whoa... too much free time theater

on the suggestion of Matt's dad Peter I took a look at the Althouse blog, blog of Ann Althouse, law professor and general commentator on politics, law, and the pretty shadows made by the holly branches in her office. Her articles - fine, interesting. But don't get mired in the comment threads!!!! I have wasted an entire day going through them... whoa. (And some of them are CRRR-AZY!)

Oh Christmas List, oh Christmas List, how lovely are your contents...

just in case some of you occasional readers (i.e. my parents, brother) needed some guidance, for your convenience:

- pink ipod nano
- alphonse mucha art nouveau book
- annie leibovitz photography book
- j crew gift certificate (or light sweaters in wool or cashmere)
- Emily Post's Etiquette (17th edition)
- LSAT study book
- cute fun books about etiquette, style, or event planning
- Nigella Lawson cookbooks
- things ingestible and comestible

SHAME ON NEW LINE CINEMA

TheOneRing.net, a fan site devoted to Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings, published a letter today in which Peter and Fran disclose that they will not be directing The Hobbit. This is due to the fact that New Line refuses to settle a dispute about Peter's still unpaid salary for the Fellowship of the Ring. WaPo story here.

Backbenchers in white wigs are standing up and yelling SHAAAAAME!

total wedding madness

can't... sleep... can't focus on school... must think about cakes with buttercream (or royal? or fondant?) in shapes and flavors - flowers (diy? splurge? pink? lilac?) - maps - must make a map and must find more ... more hotels! and put it on the wedding website! wait, must update this too! and when will we have time for pictures?? between? during? before? wha... six and a half more months of this?!?

oh, poor, poor Matt.

:)

we really ARE getting married...

just put the save the date cards in the mail!

totally creepy stalker ecard

Well, if you care about someone enough to bother sending them a halloween card, why don't you send them a creepy stalker card - one that's realistic enough to seem totally threatening and psycho.

Not taking credit for finding it - saw it first on Wonkette, who linked to this blog.

Coming Home to Georgetown... remembering food

Georgetown's homecoming is about two weeks away... As a student there, coming from Oklahoma, I considered McDonald's cheeseburgers a treat (the closest one is so far away!) but I did manage to have several culinary experiences... I remember:

- dessert-only trips to Bistro Francais, for their strawberries and raspberries in sabayon...
- california chicken sandwiches on a croissant from Wisey's (seemed so sophisticated on a croissant!) or of course the Chicken Maddness (no peppers for me)
- the first time I ever had crab rangoon, from Hunan Peking. Sitting on my dorm floor being introduced to chinese delivery (they didn't deliver in oklahoma back then!) and lemon chicken
- first eggs benedict, possibly first brunch experience ever at Daily Grill (Martin's Tavern also good!)
- going out to I Ricchi on the medieval studies department tab to wine and dine our internationally recognized guest speaker! I wore my easter dress... we were early, my friend Kristin, a senior at the time, marched up to the bar and asked the bartender what he recommended. I, a junior, was not carded... the bartender told us he'd invented a drink, based on the bellini, called the carnevale... raspberry puree and champagne. mmm... That night was also the only time I've ever seen someone order from the "special" wine list (not the department! one of the guests treated)
- on a diet which consisted mostly of individual frozen pizzas, kraft mac n' cheese, and salad... learning to cook on my own. My first recipe - spaghetti aio e olio.
- being taken to 1789 by a then-boyfriend and ordering (then my favorite food) caesar salad... and being served whole romaine leaves. (Do I cut them with my knife?? do I try and fold them up so I can shove the whole thing in my mouth?? I didn't think you were supposed to cut your salad...!)
- crab and artichoke dip at the Tombs. !!
- being taken to Cafe Milano by my thesis advsior with friends and other profs to celebrate graduation/thesis end. It was the day Michael Camille died. I was introduced to carpaccio - they insisted I try it. thinly sliced raw beef, arugula, parmesean, lemon. It is now, still, my favorite food.
- two filet mignons! with sauce at Nathans
- my first grape-leaves wrapped whatnot at Bistro Med, trying to impress first date Matt with my culinary adventurousness... didn't work. Ew. Chewing slower and slower... swallow... erugh. Still don't like olive tapenade, either. (Good opportunity for Matt to promise to take me out somewhere else next time!)
- Cheese sampling at Dean and Deluca for my dad's birthday present
- Chai from Uncommon grounds - late nights with Kristin in the leavey center
- snooty sandwiches and a glass of white wine for outdoor lunch at Peacock Cafe
- my first coffee.

wow... facebook.

ok so I was following up on the Reggie story when someone said that a comment had been made on the "Reggie" group on Facebook... so I caved and started a Facebook account... and I have to admit... it's WAAAAY better than friendster! Wow!

