wednesday, 31 may

i just discovered that i'm hit number 5 on google for a rather inappropriate search related to my entry from the 5th of may. whoops. i sat with tristan, shell, georgie and josh last night. every year i forget how jittery finalists get during exams. their eyes are all glazed over, they literally shake from caffeine consumption, and their topics of dinner conversation invariably turn to questions like "would you rather be queen of the world or have a flying carpet?" or, "would you rather have a cat glued to your neck or a duck glued to each food?"

it's the ducks, clearly. i don't like cats at all, but e'en if i did, i would rather have duck poo on my feet than cat poo on my neck.

i got my contracts yesterday! by courier! i've never received anything by courier before. super exciting. and almost completely signed. i'm going to drag them back down to london tomorrow (i'm my own mini-courier service, you see).

it ended up being eight libraries yesterday, but wildly successful. wildly. today, sorta more of the same. not really, but i'm looking at two sixteenth century books (one printed in 1548 and the other in 1599) at duke humfrey's. i still get a little surge of excitement every time sign on to olis to call up a sixteenth century book. i feel like a bit of a fraud though, being able to demand such old things be brought to me for my own intellectual satisfaction. after the duke, i need to finish the first round of edits for my IHR talk, and then print it out again, for round two. if only the thesis itself were this easy.

tuesday, 30 may

monday, 29 may

so my brother was taking our gramma to lunch and then to her pedicure last week, and he wanted to say as much in his away message. he also wanted to be sure not to misspell anything, so he typed "taking my gramma to lunch and then to her pedicure" into google. sensible approach, right? well, apparently it brought up my dec 2004 blog about doing much the same thing. now, is this a niche activity in which only the people in my family participate? or am i just the only person on earth whose life is boring enough to blog about it. i'll leave you to decide.

i have no excuse for not updating yesterday. i wasn't even hung over. but the garden party was a lot of fun. it was definitely the most time i've ever spent int he cloisters, which are surprisingly lovely when not full of tourists. anyway, many thanks to jack for taking me to cafe zouk beforehand, and for bringing a delicious vat of carluccio's pesto with him from london. i made the most delicious risotto for dinner last night using it.

two complaints: 1)why is my last term at oxford going so fast? i've decided to come back for a fortnight in august as i finish up my d.phil, but it won't be the same. it never is out of term. second complaint: why is it so cold. i like the grey. sun is way overrated, but what's with the predicted highs under 15C/60F all week? totally unacceptable. it's not even a mildly convincing late may. at all.

oh. one more complaint (observation): i've been up since 4 am. don't ask me why. this is what i get for going to bed at 9.30 last night. it's still definitely not enough sleep, but oh well. i've decided to dedicate my day to figuring out what to say at the IHR seminar at which i'm speaking next thursday. i have library stuff to do, but that can wait until tomorrow.

saturday, 27 may

i had a dream last night about the portland zoo installing little mist-spraying nozzles in the parking lot. because they felt that, while the temperature in the zoo was good it was getting too hot in the car park. there's probably some truth in that. but how cool is that max station? i really need to get back to portland.

the dream, i'm thinkin, is a byproduct of having started a tale of two cities last night before bed. that opening seen with the dover mail, you know. if i remember correctly, mrs korn made us read it back in our cataldo days. she was fed up with teaching. i can't imagine why.

i don't understand the cult of margaret thatcher. yes yes, i know it's rather exaggerated in the line of beauty, but i still don't get it. or the cult of ronald reagan, for that matter. i mean, i liked bill clinton and all (we share two almae matres, you know), and i certainly preferred him to the current president, but i don't think of him as a living political god. thankfully.

i need to get to the gym. i took three days off on account of this screwy thumb, but i really need to get back to it. oh, and congrats to the chch men's 1st viii, who bumped oriel yesterday. pembroke: get it done today.

ps - thanks to bo for informing me of the llama song.

friday, 26 may

thursday, 25 may

first things first: congratulations to my rhodes classmate david on his recent engagement, and congrats also to hoya oxonians jason and maria, who got engaged yesterday! spring is clearly in the air. how romantic.

the food at the cherwell boathouse was lovely, but i jammed my right thumb something awful. it's killing me. oh it hurts so bad. and rather swollen, but i don't think it's broken, so don't worry too awfully much.

disappointing start for chch in the summer 8s. the first boats both rowed over. which is fine, i guess, but not really all that great. let's hope for better weather and better results today.

