travel: August 2005 Archives

It's been one of those weeks where, every day it seems, I think of about two or three things I could blog about, either individually or in a miscellany post, and I don't quite get around to it. Let's face it, when my reason for choosing not to blog is that Shiva is sleeping in Jenny's desk chair, clearly I'm not all that interested in blogging to begin with.

The problem with these kinds of weeks is that you hit a point where the number of things you have to blog about simply exceeds the energy you have to devote to the process, and that also keeps me from doing it. I got into town on Wednesday night, and went to my apartment, newly carpeted and painted during my temporary relocation. That was nice, but the downside is that my entire life is boxed and stacked against various walls. Nothing was in the right place, and I have enough stuff (and a small enough place) that arranging it is almost an all-or-nothing sort of deal, one of those "in order to move this, I have to move that, which means I have to move that, which involves moving that" and so on. Ugh. This means at least a week and maybe more of heavy lifting and shoving just to return my living and working spaces to a state where I can start to feel comfortable.

Needless to say, I celebrated by basically ignoring this situation for two days. And by not blogging about it. I don't typically use this space to work through my various mood swings, so the fact that I'm here now probably means that I'm slowly starting to overcome the depression-inducing, warehouse-resembling qualities of my apartment. Last night, I moved 20 boxes of books into semi-storage, having marked the ones while packing that were most immediately unpackable. Maybe tonight I'll arrange bookcases where they're supposed to be so I can empty some boxes. This is made more likely by the fact that my cable appears to be turned off at the moment.

And of course, the upshot of all this is that it's been exceedingly difficult to put a happy face on when people ask me how it feels to be back after my trip. Umm...

That's all.

From the department of Largely Useless Observations, I should note that, for the past two days, both trips to coffeeshops have entailed virtually non-stop harrassment of me by flies. Apparently, the more annoyed I get, the sweeter I taste. If this is the case, then I am rapidly approaching Death by Chocolate status.

Only slightly less frivolously, I'd like to officially second Ze Frank's recommendation of Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek." If you're like me, and you don't see the harm in a 99-cent tryout at the iTunes music store, then you should go download it. Now. I'll be picking up the album soon, I'm sure.

That is all.

The return trip to NY began yesterday with nary a hitch. As is almost always the case, though, I overestimated my ability to time my trip with any sort of accuracy. I never quite get going when I think I will, and as a result, I'm always a little behind my estimates in terms of arrival times.

Ah well. It's worth noting that, in some bizarre, cosmic instance of symmetry, on the way through Illinois to Iowa, I stopped to visit Deb H (Holdstein) in Dekalb for what would have been lunch had I not been so late. And on my way through Illinois to Indiana, I stopped to visit Deb H (Hawhee) in Urbana for what indeed turned out to be lunch. Is there anyone other than me reflecting upon the fact that Illinois has a monopoly on Deb H's in our field? Maybe not.

Although I was running late out of Urbana, I got to Lafayette just in time for the dinner plans: Jenny, Thomas, and I had dinner with Janice Lauer last night. The place we went was a little loud, but the food was good, as were the stories.

And so now, I'm in IN for a few more days. There are a couple of posts out there that I was thinking about commenting on, but we'll see. I'm going to try and do some writing over the next couple--whether any of it will show up here is uncertain.