The Word of the Day is "Awkward"

Damn, but there was a lot of awkwardness today. In addition to my date with the mathematician (who emailed me to ask me out again so chalk that one up as a victory) I had a terrible interaction with the Werewolf. Just when I think he and I have turned a corner we get all awkward again. The Werewolf, for those who don't recall, is my officemate, an 8th-year Kierkegaard scholar. He is very nice but I find him really intimidating and we've had some miscommunication in the past.

Today I was taking a break from my interminable Lewis paper and reading Questionable Content when I heard the key turn in the lock. I tried to close the browser, but I wasn't fast enough and the Werewolf saw me scramble to look busy.

"You don't have to stop reading blogs just because I come in," said the Werewolf.
"I wasn't reading blogs, I was reading a comic," I said, blushing.
"Well, you don't have to stop."
"Yes I do. That's what office-mates are for."
"To hold you accountable?"
"Um ... in a no-pressure kind of way."
"Well, anyway, you don't have to stop doing what you're doing when I come in."
"I do though," I persisted. "I mean, I have to do epistemology."
"Not because of me," the Werewolf insisted.
"No, but I just do. And have been! For hours on end!" I insisted.
"I'm sure you have."
I stood and started to gather my things.
"You don't have to leave just because I'm here! I'll only be here for a few minutes."
"I'm not," I said. "I'm just - I have to go ... somewhere else."
"You don't have to."
I got out. And I didn't go back in my office for the rest of the day. Aaand I probably never will.

Later, after a philosophy of language meeting, the Junior who was sitting next to me asked, "What are you doing after this?"
I had been afraid of this. He was chewing gum, and throughout the lecture the sound of chewing and smell had been bothering me. "I'm going to my office to get my stuff and then I'm going home," I said.
"Can I walk with you?"
"It's not a very long walk," I said. My office is right across from the seminar room. He followed me in and I gathered my things. He followed me all the way to the Union. "Do you want to go inside? I'm not doing anything... we could hang out."
I didn't want to hang out. Eventually I said, "Don't you live over there?"
"Oh. Yeah. I do. I guess we'd better part ways then."
"Okay, bye."
"Bye. Take care! Have a good weekend!"

Look. I don't want to be mean. But I don't know how to make these people not do this. Maybe I should shave my head.

However...

Okay, not freaking out about social interactions, blah blah, yes I know, but just one thing: as we parted, standing awkwardly around, unsure of how exactly dates are supposed to end, he said "Maybe we'll keep in touch." I guess he was just groping for something to say, but surely he could have done better than that!

Just Stop

This morning for breakfast I had coffee with milk, fresh-baked bread with redcurrent jam, and a goat cheese omelette (made with a free-range egg, though not one from the farmers' market, which is on hiatus). Then I put on my snazzy new leather jacket and my headphones and listened to Blondie on my way to the office.

I am working on a paper about David Lewis's contextualist theory of knowledge for the Horse, and it is a slog. I banged on the keyboard for an hour or so and then went over to the math building to meet the cute but nonverbal mathematician for lunch.

I thought of a strategy to overcome shyness: pretend we are already friends. Just take it for granted that we will get along and be pals, and then act as if this has already happened. Why not? I do not have to worry about impressing these people; not to brag, but I have been asked out on so many dates since moving to Indiana that I am beginning to get the sense that I can write my own ticket. It is *their* job to impress *me.* So the mathematician and I went to a Korean buffet and I pretended we were already friends, and to some extent I think it went well, and beyond that extent I don't care, so there we go.

So many of my problems are problems for which the only solution is "Just stop that." I talk to myself, I pick at my fingers till they bleed, I bite my lips and grind my teeth, I fret about social interactions and blow them all out of proportion. You're right; the only solution is to just stop doing those things. A simple solution isn't always easy. I try to find tricks to make stopping easier. I wear gloves; I pretend that people already like me so I don't have to worry about making them. Sometimes these tricks work. Sometimes they don't. But I look pretty cute in gloves.

Birthday

Lying on the ground in the cemetery at midnight, sipping bourbon and counting shooting stars. Not a great year for the Leonids, but how many girls get a meteor shower for their birthdays every year? I will take it. It will do.

Email:

Now, don't take this the wrong way, Emily, but I get the sneaking suspicion that you
could be the sort of person who likes doing set theory on her birthday. But, assuming
you're not, if you do want in, feel free to suggest another time.

Hey.

Bacon Pizza

Ugh. Did you know they make bacon pizza? Did you know that I've taken up with a crowd that is obsessed with bacon? Maybe it's a guy thing, and I've never had many guy friends before (8 years of all women's education will do that) but I find it alarming how often the conversation turns to bacon these days. I have bacon maybe twice a year on a club sandwich. I was planning to have a club sandwich next week because I'll be in New York. Now, the morning after two slices of bacon pizza, I feel the need to detox and eat nothing but steamed brown rice and broiled fish for the next month. Bacon pizza. Ew.