Facebook me!

Reggie loses his job at the Gregoriana

Reginald Foster, Latinist extraordinaire, was unceremoniously dumped from the Jesuit Gregoriana University because of exacerbated relations between himself and the bureaucracy (Reggie's general distaste for hierarchies, plus the fact that he would let students sit in on his classes without paying tuition). See the story here and here. [Note: these links take you to an ultra-conservative Catholic blog which is otherwise kind of obnoxious.] Reggie has taken this opportunity to announce the creation of his own Latin Academy in Rome, location TBA!

I have TWO friends! (at least!)

Beth, Me, and Anna on Wollaston Beach (just down the street from my house)


and inside the house!


And the angora bunny, as promised. (on columbus day we went to the Topsfield Fair, which was really weird, but we got cider doughnuts and saw a bunny. Lots of them, actually. And goats and bees and a pig race, too. Then we went to Gloucester MA and drove around.)

Well, that's pretty much up to speed (or up to meth, whatever). This past weekend we went to Matt's Homecoming up at Dartmouth, which was beautiful - all the fall leaves and Hanover is such a cute town! And Matt enjoyed getting tossed around by his Jiujitsu friends, too. :)

Dissertation Research is Hard!

Especially when the Red Sox lose!


Plymouth Rock - booooo.


Yep, that's it. That's the rock. It was designated so in the 19th century, so it has to be the right one.


So then we decided to go up to Maine, because lobsters are brain food. They help dissertations! Let's go get one!


Matt caught me a crab! Real live green crab! (No, not a lobster - but close!)


Lobster is food for brains!


They make you smart!

Albany - I have a friend!

Bethie! Iiiiiiiiit's been so long since last we met, lie down forever lie down! (OK, that's the georgetown song, not a strange solicitation...)


This *looks* like a college, but it's actually the Emma Willard School, where Matt's cousin went to high school. Damn.

The driving continued through Toronto and Niagara Falls

Oh Centre, how I've missed thee!


And then the falls, where of course there were rainbows, and lots of water, and ticky-tacky tourist things.


All of these are in one building next to the falls... get your teeth cleaned, then hypnotize your lover and convince them to marry you. One stop shopping!

Pictures!!!! Of Everything!!

So these go all the way back to Chicago during the road trip, when we visited Sohkeing. I vowed to stop working on my dissertation right then and there, having had the opportunity to try on Sohkeing's robes. Since that's all I've ever wanted to do - wear the velvet beret - I have no reason to continue my research on Gerald of Wales.


Here is the venerable Sohkeing - that IS brilliance at work.


Matt and Sohkeing outside her lovely apartment building (near Northwestern, where she's doing her postdoc).

matt *almost* got his camera cord...

So, I have over 150 pictures to share with you from road-trip chicago on (including me eating my first maine lobster, physical evidence that I have friends, and a real live angora bunny). Matt left his camera cord at his sister's - and then she moved - but rumor has it that she managed to find it while unpacking. The spare cord matt ordered from amazon electronics came all the way from Hong Kong - and it didn't work.

Last week we went and saw SPAMALOT! it was very good. Though if you know the movie too well (cough, cough) it can be hard to stop criticizing the actors' delivery of movie lines. They've obviously been told to "own" the part, so they do it differently, which can be not as funny...

sad news from last week

Nicholas Howe, professor of Anglo-Saxon at Berkeley, died last Thursday morning from complications with cancer. He was a great supporter of all graduate students.

It's hard to imagine that he's not on the other end of his email.

left sidewalk?

was it the house burglar alarm, announcing a breach from the "left sidewalk" over an intercom we don't know about, or a local college kid (those eastern nazarenes!) with a bull horn on the street, or some emergency vehicle? Well, it woke me up from my nap. I guess we'll never know...

