And Promenade!

I just got finished making pesto from farmers' market basil and garlic, co-op pine nuts, Kroger olive oil and Wal-Mart Parmesan cheese. The cheese may not have come pre-grated from a jar, but it's not the best I've ever had and it makes me think about the futility of combining good ingredients with less-good ones. It seems wasteful. Like mixing $40 French gin with Rose's lime juice (I'm thinking the only drink that would properly make use of fancy gin is a martini - otherwise you may as well drink Seagram's. But I may be wrong.) I also feel bad about using the food processor instead of chopping by hand or using a mortar and pestle like it says to here, but what're you going to do.

The pesto is for tomorrow, when Cufflinks and I are having our friend Scott and his girlfriend over for dinner. Once again, Cufflinks' annoying food issues mean that I can't have everything exactly the way I want it - once again he wants to have mashed potatoes, even though it's in the 80's. I am excited about the wine I got, though - they were having a tasting in the store and it was really good. I like having dinner parties and I like these people, so I am excited. It's really tempting to make the dessert now, but instead I'm writing this and then working on my Frege paper.

On Friday I went with some philosophers and cog sci folks to the drive-in to see Batman. My colleague Matt and his wife and 3 month old baby were there, so a lot of the pre-movie conversation was pretty baby-centric. Babies are so engrossing. Apparently babies can read now - isn't that distressing? Why would you need your baby to be able to read? Can't we just leave the pre-verbal children alone to do their drooly thing for a bit before starting in with the academic pressure? (My colleague's baby can't read, for the record, and they have no plans to start him any time soon. He is therefore doomed.)

Last night Cufflinks and I went to a square dance hosted by the old-time band we see every week at the Runcible Spoon. It was a ton of fun - we danced every dance (well, Cufflinks did - I sat one out) and by the end we were totally experts. Practically every hipsterbilly in town was there including a bunch of little kids with far-out names like Meridian running around on the dance floor. We didn't know anybody there (Josh knows the band only slightly) but that doesn't matter much at a dance.

Summertime

So after my very brief slacking off time (last Wednesday afternoon through this Monday, inclusive), I have begun the summer semester. I am only taking one class and, as we will not be learning how to say at any point, es ist für Babys. I really did not mean to sign up for German for Reading Knowledge, as the idea of only learning one aspect of a language strikes me as stupid and wrong. Speaking, listening, reading, writing - these are the tasks involved in learning a language. We are only learning ONE of these. What a waste of time! I don't have any burning wish to go to Germany to talk to anybody but my Tante Claudia and her family, but still. Plus it's a language-learning style that's completely alien to me. Normally when I learn a language, I memorize hundreds of vocabulary words and a few verb conjugations, then automatically pick up a sense of the grammatical structures and sentence patterns. This is what I've been doing since high school, when I learned how to learn Spanish. But all we're doing in this class is learning to recognize grammar structures and translating text. This is not how I roll. And I do not like to roll in ways other than the ways to which I am accustomed. I am not flexible that way.

On Monday I am having a dinner party. This was sort of unexpected - I had promised my beau that I'd roast him a chicken to celebrate the end of exams, and it got put off for awhile, and then he asked if we could invite this couple we sometimes socialize with, Amity and Tawrin (Amity's the one who has the splendid dinner parties) and then I suggested we make a thing of it and invite Kari and the Werewolf, too. The trouble is that my beau is the world's fussiest eater, and apart from the chicken he might not eat anything I would make. He balked at roasted potatoes, for instance, and suggested that he make mashed potatoes using his mother's recipe, instead. I feel that this is a very heavy dinner for this time of year. He also wants to make No-Bake Cookies for dessert, and I am hoping I can convince him that these are not a proper dessert for a dinner party and I will make a pie as well, or pots de creme, or something. Then he can have No-Bake Cookies and the rest of us can have something else. Feel free to chime in with suggestions!

(He also said in the invitation that there would be "drinking, maybe some smoking, maybe some games" at the party, and now I will have to tell the guests that no, there is no smoking in the apartment, please. Also that the only games we have are chess and Set - not even a deck of cards or a game of Scruples.)