Also, I realized yesterday that my bike has been stolen. This is severely vexing, but at least I have the comfort of knowing that I'd chained it properly. The only thing worse than losing something is losing it due to your own negligence. This is just bad luck, and bad luck I can deal with. Still, it makes me upset. I liked having a bike, and I had a certain sentimental attachment to it. Goodbye little yellow bike. We had some good times, didn't we?

Watched Serenity last night with a bunch of people at Cufflinks' house no place in particular. They talked the whole way through it which was annoying because I've been wanting to see Serenity for ages and I didn't really get the proper experience.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be 22. So there's that.

Recipe: Roasted Autumn Vegetable Soup

Last night I made an amazing soup. It was my greatest triumph to date, and so I will share it with you.

Ingredients:
5 carrots, peeled and sliced into pennies
2 leeks, just the white parts, ditto
2 onions, chopped roughly
3 turnips, cut into chunks
2 or 3 potatoes, ditto
Olive oil

About 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
3 cups tomatoes, peeled & seeded
1 T rosemary
1 T thyme
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste

Coat the vegetables in olive oil and roast in a 400 degree oven until golden brown - this takes an hour or so. Bring the broth to a boil and add the roasted vegetables, tomatoes, and seasonings. Let cook for awhile longer and then puree the soup in a blender or food processor until fairly smooth. You can mix in a little yogurt or half and half if you like, that’s nice, but it’s really delicious just plain, too.

The thing about soup, I’m discovering, is that you can just cook vegetables and puree them with some broth and then you have soup! Nothing could be easier! This recipe is a little time-consuming because of the chopping and the endless roasting, but actual work time is pretty low, and it’s super-delicious.

Speed Dating

Every once in awhile the GPSO has a “speed dating” event. At least, it used to be called speed dating, but this was considered stressful or exclusionary or something so they changed it to “speed meeting.” After all, they explained, people want to meet people for all kinds of reasons, not just to date. The important thing is making connections with graduate students in other departments and not just hanging out with ethicists all the time, like I do.

My friend Shana is our GPSO representative, and this, combined with the fact that she met her boyfriend at one of these shindigs, means that she’s very gung-ho about the speed meeting. So last night I gave in and went.

Boy were there a lot of shoe-gazers. I was feeling pretty shy myself, but I was once again reminded that there is a spectrum of social anxiety and there are some people beside whom I look like Miss America. During the registration period before the actual event, I attempted to make bright conversation with the shyest mathematician I have ever met and a chemist with absolutely no social skills whatsoever and frightening teeth. I brought out the old, “What power would you rather have, flight or invisibility?” but it was pretty clear I was fighting a losing battle.

Presently we were herded upstairs to the Solarium, where things took a turn for the better. We were seated at a long table with sheets on which to record people’s names and whether we wanted to be friends with or date them. Then we had three minutes to talk to each person before rotating.

This musical chairs format of conversation is unnatural, certainly, and kind of awkward, but I sort of liked it. There’s not too much chance for awkward silence when you only have three minutes. Even if there is awkward silence, it can only last for so long, which is a relief.

Because it wasn’t expressly for the purposes of dating, we all talked to both men and women. I met an economist from China (we conducted our chat in Chinese, which was fun – I haven’t practiced in way too long), a sculptor who works with Indiana limestone, and a woman who specializes in Bosnia. I also met a girl from Buffalo who went to Olmsted and Performing Arts, just as I did, which was pretty neat.

Probably no dates will result from this adventure – the only person I checked the “possible date” box for was the aforementioned mute mathematician – but it could have been more painful than it was. At the very least, it was a different way to spend an evening.

Better Homes and Gardens

After nearly three months in the Hoosier state, I have finally bought a couch. It folds out into a bed, even, so if you want to come visit me, you will no longer have to sleep on the floor.

Doesn't it look homey, with the lamp and the plant and the Chagall? It's rather intimidating to own something so large and heavy, but I already have a bed, so in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. I can never move now. Not that I'd be able to find something so well-located again, anyway.

I've been sick for going on two weeks, which meant no homemade bread this past week. On Sunday, my breadmaking day, I was too sick to even contemplate mixing, let alone kneading. I have, however, been having a lot of fun with soups. I tried Laurie Colwin's curried broccoli soup, which was pretty good and fairly easy to make, plus a ridiculously easy sweet potato soup: Bake some sweet potatoes until soft. Let cool a little and then peel, then put them in the food processor with a quantity of chicken or vegetable broth. Season with red pepper, cloves, and ginger. Very soothing.

As soon as my cough goes away and I can eat delicious dairy products again, I'm going to make some roasted autumn vegetable soup using one of the recipes I got last week at the Farmers' Market. The recipe sounds rather unhealthy so I'm going to make some alterations. I'll see how it goes.

Happy Hour at the Irish Lion last night with a bunch of people from the department. The Lion is not an ideal venue for this sort of thing because one sits at long tables and I invariably end up with a bunch of non-talkers. I rallied as best I could and brought out one of my favorite conversation starters: what was the first album you ever bought by yourself? (Mine was Jagged Little Pill, by Alanis Morisette, I think.) (Confidential to CLA: note carefully the "by yourself" part.) This was a very musical crowd and so that was quite effective.