But while I'm up, allow me to proceed with this update. Ironically, I began these posts as a way to keep in touch, but now they're actually a way for my family and friends to TOTALLY AVOID CONTACTING ME and still find out what I'm doing. Gee, thanks guys. You can CALL. :P

(No, no, it's ok! sniff!)

Hm, I think I'm a little cranky from being disturbed from my nap. :) Aaaanyway... In answer to everyone's bated breath YES, I finally did get a Harvard ID (one more to add to the collection!) and now I have supreme access to their materials. (mwahahaha... except that I just had to ILL a book from Berkeley. How ironic.) It took 3 hours of concerted door-knocking (student ID office, then registrar, then student billing, then student ID office, then registrar again, then student ID office one last time). Wow did they HATE me by the time I was done! But props to harvard for having really high quality ID camera setup - backlighting, screens, etc.

I sat in on a couple Harvard classes - wow was that a lesson ... called "Reasons I *heart* Berkeley!" I'm pretty sure some of the students here have cultivated affected vaguely british accents. They must practice at home. Really, though, there's nothing to make you appreciate Berk-town like leaving it for a while. I miss: cheap lunch near campus, being given the benefit of the doubt (no, it's not a stupid question, it's a really damn good question which you guys just haven't thought of yet!), and spacious library stacks with tables in them which are well-lit and, perhaps most importantly, all catalogued according to a single system in alpha-numeric order. Ironic that the organizing principle of the Widener library syatem, arguably the best library in the world, is, to use a favorite phrase of Matt's, totally retarded. You really have to be here to appreciate it.

Actually, I'm having a great time though. Because I get to smile and say, "actually, I'm from UC Berkeley" and hear responses like "Oh, I went to berkeley undergrad. Sometimes I wish I were still there." And "Oh. Berkeley rejected me." And you DO feel uber-collegiate walking through Harvard yard in the fall with a huge stack of books. And Matt and I are just now meeting some very, very cool people. So it's working out.

And we're going to see SPAMALOT next week!!!!!!! Spam spam spam spam...

Hello from Harvard!

At least, that's what I *would* say if Harvard had managed to assign me an ID number so that I could get an ID and have access to their libraries and computer system. But as of right now, that is sadly lacking... Considering that the registration period is already over and classes begin Monday, I'd say that, well, it's kind of disappointing.

So instead, Matt and I have amused ourselves by going to a Red Sox game, scouring Filene's Basement, and taking a road trip to Plymouth and then to Sandwich, just barely on Cape Cod. (Yes, we saw the magnificently disappointing Plymouth Rock.) And I bought tickets to Spamalot, which we'll go see on Oct. 4. So it hasn't been a complete waste of time. Just in terms of dissertation work. :)

Just to get us up to speed...

We're off the road - after chicago we drove through Michigan - stopped in Grand Rapids to see Ambre, yay! and then spent the night with Christine R. in Ann Arbor, where she's about to start law school! Then we went up to Toronto for a nostalgic visit... everything has changed! The 20$ bill is different, my favorite bagel place has become a "fresh" juice bar and restaurant, my favorite pub no longer sells Scrumpy cider, and my restaurant choice (Bar Mercurio) was closed for the week. Booo! Thank god Futures was still in tact.

From Toronto we crossed back into the US at Niagara Falls (and had a horrible lunch stateside at a place called Red Carriage Inn - ick!) but the falls were pretty, of course! And then we made it to Albany to stay with Matt's uncle and aunt, and we had dinner with BETH who I have not seen in forever! and then we went to Boston - Quincy, actually - where we are now safely ensconsed in our lovely loft, which can be checked out here.

Chicago

Hello from Chicago! Evanston, actually, home of Northwestern University and our friend, Sokheing, who is a postdoc here now. We're leaving today, actually, and I have no pictures, but thought I'd check in. We walked around Chicago without going into any buildings or doing anything in particular - walked down the magnificent mile, through the park, saw the bean, etc. And spent a lot of time on the wireless internet connection.

Through Michigan today, then a stop in Toronto before Matt's uncle's house in Albany...