it's beginning to feel like the end of my JVC year. i remember that once july started, almost every single meal and every single weekend was booked. i leave four weeks from saturday, and things are starting to get rather crowded. i wouldn't have it any other way. mark is coming to dinner at chch tonight, which i'm looking forward to. and then jack is coming up saturday for a garden (?!) party. i'm getting ready to be nostalgic. i am. watch out.

ps - only 7 months until christmas! and this cartoon describes what i miss about seattle: the weather. yes. the weather.

wednesday, 24 may

tuesday, 23 may

saturday, 20 may

again, i have nothing for you. i went for beers with andy and dan last night, but i was too busy listening to actually remember embarrassing things they said. too bad: dan was VERY drunk.

please note the addition of my best friend brandon to the blog role at the right. his blog is particularly useful if you need motivation to go work out, because he's training like a mofo, as best i can tell.

good luck to mark on his night-time bra marathon! i don't actually know what day it is, because when things start at midnight i get very confused about what date that is. it really ought to be standard practice to describe midnights (and times in the wee small hours of the morning) as between friday and saturday, or whatever.

it's been quite cool in oxford the past few days. almost autumnal. it reminds me of those first cool days in mid october in DC. which i like a lot, but not in mid may.

i was talking to my friend christine a couple days ago, and she mentioned that new york is a city where one has different layers of friends: friends you go to dinner with. friends you go clubbing with. friends you jog with. friends you meet for coffee, and then the (important) ones with whom you share everything. now jack always teases me about coming from a village, but there's probably some truth in that. in spokane, there are great people, but they are limited in number, which made it much easier to develop that last (important) type of friends. and i'm damn lucky to have them, even though i live way way too far away now.

ps - i'm heading to london just now, so no updates until tuesday. later, gators

friday, 19 may

thursday, 18 may

last night john hosted a little a the line of beauty party for a bunch of chch'ers. he made a HUGE bowl of guacamole. anyway, it was intersting to see the adaptation. i'm not sure if i liked it, but i wasn't sure how much i liked the novel until the end, either, so there you have it. gosh. i read that two summers ago. scary.

speaking of BBC adaptations, i've decided on something i dislike about the bbc pride and prejudice...i know. you never thought i'd admit to disliking anything about it. it bothers me that lizzie doesn't tell her father that darcy had orchestrated and paid for lydia's wedding. i think it's important. i just do.

there's a very important article in today's new york times about swimtrunk length. read it. more importantly, gawk at the photos.

and a hot tip from my brother robert. if you find yourself hankering to know more about spokane's crowning achievement of the 70s, head over to watch this amazing video about Expo '74. the best part: the song! if anyone has the mp3, email me IMMEDIATELY. no. really: "come share the world of excitement (take a ride over the falls!). so much to see and to do (you can never see it all!)..." brilliant. brilliant.

wednesday, 17 may

stop the presses. best news ever: i have a job!! ok. well, techinically it's a job offer. but that's a whole lot more than i had yesterday at this time. for those whom i haven't already pestered with the exciting news, starting in september i'll be doing PR for the company mentioned in yesterday and today's dilbert strips. so get out your keg cups, because i'm serving kool-aid. no death ray here, folks. keep moving.

anyway, i'm super excited. SUPER excited. i went out last night with stijn and michael and then met marty for a drink at the turf before going to love bar, which was crowded and a lot of fun, although way way way too smoky. when does this english smoking ban come into effect?

ok, not to start a cataldo reminiscence war, but my best friend brandon pointed out to me that he doesn't remember dixie cups at hot dog day...only cookies and cupcakes. he says (and i'm thinking he's right) that dixie cups were really more the dessert of choice for outdoor cataldo events. like the beginning of the school year picnic. or the outdoor fun day that i so looked forward to at the end of every year.

finally, a rant: i don't have a myspace page. i'm sure it's a perfectly nice social networking website. it seems to be very popular, but why on earth do the majority of people's pages take me back to the world wide web circa 1996? annoying music that plays automatically, animated gifs, poor layout/font choice/color schemes, obnoxious background images (a puma! a unicorn! a muscle car!) that GASP! don't move when one scrolls down the page.

this html stuff sure is nifty, isn't it? and apparently it makes all semblance of taste go the way of the dodo. ok. end of rant, but that's why i'm not on myspace, in case you're curious.