Krista's mother and father and elder sister and younger brother are all here for a visit. Tomorrow they're going to go down to Chicago for the youngest sister's graduation. In the meantime I feel very out-of-place in my apartment - I've been keeping out of the way, but other people's families are so insular and take up so much space, literal and figurative. I will miss Krista over the summer but it will be exciting to have the apartment all to myself.

Upcoming plans include a Futurama marathon at someone's house tomorrow, farmer's market on Saturday, dinner party on Monday, IU's last home baseball game on Tuesday (peanuts, a flask of bourbon, and possibly necking under the bleachers - maybe I can compromise on the No-Bake Cookies), and a soup kitchen shift on Wednesday. Plus I've been to the gym every day this week! Summer is off to a good start.

The G.D.

First, you should really go make this and eat it, as soon as possible. It is amazing like the Mets.

Second, and unrelated to food, here is an interpersonal relations question. Last night Cufflinks and I were watching Road to Brazil and I used the word "goddamn" in conversation, as I occasionally do, possibly as a result of reading a lot of Salinger in my formative years. I try not to swear in front of Cufflinks because of his extreme religiousity, but I guess I don't think of what he referred to as "the G.D." as serious swearing. I guess this is because when I was younger and was considering incorporating swears into my vocabulary, my father told me that profanity was okay, but scatological swears were not.

Cufflinks said that he wasn't okay with "the G.D." and I apologized, but it rankled a bit. On the one hand, we are supposed to say when something bothers us so we can talk it out. This is a good policy that has been serving us fairly well, considering what an odd match we are, each of us finding all of the other's values anathema and appalling. So on that count, I am glad he said it bothered him, because now I will know not to do it again.

But on the other hand, I feel that Cufflinks should not be allowed to tell me what words I can and can't use. It feels a little infantilizing. Not to mention, now I'm worried that the other Batman-and-Robin-style non-swears I use in his presence, like "Holy cats!" might also be unacceptable. I don't know how I should react to this. My inclination is to say he can't tell me what to do, but I'll voluntarily refrain from using expressions that offend him - this I realize is not a consistent position. Thoughts?

(And if you're asking yourself why I keep the guy around, here's an example: he may have gotten us an invitation to a Kentucky Derby party somewhere down South a friend's house, where the women all wear big hats and where he will wear a seersucker suit if we go. Big hats! Seersucker! Mint juleps? I don't even know! The kid's all right, is what I'm sayin'.)

A cherished dream realized

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect Sunday in April - it was in the 60s, the daffodils and crocuses were in full bloom, and Cufflinks had invited me to a picnic given by one of his colleagues, who are all very nice, and whom I mostly know at this point, which is great - I love philosophers, but it's very pleasant to meet people from our evil twin department History and Philosophy of Science.

The picnic was held in a park by the hospital. Cufflinks had brought some chicken marinated in barbecue sauce for us, which was really good, and one of his colleagues had brought vegan cupcakes and grilled asparagus for everyone, too. The best part was that Nick, an Australian, had brought a cricket bat and wicket, and after we ate he showed us how to play.

I've wanted to play cricket ever since I became a P.G. Wodehouse fan, and this was a dream come true for me even though I was unsurprisingly very bad at it. (Cufflinks, who takes baseball rather seriously, was pretty good, which was pleasing to watch.) It's actually not a terribly exciting game, at least not at the level we were playing, and not if you're in the field instead of batting. But it was cricket and it was lovely to just be outside with friendly people (and a friendly, eager to help dog) playing a game.

I can hardly wait for summer, but I'm certainly digging spring.

The Simone de Beauvoir Party

Last night Krista and I had our first official dinner party. Sure, we've had people over in the past - once for a game night and once for Krista's birthday (the time we nearly set the apartment on fire again - but this was our first proper sit-down meal with courses and stuff. I called it our Simone de Beauvoir party because we invited all the female students in our department and in the invitation I said we'd be discussing The Second Sex and braiding each others' hair, but neither of those actually happened.

