Off to the lovely Pacific Northwest tomorrow for two and a half weeks. I won't specify the city I'm going to, although I don't much care about keeping it a secret--for some reason, no one out here ever seems to remember where I'm originally from. Maybe it's because it's so far away and relatively few people here have any strong personal associations with it, but I get a lot of, "oh, you don't seem like the [NW City] type." Whatever that means.

Today I got up late and then lolled around, painting my toenails, packing off and on, and organizing my files. I also made up a "to-do" list for the next four months--diss stuff, job market stuff, conference work--which I barely managed to keep to a single page. Even after I turn in this damn dissertation it's going to be a rough semester. I'm just glad I've been busy enough not to have started worrying about teaching yet. But of course, it will come!

After mass tonight I went over to my friend Victoria's (she's my HS friend now starting her third year of an English Ph.D. program). She'd just moved to a new place, so we sat among her boxes and drank a bottle of champagne and caught up. It's funny, but I don't have many friends who are academics--most of my college and post-college friends are in very different lines of work, and although I like my grad school colleagues I never formed many close friendships with them. My entering class was small (10 people), and we almost immediately started losing members (I think only 6 of us have received or are on track to receive our degrees); the rest all seemed to have long-distance relationships or pregnant spouses or otherwise not to be around much. I was really jealous of the classes above and below me, which were larger and more cohesive and always seemed to be hanging out and throwing parties. Anyway, that all makes it especially nice to be able to talk about academic stuff with Victoria and (in some small way) share my wisdom. Because really, all this suffering and drama has to benefit someone.

So. Goodbye for now, but you can all expect thrilling work updates while I'm in the NW. Maybe even a vacation picture or two. At any rate--don't change that dial.