tuesday, 16 may

monday, 15 may

sunday, 14 may

happy birthday allison!
(one day late) happy birthday, mark!
happy (american) mothers' day!
quoted: "france is communist. with croissants." -jack, re: this article

yesterday, you may have guessed, was a hangover day. and it was a perfect hangover day, because it was cool and cloudy. contrary to all my posturing about loving oxford in summer weather, i think i would prefer if every two days of mid-70s sunshine were followed by one day of high clouds and high 50s temperatures. days with no walls, i call them.

can't we impeach the vice president? just checking.

walking back from mark's birthday party on friday night (after a WONDERFUL feast at chiang mai), i must admit i stole two little bunches of lilacs from a bush on mansfield road. and they're great. there are very few things i find as calming as the smell of lilacs.

maybe it was the temperate evening; maybe it was all the wine; maybe it was carrying lilacs through the city of dreaming spires, but i found myself profoundly content on that walk home friday night. i think, though, that there wasn't any specific cause, other than gratitude for these wonderful years at oxford. you may remember for the first few weeks of may 2002 i included in each daily update a memory of my undergraduate years for which i was thankful. i think i'll do that again next month.

ok, it seems like everyone i know graduated this weekend, so i apologize if i leave someone out, but CONGRATULATIONS to jose the bose, shannon, ptom, mike, tony, and john. well done!

there's an article in today's new york times magazine on the universal library. it's rather interesting, so give it a gander.

friday, 12 may

so today is mostly going to be things i keep forgetting to mention. we could call it psycho-blogular housekeeping. instead, let's call it leftovers. i'm up at an inappropriately early hour (5.30). i don't know why, but it's absolutely beautiful out, and i'm very much enjoying the peacefulness of the quad in early morning light (the best type of light) with everyone asleep. so having to take a nap later today is a small price to pay for a lovely right now.

first things first. i just discovered the most amazing website: pandora.com. you give it a song or a musical artist, and it creates a playlist based on the musical qualiities of your input. they call them radio stations, and then as they let you listen to the playlist (free!) you get to rate the songs, which allows the software to further tune the future selections on the playlist.

in part, it's encouraging to my sense of consistency that the "dar williams" playlist i asked for has included other musicians i enjoy--ani difranco, ben harper, the indigo girls, joan baez. but it's also made me realise that i seem to have a preferrence for chick singers. imagine that. i will admit that they've played a few songs by guys i'd never listened to (josh ritter, matt nathanson, and michael fracasso), that i've enjoyed a lot. and did i menation it's free? oh. one warning: it's theoretically only for US residents, but clearly they're not checking IP addresses. so all you non-americans had best get over there now before they figure it out.

many thanks to my cousin stephen, who dropped me an email to say that i'm not completely out on a limb on the whole smell/memory thing. something about different neural pathways. i really should have paid more attention in that sensation and perception course i took in college. i was really just there for the optical illusions. no kidding. and because the professor generally said funny and/or quoteworthy things.

thanks too to my friend angela, who wrote to remind me of another cataldo smell: whatever the custodian (Mr Mack) used to clean the floors. i can almost smell it now. i sure hope he's retired by now. she also reminded me that dixie cups were totally the dessert of choice for cataldo hot dog days...alternating thursdays. weeks without hot dog days generally had half days on fridays. those were the days all the big kids walked to taco time for lunch. mmmmmmm. taco time. but hot dog days were great. my dad was head hot dog mom for a few years. the only problem was the rampant inflation. i'm certain that when i was in first grade (ummm...1987-8? maybe?) we could get a hot dog, a pack of chips/crisps and a cupcake (provided by parents, of course) for 50¢. by the time i left, it must have been $1.50 or more. and i don't even want to think what they charge now.

i spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon in the master's garden with my friend katie. not the same katie who had a birthday yesterday. but they are both psych people. and they are wonderful, wonderful people. so it's not that tough to confuse them. anyway, i'm not sure i can think of a more pleasant way to spend an afternoon. especially since katie was mysteriously carrying around baby carrots and hummus. and it may well have been one of the most gorgeous days in the history of creation.

ok. just one last thing. gosh this became a monster update, didn't it? maybe there won't be one tomorrow. maybe. anyway, the other night, i had the most remarkable case of sleep amnesia. i woke up quite suddenly and jumped out of bed. standing in my dark bedroom, i had no idea where i was. i couldn't figure out where the walk in closet had gone (i have one in my room at my parents' house). it was really disorienting. but then i went to bed. you really had to be there, i guess. ok. i'm off to the gym.

thursday, 11 may

wednesday, 10 may

one of the many wonderful things about summer in oxford is the smells. flowering trees. flowering bushes. other things (i'm not sure what the other things are, but the air smells so sweet i keep thinking i have maple syrup stuck in my mustache. if only i had a mustache). the lilacs are in bloom--which is good, because lilac bloomsday was last sunday.

