce of all kinds, etc) and I'm really excited about that too. I've had such hit-or-miss (mostly miss) luck with basil transplants so I hope for good luck with the seeds. We'll see. But one of our baby tomatoes is finally starting to ripen and change to colors other than green on the vine! Yum...

Chicago--



We're back. We had a great time in spite of the two hour flight delay coming home. We are tired. We find returning stressful for various reasons that I won't go into. Life is hard sometimes. Here are some pictures.



Thanks to Orbitz we were living the life of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo--




But we didn't mind. We had a grand old time in and out of the room. We didn't remember to take lots of pictures but here is the huge steel sculpture in Millennium Park that residents and visitors have dubbed "The Bean"--






Adventures in public transportation! I love them. I love Chicago. And I really love trains. I also like 826CHI's Boring Store, an emporium for all your espionage needs. But I have no pictures. Not even with my camera disguised as a pen disguised as a pencil. So instead here we are in the Bean. See! We were there.






Our garden totally freaked out while we were gone because (of course) we had another heatwave. Everything was wilty as hell and J tried to console me by reminding me that wilting is a plant's defense mechanism and a way of surviving not dying. I was still terrified but he must have been right because after one long drink of water as soon as we got home and a cool night things are already looking up.





Our first strawberries and first serrano pepper!

Up too late last night and too early this morning to get J dropped off with work folks to head to the airport and very tired now. My grandmother is ill and it sucks and I'm getting no work done but still planning to meet up with J in Chicago in two days because mom says it's what grandma would want and-- Yeah. Anyway. While we're not speaking of things let's not speak of dissertations. All I've done today is travel stuff and waiting around for a plumber and compulsively cleaning my house (vacuuming, mopping, and bathrooms--oh my!) to avoid other thinking.

But here are some happy growing things we adopted from morganlf and bellwethr yesterday!


I was mauled by lemongrass--



--so I had to exile it to a far corner and bushwhack it just to make it fit in the pot. And to ensure that it wouldn't maul our nice neighbor when she walks to the washing machine since she's being nice about letting us make a jungle out of the balcony. I forgot to take a before picture but you should have seen J's face when he walked out on the balcony before I attacked it for attacking me. I just hope it survives the transplanting and bushwhacking trauma. I mean, it's GRASS, so it should be alright, right? I think so.




Tomatoes! Apparently these just volunteered to grow in one of A&K's basil pots? Let's hope they like us too.




Our beloved peppers at the top right + mint, basil, and green onion belows. We swiped a bunch of strawberries from A&K + the cute rosemary tree and some Mexican tarragon in the small yellow pot.




Too bad the tomatillos and fuzzy cucumber flowers were too big to transplant but here's our first strawberry ripening away!




And here are our first tiny peppers because I'm so proud!

We also acquired one large snail that I forgot to take a picture of before we liberated him outside our garden + a crazy little hopping bug with sticky feet that is probably going to morph into a giant grasshopper or something and eat everything in sight. He escaped yesterday but this morning I found him on my basil--and found the first holes in my basil. I don't trust him. He may have to get exiled too.

Time to get back to avoiding work. Or get to work? We'll see.

Things I have yet to mention:

1. Last Saturday's trip to Cinespia with morganlf and glass_diamonds to see David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve play vampires alongside Susan Sarandon in THE HUNGER--which is awesome and disturbing and seriously, seriously visually stimulating. Square that when you see it in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I should have written about it sooner. All I can do now is confess my inability to figure out how to embed a YouTube link and just beg and plead that you will go watch vampire-Bowie rock out to Bauhaus on morgan's blog because it is AWESOME. End of discussion.

2. For my belated non-Versailles birthday dinner last night, J got in touch with the friend who made us curry that night more than a year and a half ago in October when everything first began to seem possible. And he made the curry again--all of it--down to the grinding of spices and all. And it was delicious. And he gave me cute silly gifts on top of that, like far more dvd episodes of Remington Steele than any sane person would want to make it this easy for me to watch all the time, so much more easily than on the DIY archive I already have (yes I have it, don't ask). But the curry was best:





That is morganlf and bellwethr's patio table being put to good "date night" use if I do say so myself. It lives with us now because they are moving (ack! but we won't talk about that--nor about how V is going home and then to England for the *entire* summer). ( More pictures are here )

Well. I am still puttering around the house but it's past time to head up to campus to workworkwork until a meeting with Ms. Advisor this afternoon and then our department's glorious (ha) end of the year party. Yesterday I avoided dissertation work entirely as my birthday gift to myself and it worked. I hung out with the kids at 826LA all day and coworkers told them it was my birthday and the kids made me cards and sang to me and I almost cried. And then we had a scrumpcious dinner at Versailles with J's parents. He and I will celebrate on our own tomorrow. Yesterday was just too packed to be very accommodating.