I made cheese straws for people to nosh on before dinner, as those are what people always have at dinner parties in books. I made them the night before, and I actually found they were best right out of the oven, but they went over rather well. When our guests arrived (we had a total of six people, counting me and Krista) they insisted on sitting on the floor in a circle. It felt sort of like a coven meeting, especially with Susan decked out head to toe in black, with big witchcrafty boots. At one point we were discussing Quine, but the conversation about Quine got mixed up somehow with an aside about a former colleague of Kari's whom Sharon and I had met in Memphis and who apparently thought we were hot. Susan was confused by the overlapping threads of conversation and thought we were discussing who Quine thought was hot. The possibility of breaking out the Ouija board was discussed to settle Quine's opinion once and for all.

I also made my gingered carrot soup and rolls using this recipe, which were rather good even though I didn't exactly follow all the directions. Krista helped by setting the sponge yesterday morning, and when I got back from the grocery store it was all bubbly and sentient. Baking is so cool.

The main course was fettuccine with creamy red pepper sauce (Serious Eats again!) which was disappointing because the pasta stuck together, making it hard to eat. I put a little oil in the water to keep this from happening but it didn't work. Susan brought pumpkin bread pudding for dessert, which was delicious, and we went through two bottles of red wine.

I don't really know much about wine, so when I went to the store to get some for the party I went straight for the Excelsior Cabernet I used to get in Northampton, but they didn't have it. So I asked the fellow working there to recommend a cheap white and a cheap red, and the red he suggested was this:

which I obviously had to get, given the theme of our party. It was pretty good, as far as I could tell. (We now have an unopened bottle of white wine chilling in our fridge, and it will probably be there for quite awhile as Krista and I can't drink a whole bottle of wine all by ourselves. Maybe we'll break it out to celebrate the end of the semester.)

I consider our party a total success - everyone was jolly and seemed to enjoy the spread and be suitably impressed by the from-scratchness of it all, and it was very nice to just spend time with the female portion of the philosophy department - because if there's one thing I love (in all seriousness), it's voluntary gender segregation.

After everyone left, Krista and I did the dishes and then I went and passed out in my room. Having a party really takes it out of you.

Spring Break

My spring break is drawing to a close, and although I've been devoting a ridiculous amount of time to my Tarski and Sartre papers (and still it's not nearly enough), I've also managed to have some fun. Cufflinks and I took Wednesday off and went hiking in Yellowwood State Park, which was really lovely - it was a very nice day and we got a nice longish car ride through the Indiana countryside, listening to Interpol and folk. We had dinner at his place and then went to a pub for dessert, where we watched old people swing dancing to live music. Most enjoyable.

I have a very low-key weekend planned; Krista's in Chicago, so I have the apartment to myself. I'm planning to make pasta puttanesca for St Joseph's Day on Sunday - I bought anchovies and everything. Classes resume Monday and then we're in the home stretch!

Susan, I speak Chinese, but that doesn't make me Mao Zedong

Today I had my coffee date with a Hungarian mathematician I met last semester at Speed Friending. He seems nice enough, if a little hard to understand, but the real reason I agreed to meet up with him today was that the last time we spoke, he told me he was playing Santa Claus for some Hungarian children at a party (of Hungarians, I guess. That part was never made entirely clear) which I found quite charming. It made me think of the scene in The Miracle on 34th Street where Kris Kringle speaks to the little orphan girl in Dutch. We talked about math, and it was fairly okay.

There is nothing in the house for dinner. Holly Sturgis would be appalled.

Caught!

Tonight is Peasant Disco and a pre-party at VTL's place, so I went by the package store to pick up a six pack of the nice local IPA and who did I run into but the Horse and his wife, my mentor. I saw the Horse and, suave as usual, jumped about a foot in the air and tried to hide, but he'd seen me and he came over and said, "Philosophy is tough, you know? We're asking the big questions, and it doesn't always seem like there are answers, and then we turn to -" he gestured at my Dragonfly IPA - "medicine."

"You caught me," I managed after a long pause.