anyway, i find nothing more calming than the scent of lilacs. something at the gym smelled like my primary school. good ol' cataldo. and then leaving the gym the chch sports ground was burning leaves or something, which smells very much like camp reed. it's amazing how strong memories associated with smells are. i think i heard (learned) once that some scientists think it's because the olfactory nerves are very close to that part of the frontal lobe that handles memory. that's a nice explanation, but i have my own: i can't remember smells. well, i can remember them kinda. i can recall small bits of what chocolate chip cookies smell like, but i can't relive the scent like i can visualize places i've been or sounds i've heard. and since i can't relive the scent, the memories associated with it are never dulled by assimilation into more recent experiences. that probably doesn't hold much water physiologically, but i'm fine with that.

jack took me for dim sum lunch at royal china club yesterday. fancy pants. for about £3 more per person the service is better, the menu is different, and you get the most delicious jasmine tea i've ever had in my life. in fact, the tea was an extra £1.10 per person over plain old royal china, so there's the math on that.

i had a dream last night in which i worked in a garment factory in hong kong. i had to sew buttons on the cuffs of men's shirts. well, i had to hold the cuff while a scary machine sewed the button on. it was SCURRY. maybe that means i'm supposed to change my buying habits. i can hear kelly and vanessa saying "yes" from DC.

tuesday, 9 may

monday, 8 may

i don't actually remember who said that. or to whom. or in what context. but it was one of the collection of quotes i recorded at the rhodes charity ball on saturday night. the theme was "through the looking glass", which sounds romantic, but i'm pretty sure very very few people have actually read. if they had, they (like me) would have had jabberwocky dreams all through saturday night.

remember first year, when my sister becky came to england for a week and went to rhodes ball with me? that sure was fun, and back then i felt like i was done with my academic year. right now i have SO much more work left to do before the end of term. it hardly seems fair. maybe i do want to be in my first year again.

no time for that. i'm staaaaaahving. and it's pouring down outside. great day to stay in and do work, if these evil internets don't distract me.

oh, and just in case anyone (in the UK) wants to waste some time today, head over to the channel 4 website, where you can watch the first two episodes of the 2nd season of desperate housewives free for the next week or so. and you can watch any episode this season for just 99p. evil evil internets.

saturday, 6 may

quoted: "no. no. we're just two guys who got excited and made out." -mad tv

i thought that video was hilarious when i stumbled across it randomly last night. oh, american football. what can't you do?

yesterday was another beautiful day. the queen's visit was great fun. they raised the royal standard at college as she drove through the gate in her giant maroon bentley. apparently before she came to lunch she visited the dictionary of national biography. i discovered this when i was trying to figure out when john field died. anyway, they already have pictures from the visit on their website, and you can see the queen going from interested to pretending to be interested to bored and ready for a nap. but isn't that pink coat fabulous?

anyone else notice that anglo-american politics seemed to break yesterday? cabinet reshuffle in westminster. cia director fired (that's what you get for not hiring a hoya). a kennedy announces he's entering rehab. what was it, a full moon?

i had a meeting with the warden of rhodes house yesterday, to assure him that i'll be finishing up in our around the middle of august. but then i felt the pressure of not wanting to submit a supremely bad doctoral thesis, so now i'm committed to working a ridiculous amount to make that goal a reality. hurrah.

friday, 5 may

but you just can't tell!

yesterday did indeed end up being beyond beautiful. there's nothing so wondrous as oxford in trinity term. marty and i walked up to the trout, a frightfully darling little pub bordering the port meadow alongside a weir on the river isis. there were cows and horses nearby, and from our table we could hear the roar of the water going over the weir and we could see the ruins of godstow abbey (founded 1133, dissolved betw. 1535-9). very very oxonian. and then, to complete the scene, there were peacocks wandering around on the terrace, watching people eat and drink, with their huge tails. no peahens, mind you. this is oxford, after all.

in other news, the queen is coming to lunch at christ church today. ho hum. even my republican (british republican) flatmate is excited.

oh. i got spanked in election for the master of the punts. who knew the GCR actually expected people to do real work in such a position?! not i! in all honesty i was planning to resign if i won. sleaze allegations. all government is corrupt these days, it seems.

thursday, 4 may

wednesday, 3 may

tuesday, 2 may

gotta run. late for a thing. happy may day (a day late!)