Among other things, my mom got me this 500 Cookies Cookbook and I'm really sort of stupidly excited about it. I'm thinking of using birthday cash to buy myself another non-cookie cookbook--maybe Mexico One Plate At A Time or maybe something north African? Suggestions most welcome!

I also "need" yoga gear and some new shoes (!) but even more pressing, apparently, is my need for a new cell phone. I basically keep my cell phones until they die (or until I drop them on the ground and hold them together with electrical tape and then that finally gives out) and I've had this one for more than the two years Verizon wants me to discard and upgrade in so I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about contributing to the electronic waste in the world. I can always look for a way to recycle the old one. I'd donate it but I'm not sure anyone wants it now. My phone has decided it will let me answer calls but only 1 in 3 times will it deign to transmit my voice to the other person. Meaning: If you try to call me in the next few days and I don't seem to answer, don't take it personally. I really dread the trip to the Verizon store, though. I just wasted 30 minutes at least browsing online to make the trip to the store less confusing but all I am is more confused and frustrated. I do not need a phone that can jump start a nuclear war or drive my car from 500 yards away but apparently they all have a will of their own (and incredibly expensive web/music/game/photo capabilities) these days.

But did you know that the 2006 law that got passed banning in-the-driver's-seat cell phone use goes into effect at the end of the month? I did not. But I don't drive while on the phone anyway. Except when I'm lonely driving across the desert to/from AZ. But I guess maybe now I have to invest in one of those hands-free devices just to be safe. No tickets for me!

Time to catch the bus.

EDIT: Ha! I just fixed this so it no longer says the law bans cell phone use in CA. It prevents cell phone use while driving.

Do you know what is even more disgusting than frozen spinach? When you buy frozen spinach because this recipe that looked really good calls for it and you decided that even though you screwed with last night's recipe and it turned out really well, you would try to play things by the book tonight. But then you thaw the nasty clump of frozen green goopy leaf-substance and start to pull it apart and you think to yourself well maybe that is just a seed pod or something and not a thorax but then you decide you don't trust the goopy green mess and you keep digging and then you find THE REST OF THE MUMMIFIED BUG CARCASS in your pile of half-thawed wilty spinachgoo.

But then you get up and get it together and realize it just means you were right in the first place to think that you should have been using your tasty fresh spinach. And you get on with the delicious looking recipe for pork chops stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese and (yes) spinach.



Once I broke out the real thing, the recipe went off without a hitch and was just as good as it sounded like it would be. Plus stuffing things with other things is tasty!

( Pork Chops Stuffed with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach )

I didn't take a picture of last night's dinner but it was good and I made lots of riffs off this recipe so I should really write them down and post them here. For solace, here is a pic of the salmon with lemon/basil spaghetti that I mentioned earlier.





In case you were wondering, acting on the inspiration of morganlf and bellwethr's date nights looks something like this--



Yeah, I know, I'm cooking a lot of Food Network lately, so sue me.

1. Jazzy Bach riffs.

2. Ms. Advisor's nice email about how Oftentimes things can feel slow when they're actually going just fine--so don't worry about that, just keep going.

3. Her advice to take other people's advice for what it's worth but above all keep doing what I think I need to be doing because this is my project.

4. My new plan to return my summer session parking pass (six weeks = $100 + gas at $4.29 a gallon and rising) and buy a subsidized student bus pass that costs $22.50, lasts for three months, and can get me to campus, the grocery store, and THE BEACH. Plus it will get me to get up earlier since I'll have to be sure I make it to campus to teach on time--but I don't really run the risk of being late since I don't teach until 10.

5. Getting up earlier today. Even if it was just a little bit earlier and even if I still got to the library only half an hour earlier (stlil half an hour later than ideal), I still got up and did 20 minutes of yoga BEFORE going to work. And I felt better. All day.

6. Actually getting some work done today. A little. But I am starting to see the shape of things again--a little.

7. The fact that soon they will give my little office away--so I won't have to hang out in the windowless fluorescent gloom-hole anymore and now I will have added incentive to get to the library early to snag a place in the happy little book-lined, well-lit reading room.

Time to go drop a bunch of cash on groceries, toiletries, and an ironing board. And brave traffic. Yay!