"Well," he said reasonably, "you caught us, too."

A very nice evening last night as well - after Tractatus group, I went with Mike to the GPSO happy hour at Nick's, where I made pleasant smalltalk with a cute, large-nosed Poli Sci major. I deserve major props for this, because I just went right up to him and used the classic line, "You look familiar - do I know you from somewhere?"

"I don't think so," said the boy.

"Well, you can meet me now. I'm Emily," I said, extending my hand.

I am pleased with myself for that.

After the GPSO thing I went for pizza with some of the other firstyears in the department - Sam, Scott, Josh, and Krista - which was really pleasant. We hung around Mother Bear's until almost eleven, at which point we went to a free showing of the Darjeeling Limited at the Union. It's no Royal Tennenbaums, of course, but I wasn't disappointed. Adrian Brody is lovely as always, and Jason Schwartzman was quite good, and visually it was spectacular, as Wes Anderson's movies always are. And there was even a little Angelica Houston, who always reminds me pleasantly of my mother.

So on the whole, good times fore and aft. I love it when things work out like this.

Great Chieftain of the Puddin-Race

Last night I accompanied Cufflinks to a Burns Supper at his friend Amity's house. This is one of those times when it pays to have my always-say-yes policy: months ago, Cufflinks invited me, Sam, and Krista to the Spoon to listen to music and only I said yes. Saying yes to one interesting thing leads inevitably to doing something interesting, and as often as not leads to more interesting things later on down the line. Saying no to interesting things leads to writing the world's most boring memoir. But I digress.

I will try anything once, food-wise, and when I Wikipedia'd haggis my first question was not "Why on earth would anyone eat such a thing?" but "Where in Bloomington can you buy a sheep stomach and when can I go there?" It turns out that you actually can't, which is kind of disappointing in a way, but the unavailability of the correct offal actually made Amity's haggis WAY more delicious than actual haggis probably is. Hers was like muttony meatloaf, and though I don't like meatloaf especially I do like mutton. It was served, as is traditional, with tatties and neeps, as well as a really good soup, kale, and stewed apples.

(Cufflinks, of course, didn't eat anything but the potatoes. He is the world's pickiest eater and I find it profoundly annoying. He won't eat any fruits or vegetables, ever. A boy who won't eat an apple clearly has something wrong with him. Probably scurvy.)

We did the whole shebang - toasting the haggis and Robert Burns with various scotches (some were peaty, some were smoky, all were very liquory and disgusting. Mixing them with Scotch water, a grainy potion of water, sugar, and oatmeal, did not help at all). Cufflinks did the toast to the lasses (it's supposed to be "amusing but not offensive" and I urged him to bawdy it up but he didn't, really) and most of the poems because he was able to do the accent. And there was dancing - someone tried to show me how to waltz but I was hopeless and he gave up on me, laughing - and the shortbread I'd made using Laurie Colwin's recipe was a big hit. After supper the men lit up honest-to-God pipes, so the room had a not-unappealing old-mannish smell.

All in all it was a most satisfactory adventure, which is what happens when you say yes.

Culture Clash

Dealing with people from other cultures can be very challenging, as everyone knows, but it's easy to forget how many different cultures exist side by side within our own country, or even within my own apartment. (Well, in that case only two, but it's still a challenge occasionally.) I've settled into my department reasonably well, I think, but there's no denying that my colleagues here are, by and large, of very different backgrounds than most of the people I knew in college or high school. Before grad school, I had only really known one seriously Christian person my age; here, they're everywhere. I was downtown today and I saw people holding signs and from a distance I thought they were Women in Black but in fact they were protesting against abortion. Things are different out here; they are not what I'm used to.

I don't know what the rules are for dealing with these people. Okay, I'll cut to the chase: I have no idea what it means when an Evangelical Christian boy puts his hand on a girl's knee. Does it mean he thinks she's easy? Is this the sort of thing one ought to slap someone for, possibly with a glove? Is it a test of some sort? Surely the Christians have rules for touching each others' bodies, but since I don't know what these rules are, I feel like a laowai again. Of course, I'm new to this whole coed thing, too, so I can't say for certain, but I suspect that in secular society, a hand on the knee is not a huge deal, but who knows? No one has ever spelled this stuff out for me; I just have to make it all up as I go along.