Tonight I've got mountains of epistemology to go through. Maybe I will do it while sitting on my couch.

Aging

The thing about getting your PhD is that it takes forever. I fully expect to be in graduate school until I am at least 27 or 28 years old. The Werewolf and Mr Clean (a Tractatus scholar) are in their eighth years right now. And although I may feel differently in six years or so when my biological clock starts ticking, at the moment, I am okay with the thought that I will be here for a while.

College is over in a heartbeat. People come and go very quickly and then you never really see them again. Grad school, on the other hand, is endless, and it's funny to think that the people I know now will be around for years. (Some longer than others, obviously.) I will go to their weddings. I will dandle their children on my knee. I will attend their dissertation defenses.

This also means that the age-range of my peers has increased dramatically. I now have friends who were born in the 70s. I have peers who are bald. I have friends who remember when Snuffleupagus was invisible. (Hey, Wikipedia reveals that Snuffy became visible on the day I was born! Keen!)

Assume I stay here. May as well. Then these people may well go to my wedding. They will see me with gray hair. In a few years there will be first-years who can't remember a time before the internet.

I'd better go moisturize.

Yes-Bias For the Win

Last night was a very good example of why it is better to say yes than no. Those who know me know that I am generally incapable of saying no to things, even things I don't really want to do or which are logistically impractical or impossible. A few years ago my undergraduate advisor, Jay, asked me to spend a few days at his house while he and his wife were out of town, keeping an eye on their teenage daughter and driving her to school soccer practice. I had to turn him down because I couldn't drive. I still think about this all the time, and there is a tiny part of my brain that has never quite stopped trying to work out a way that I could have said yes. Perhaps I could have given the girl a ride on the handlebars of my bicycle!

So, while my yes-bias is ... excessive, it does spring from a fundamentally sound principle, which is that you have more adventures and things work out better for you if you are game. "God looks out for drunks, children, and feisty girls, girls who are up for anything," as Cynthia Heimel said. (Something along those lines - I'm probably misquoting.) "You're going to die eventually anyway, at which point you'll be safe as houses."

So last night I didn't really want to go out when Mike invited me. I didn't know who was going and I was afraid it'd be just me and his pal from Detroit, plus I'm trying to dissuade Mike from asking me out again. God was helpful enough to give me a cold the last time, so that was a good excuse (it also gave me a good excuse not to go to the Spoon with Cufflinks this week), but unless I become a chronic invalid there seems little hope that I'll always be sick when I get asked out. And since I am sick, that was even less reason to go out last night. But I felt the familiar tug of the yes-bias, and before I knew it I was zipping up my black boots and putting on my lipstick.

And of course I had a lovely time. It was all very low-key and agreeable; Luke and VTL were there and I got to hear VTL's awful puns and his and Luke's stories about Germany. Plus, adventure breeds adventure: if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have been invited to go to Indy to see the Darjeeling Limited, or to go thrift shopping with Luke, or to go to Yoga with VTL and Mike. Will any of these things actually happen? I don't know. But they could, and I am all about possibilities.

Then this morning I went to the farmers' market, where half the restaurants in Bloomington were giving away free samples of delicious soups, as well as recipes. Could life be any sweeter? I fail to see how.

I am officially a middle-aged woman

Nothing else could possibly explain how excited I am about my new spice canisters. They're little aluminum canisters with clear lids, and they stick to the fridge! Pictures to follow!

Bed Bath and Beyond is truly a shrine to consumerism. Did you know there's such a thing as a "flavor injector"? You use it for shooting up your turkey with heroin flavor, I guess. Do you have any idea how many different kinds of spoon rests there are? I may have little magnetic canisters of tumeric and cloves, but at least I lay my dirty spoons on the cutting board (or sometimes, yes, the stovetop) like a normal person. Don't even get me started on trivets.

Also on my mall adventure I got a poster frame at Target. We now have art on our wall! I think the room looks nicer already. Irritatingly, my Klimt poster is a weird size and Target doesn't have frames to fit it. I guess I'm going to have to get it framed specially, which is annoying.

The Werewolf is giving a talk on Kierkegaard this afternoon, which I'm looking forward to - largely because the Werewolf has a very pleasant speaking voice and I've never heard him say more than ten words at a time before. There may be some subdued hijinks afterwards, which would be nice, although I'm a bit under the weather.

The Horse told me yesterday that he was thinking about whether I should use my real name when I start publishing, or whether I'd be better off with just initials. Apparently there's enough gender bias in philosophy that my girl-name might be a hindrance. Especially, he said, in fields like epistemology, logic, and metaphysics - "the hard stuff," as he put it. Maybe I should go with Ellis.

I just found out that a second X-Files movie is coming out this summer, which is way exciting. Not that I'm going to get my hopes up or anything, since the last season was pretty awful, but David Duchovny is at least going to be in it, so right away that's a start.