Today my yoga teacher was trying to help me work with my insanely tight shoulders--even tighter today than usual--and then all she could say was just Well that's years of abuse, now isn't it and she's probably right. As long as I can remember, I've had tight shoulders and let my stress manifest there. My mom does it too. But all I could think today was fucking dissertation. And I think that's true too. Whatever this funk is, I need to get over it because where I am right now isn't good for me and won't get better until I make it better. First thing tomorrow when I get to campus I'm signing up for summer yoga with the same instructor and I've already made a commitment to myself to take home practice seriously in the month between now and summer classes.

That's something to help with frustration but it's not the root of frustration and I know that. So it can only help so much. But for now there is yoga--and CHOCOLATE! I made these spicy brownies for ES's birthday / welcome-back bash this weekend and I just took them out of the oven again to take with me to another birthday soiree for J's dad and various other family members. There's seriously a birthday every other week--and almost every week in May and June. I can count my entire immediate family (those whose birthdays I know and celebrate when in the vicinity) and not run out of fingers and toes. Even if I include spouses/partners and children. You do the math.

Speaking of math, I'm really proud of these brownies because it took lots of math to get them right. I vaguely remembered making spicy Mexican chocolate style brownies once upon a time when morganlf and bellwethr came over for dinner. But it was an 8x8 pan and I wanted 9x13 so then I found this recipe but it was 1) way too wimpy with the cayenne, 2) called for ground anise which I didn't have, and most problematic of all 3) called for regular unsweetened cocoa when I had awesome sweet Ghirardelli cocoa at home just dying to be used. So I called mom to make sure I was right to think I needed to convert some fractions to avoid killing ES's guests with sweetness by using the same amount of sugar called for when unsweetened cocoa was in play. And then we did the math and I ended up with this. The brownies seriously might have the best consistency ever--chewy and a bit fudgey and still have that light crust on the top...

Combine the following in a bowl, mixing thoroughly until everything is the color of cooca. Bless J's mom for giving me that glass mixing bowl since that's the best way to tell if you mix it all through. Or I could have used the KitchenAid I inherited from grandma, but that seemed too easy.

* 1 3/8 cups Ghirardelli sweet cocoa
* 1 3/8 cups sugar (I know I know, you are thinking if they are the same then what is this "math" that I speak of--just trust me--it was easy math but it was math)
* 1 1/4 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I might actually up this to 1.5 or 2 teaspoons but I have been trying to not kill my friends with cayenne lately--in recompense for last year's cayenne chocolate truffles)

In a separate bowl (or two-cup measure) lightly beat the following and then add to the dry ingredients and mix/fold until moistened through.

* 4 eggs
* 2/3 + 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

Spread in a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. I floured my pan too just to be safe. Enjoy!

Time to attempt a bit more work before J gets home and we head to his parents' house. Or I might just keep fine-tuning V's belated birthday / moving mix...

I'm trying to do a better job of trying at least one new recipe a week instead of just making the same old stuff night after night. Last night I decided to walk down to the grocery store, even though I'd already dropped 75 bucks at Trader Joe's the day before, so that I could pick up some lemons and whole wheat spaghetti and capers to make this recipe out of the salmon we had at home. Sure, it's Giada and sure you may want to take her smiley face with a grain of salt (as I often do) but her pasta is tasty and this one is super light and summery and it was great. I'll make it again.

I added a bit of extra garlic because garlic is good, and it was yummy but lots of it sank to the bottom of the pan when I tossed the pasta, which means at least a full clove of raw garlic all went into the tupperware of leftovers that I just consumed cold for lunch. And that means that currently, dear readers, my breath basically smells like I'm trying to keep a vampire that's taken up residence in the library at bay. A very, very dangerous and feisty vampire. Good thing I'm sequestered away in my carrel today, that's all I'm sayin. And thank goodness I have some strong peppermint gum in the car.

But, the vampire might not actually be a bad figure for discussing how I feel about the library and/or my dissertation today. Lord knows I feel like something is haunting me. Or we could turn just as easily to the hands-down funniest part of the working group meeting last Friday where I presented my work to a small group of grads and a visiting prof who's friends with my advisor. He said it's kind of great that you're writing about the Augustan undead and then proceded to talk about zombie movies for a while. It's kind of true and I make those sorts of jokes myself so it was amusing to hear one from someone else. But of course he also made it abundantly clear to me and the small crew assembled that it's entirely possible I have absolutely NO idea what my dissertation's overarching argument is. Or even what its tiny kernels of argument are. So that was great.

Yay academia? All I can really say is I'm still getting far too little done on this new chapter and don't have much, if anything, to say for myself in the way of excuses. So it goes...