ETA: Krista informs me that you'd have to be really conservative - "like, Amish conservative" - for knee-touching to be a really big deal. Good to know that, once again, I am making mountains out of molehills.

Let's Stick to the Script, People

When someone tells the story of how she caught a peeping Tom outside her window, the following reactions are permissible:

• "Wow, that's awful! Who would do that?!"
  
• "He must be killed!"
• "Oh. My. God. I have already heard this story, like, three times!" (sorry, Luke, I will never get sick of telling this story)

The following reaction is NOT ACCEPTABLE, Math Guy:

• Smiling a creepy little smile.

It was so totally him.

Epistemology works badly when you're CRAZY

I'm not a very good epistemic agent. Even when I know that a disastrous proposition Q is very, very unlikely to obtain, I am often unable to rule out Q on the basis of my evidence. I know that when the mathematician suggests that we go to the movies, it is much more likely that he wants to see a movie than that he wants to get me in his car so he can chop me into little bits. Nevertheless, I see the horrible looming face outside my window and I am unable to eliminate the possibility that he is going to murder me, and my belief-state gets all skewed.

We could model this with possible worlds. I love doing that! It so happens that the possible worlds in which the mathematician murders me are, as modal metaphysicians say (driving me crazy with their lack of rigor) "far away." That means the possibility is not very likely to obtain. However, the set of my doxastically accessible possible worlds (the ones which represent my beliefs) drastically overrepresent the possibility that the mathematician will murder me if I go out with him.

And no, my crazy brain is not concerned with silly math, like the fact that the mathematician being the peeping tom = very unlikely and the fact that probably most peeping toms aren't actually murderers anyway, so the odds of him being the peeping tom AND a murderer are so very very tiny as to defy description. The crazy brain cares not for statistics!

Thing is, now I basically have to go out with him, because to do otherwise would be to let the crazy brain win. And I am so busy worrying about the murderin' that I can't really focus on the fact that I have no interest in seeing Beowulf.

Cupcakes!

Saturday was my flatmate K's birthday and, finals notwithstanding, I managed to convince her that we should invite people over for delicious cupcakes. We invited all the firstyears but only two were able to make it. Nevertheless, the four of us had a nice time, drinking red wine and tea, eating our cupcakes, and talking shop.

We couldn't find any matches, so Scott struck upon the brilliant idea of lighting the candles by first setting a paper towel on fire using the electric burner. No one was hurt and the apartment did not burn down, but jeez, what kind of apartment has no matches! It's like being stranded on a desert island! Except then I suppose we wouldn't have a stove. (And I know I'm going to get snarky comments about dumb PhD students starting fires but could we just not?)

(Also as a delightful party game we had Scott go outside and stand outside my window, to confirm that I hadn't imagined the Peeping Tom the other day. I had wondered whether, with the blinds down and the light on in my room but no light outside, I could possibly have seen a face. No doubt on that score: a face outside my window looks like a face outside my window and nothing else. This at least reassures me that I was right to call the police - I don't want to be all wolf-crying.)

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.

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.

Zombies, Set Theory, and Hot Buttered Rum

Here are some weekend highlights:

• Friday: attended a grad student workshop on the Tractatus given by an eighth-year student who's finishing up his dissertation on Wittgenstein. There's maybe going to be a Tractatus study group next semester, which would be awesome. We didn't spend a huge amount of time on the Tractatus in college, so I'd be especially interested in going through it more deeply.

• Luke had to cancel his scare-fest on account of rain, which was disappointing until it turned out to mean I got to hang out with the department's Cool Kids two nights in a row instead of one. VTL gave me a ride to his house (he kind of lives in mild, undergrad-y squalor, not to my surprise) where we watched Old School with his roommates and then Shana, Luke, and Mike arrived and after a bit we went out to the Crazy Horse, where Luke warned me about Cufflinks and the way Evangelical Christians are likely to operate. I am willing to take his word for it since he was raised Evangelical (his father is a preacher, which is kind of astonishing when you know Luke) but I still think he was being a bit alarmist.

