Making progress on the chapter revisions. It's not exactly going to be my longest chapter, especially given that I've been cutting and cutting and cutting, but I think it's going okay. (That it's also not going to be my greatest chapter goes, I think, without saying.)

I emailed my advisor the other day to give her the update and an ETA for this draft . . . and she wrote back a short cheery note with an exclamation mark. Cheery. Exclamation mark. Atypical, and hence worrying. I should know by now that nothing she does has anything to do with me, even when she is in fact ostensibly reacting to something I've done, but it's hard not to overread everything she does. Several years ago she sent me an email telling me that I really should come hear a speaker the department had invited in later that week--and I spent HOURS wondering why she'd emailed me, and moreover why she'd phrased the note just the way she had. (And of course, I attended!) I later found out that she had sent identical notes to several other students in the department, and that each one of us had obsessed over the secret meaning of the message in much the same way. (I note this to show that my paranoia over her recent message isn't just the usual advisor-advisee drama--she inspires this reaction in everyone, and in fact I'm convinced she deliberately cultivates this persona.)

I've got Liz Phair on in the background, just audible over the fan. She always feels like summer to me, maybe because I listened to Whip-Smart over and over the summer after my sophomore year, when I was living in College Town, working 9-5, and without a hell of a lot to do with my evenings and weekends. And now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I bought whitechocolatespaceegg in the summer, too--a couple of years after college. I was psyched for her last album, when it came out a couple (two? three?) years ago, but wound up not buying it after some disappointing reviews. Maybe I should reconsider. Anyone out in blogland have an opinion?