• After the Crazy Horse, we went to hear a Detroit ghetto-tech DJ Mike and Shana really dig. We danced until last call while Night of the Living Dead played on giant screens on either side of the dance floor.

• In the morning I awoke, fresh as a daisy and filled with high spirits, and read a very cogent essay by Hilary Putnam.

• Later that day I met up with the two History & Philosophy of Science guys in my set theory class to work on the homework. I have resented them a bit ever since they made fun of me in front of the Badger but now we're burying the hatchet, and I'm glad. I'm even gladder that I totally schooled them in set theory and whipped out some fine, fine, superfine proofs on the chalkboard. At the end of one of them, the Australian clapped.

• You know what's attractive? Smugness. Everybody loves a smug girl.

• And then finally it was evening and time to go to Luke's to get our scare on. Luke had built a bonfire and set up some scary mannequins. He's the kind of boy who owns mannequins, which he got at a garage sale. One of them is named Gloria. "It was kind of awkward undressing her in front of my mom," he admitted. (Gloria was tied to a tree in a prom dress and covered in "pig's blood" to be Carrie.)

• Once everyone arrived, we split up into two cars and ventured further into the heart of darkness (as Luke put it) to a very ramshackle haunted house. There, we played a reflex-testing game that gave the loser an electric shock. I played about seven rounds but wasn't shocked once, somewhat to my disappointment. It was really a rather spooky place, though I was right behind VTL, who spoiled the ambiance by talking loudly and touching everything curiously.

• The second haunted house was a little more upscale and more tableau-oriented. None of us wanted to be in the back because there were people who would follow you around, which was unsettling. A guy with no eyes and lots of rotting flesh got way up in my face, too, which was also not to my liking.

• At the end of that haunted house, as you exit and head towards the funnel cake vendors, a guy in a mask chases you with a chainsaw. It is indeed a real chainsaw, although Luke told me afterwards that it has no chain, rendering it harmless. It is certainly loud, however. I did not run (because that would be undignified) but I did walk REALLY FAST.

• After all the scaring we went back to Luke's, where we sat around the fire and drank hot buttered rum and listened to Nick Cave. It was perfect bonfire weather, the company was congenial, and the rum was very delicious. We stayed until around 2:30 and then VTL drove me and Shana back to civilization. I woke up this morning feeling like the last piece of a puzzle, like I fit where I belong. Good times don't last forever, I am well aware, but I am enjoying this good time right now.
  

It has been a fantastic weekend.

Things That Vex Me 2.0

• BEING STOOD UP. Seriously. Not cool.
• Pretty much anything that happens after being stood up is going to vex me disproportionally as well. Being told to "stop picking at myself." Um, okay, I will just stop. Because you told me to. Because the fact that it hurts to type and wash my hands and my poor bloody Quine book were insufficient reasons, but now that you've offered this brilliant solution a more-than-a-decade-old habit is just magically broken. Thanks, Dad!
• The awareness that I'm being a brat right now. That just vexes me even more.
• Also, being told to go to the dentist.
• Also, the fact that I put on mascara for the date-that-wasn't. I hate mascara. Good thing I didn't wear my contacts, or I'd be going into full ninja-mode right now.

Things That Do Not Vex Me:

• Scrambled egg burritos. Mmm. Eggy.
  

Darn those pesky tsetse flies!

As usual on Mondays, I am barely conscious, owing to a weekend of staying out late and waking up early, since you're supposed to sleep best if you wake up at the same time every morning and I like to get my weekend chores - marketing and bread baking - done by noon. Normally I have class on Monday afternoons, but today I did not, since my prof is out of town, and so I napped all through the time I would've had class. I did, however, go into the office this morning (what a grownup turn of phrase! And it's true: I went into my very own office, despite the presence of The Werewolf, my scary officemate) and turn out another draft of my analyticity paper. It is now in a form which could be turned in, should I slip into a coma until Wednesday afternoon, and this is comforting, though I will diligently continue to tweak it until the buzzer sounds.

Perhaps I should elaborate on that allusion to The Werewolf. He's writing a dissertation on Kierkegaard (amazingly the Blogger spellcheck has no problem with "Kierkegaard" so maybe someday when I'm a famous philosopher it will stop telling me my last name is "Neutered" or perhaps I meant "Neuterers" which is a new one) and is in the office ALL THE TIME, and never says a word, and every time I go in there I want to announce, "My name is on the door!" because I feel like I'm intruding. But it is silly and babyish to be afraid of my own office, so I'm sucking it up.

Oh, and I call him the Werewolf because he kind of looks like a blend of Oz-from-Buffy combined with my mental image of a young Remus Lupin (i.e. not like this). Plus he's just kind of lupine. (His girlfriend Kari is very cool and gave me a ride once.)

Um. Where was I? I just finished The Orange Tree, by Mildred Walker, which was pretty good - it is apparently kind of a modernization of Chekhov's Three Sisters and it's published by Nebraska University Press, which perhaps partially explains its occasionally jarringly bad editing. To be fair, the editor was trying to reconcile several different versions, as Walker apparently kept fiddling with it for years and years after it was rejected, but since this editor didn't feel any compunctions about inserting references to an orange tree so the title would make sense, you'd think she could've somehow smoothed some of those scene changes. I was constantly thinking I'd skipped a page.

And it's Columbus Day, which, despite its dubious political correctness, I kind of love, because when I was little, my grandparents would take me and Floss and our cousins on an outing every Columbus Day. We'd go to an orchard and each pick one apple, have lunch at a hotdog stand, go to this beach with lots of neat rocks and interesting driftwood and debris, and then on the way home stop at the Dollar Store, where we were each allowed to choose any item to buy. It was super great. (I've just dashed off a letter to them, since this made me think of it, so no need to tell me.)

Weekend Highlights, bullet-pointed and with a minimum of personal pronouns

• Went to the Farmers' Market, of course, which featured lots of flowers and way more crafts than usual, which was cool. Music, of course, and a butternut squash which will, in the fullness of time, become butternut squash risotto, and an overpowering sense of sun-drenched wellbeing
• Drew and inked several comic strips, which made me happy, as I hadn't drawn in a little while and I'm getting to the fun part of the story. Listened to a lot of Death Cab.
  
• Drank red wine and played Fictionary with a ton of amiable people at the lovely Susan's house. Talked probably way too much but at least got a few laughs. There was one word that I really didn't know, but we were almost done and I was bored, so I wrote "having to do with awesome robots" as my definition, and bluffed very convincingly, so that Sam, who didn't know what I'd written of course, wrote "what Emily wrote" as his definition
• Went to Mass, where we prayed that people who work with animals be kind and humane like St Francis of Assisi and that we all become closer to the Virgin Mary, and I'm down with both those things
• Baked three-flour bread, except that I forgot to buy soy flour yesterday, so I left my starter mixed with molasses, oil, and dry milk and ran to the store to get some, but they didn't have any, and of course by the time I got back it had begun to rise without flour so I just hastily threw in all the whole wheat flour I had and some white flour and hoped for the best. It rose like crazy but I haven't tried it yet.
• Chess with Value Theory Lad at the Spoon - I haven't played chess in years and I was never any good, but he's going to loan me a book, and oh look I think I just found a motivation to learn how to play.
  

Friday Night

Friday night was very jolly, as my roommate would say. I went to the GPSO Happy Hour, which is supposed to be a way to meet people from other departments, but, though I talked a little bit to a library science major and a criminal justice guy, mostly it was an excuse to hang out with people from my own department, including Value Theory Lad; Luke (the departmental Beau Brummel); Shana, another ethicist, and Mike, a logician. We five ended up going to several different bars over the course of the evening, and had lots of good conversation, which was lovely. They were all very fun, interesting people, and it made me happy to get to spend time with them.