This morning? 51 degrees.

Now? 7 degrees.

That's just wrong.

More Joe Morello awesomeness....

Those archikidz....one of them turned up what must be the best use EVER of an outdoor sculpture park.

Fucking-A, Joe Morello rocks.

I'd forgotten. About winter, that is. Not just about having to clear 6" of fresh snow off the car every morning (and the sidewalk, and the steps, and the driveway, and everywhere it gets in your way), but also about having to remember which roads can be driven in the snow (state roads get plowed before county roads, city roads get plowed according to a strange schedule that leaves the main street running through town unplowed until the end of the day), which parking lots have to be avoided (turn left out of Safeway and go around back to the highway, don't try to take the front exit). I had to relearn the process of slipping an SUV into a driveway without hitting the ramparts of month-old snow protecting the house from evil hordes of snow barbarians. Learned to take off my boots at the door so I don't track mud and wet all over the carpets. Learned to wear a stocking cap. And gloves. And even a winter coat.

Luckily, I'm a quick study, because I didn't get much time to re-absorb all these lessons. Landed at the airport in Spokane mid-day Monday, and minutes later, after cleaning the snow off the rental, found myself driving through fog and dark and herds of mule deer that didn't care much about winter driving conditions. Alone, in an unfamiliar vehicle, driving on unfamiliar roads covered with compact snow and ice, this is exactly how all those news stories about people losing limbs to frostbite after a slide-off begin, isn't it?

But, I made it, and here I am, in north central Washington, reminding myself about winter living. Mostly, I think winter is brutal, and I understand why it kills so many people: it's a lot of work, all the time. There are nice winter moments to be had, like when I come down off the highway into town, and I can see all the hills behind town covered in snow, and I can see how complex the winter sky really is--it's never just one color of gray. Sometimes, even if you can't see the sun, you can see the glow of white light at the bottom edge of the clouds to the west of the valley, even when the north valley is socked in with a heavy, icy fog; the clouds over the reservation are rising up to show off the sagebrush on the hills, and the view to the south is heavy and dark and weighted down with more snow. But there's that ribbon of white to the west, reminding you that somewhere, just beyond your field of vision, the sun is still shining. And at dusk, when when I'm up on the highway and can see the lights coming on up and down the valley, but it's still not dark enough to hide the orchards on the hills or the dark curves of the river, it's breathtakingly beautiful. While I was standing out on the porch this evening, watching ice float down the river, knocking icicles off the back gutter with my fists, I saw a coyote hurrying along the bank on the other side of the river. He was trying to hug the water, but the ice is fragile on reservation side because the water is a lot deeper there (some kids have a rope swing on a tree over there so they can drop into the river during the desert months of summer, they really do exist, those dry, hot days), so he kept making delicate detours up the bank and back down again, keeping his head turned north. When I see the coyote, I can also see that winter--depressing, cold, dark, threatening winter--is really just a state of mind. The beauty of white-on-black, snow-on-rock, is there if I want to see it, but right now, all I'm thinking is, "I wish it would stop snowing. I'm so fucking tired of snow." Nothing too pretty in that thought, is there?

So, I made this unexpected trip out here because it seemed like the end was near for my dad. A week or so before Christmas, my mom called me and told me this was it, so I bought a plane ticket out here. But once they got my dad to the hospital, he seemed to rally. He improved enough to go into a rest home, and my mom told me to hold off for a bit, because maybe it wasn't the end after all. So, I waited, and tried (mostly succeeded) in having a bit of a vacation, and my dad got better, and eventually went home. But this weekend, my dad was back in the hospital, and my mom was saying, "Well, this time, you really better come out here." And so I did. But my dad seems to be rallying again, he's at home again, and he does seem a lot better today. Unfortunately, my brother, Carl, now has the flu, and my mom is completely worn out from trying to keep everything, including my dad, in working order. There's been a lot of people in and out of the house, home health nurses, volunteers helping my mom fill out paperwork to get qualified for in-home health care, nutritionists, some person today I don't even know what she was there for...

This is a small town, so everyone knows everything about everybody. The neighbors all watched my dad leave in an ambulance, so they all know what's up, and really, I shouldn't be complaining about the snow, since the neighbor to the north of my parents has been VERY KINDLY using his snowblower to keep my parents' driveway and sidewalk clean, even though I'm here this week to shovel snow. The neighbor to the south was out shoveling snow when I was cleaning off my mom's car this morning, and he asked, "Did you get a new car? You were driving a different SUV last time you were here." Clearly, the man has been paying attention during my annual visits. I called a friend from my hometown (30 miles up the valley) today to tell her what's up, but she already knew, because news travels fast around here, especially when your relatives are all part of the Brethren Church. I'm staying in the hotel up on the highway (next to the casino on the reservation), which is a lot like home, because Carl works nights here when he doesn't have the flu, and my Aunt Fern works the late shift, 3-11, so she's always here to say goodnight before I go to bed. My cousin Wayne made his weekly visit to my parents this morning, and my Aunt Rosie stopped by last night. I'm sure if I stood in one place long enough, other relatives would eventually wander by.

I'm typing like a graphomaniac, but not saying much of anything. Number one on my list to do when I get back to Illinois is schedule an appointment with the counseling center. Last semester was my worst semester ever in terms of grades, and this semester coming up will probably be my most stressful semester ever (Ph.D. exams/proposal defense). A lack of academic confidence isn't going to help me prepare for exams, so I've got to get over my sense of failure. A lot of stuff going on with my family, obviously, and I'm still trying to deal with my own lingering health issues (everyone will be glad to know that my cholesterol levels are excellent, I'm sure). My cats no longer recognize me, and I sometimes worry that my wife doesn't, either. I feel like I've got a lot on my mind, but I can't make my mind process any of it to completion. So, I've got to get that taken care of before I really mess something up.

I hope to god it's not snowing in Indiana. Or Illinois. Or anywhere. I'm tired of snow.

I suppose I could take advantage of the blizzard blowing outside my back door to catch up on a semester's worth of news...but apparently I'd rather lie on the couch and read a novel. Anyway, I think it's going to take a few more days before I stop feeling....feeling what? Can you feel anxious and numb at the same time? I've been living five minutes at a time for so many weeks, now that I am healthy enough to look *at least* ten minutes into the future, it would appear that I've forgotten how. Hopefully, a few more days of couch time will sort that all out. Not kidding, I just realized I was sitting here in my chair, rocking back and forth like the autistic child from the ABC After School Special. Truly whack, I am.

Signs that I've been seriously out of touch this semester: I had a paper due yesterday at 2:00. 48-hours before that, two of my e-mail accounts starting sending me automatic reminders: "Travel Paper Due, 2:00, 12/14/07." Yesterday morning at 8:30, I heard strange music coming from the office. I came upstairs to find my cellphone playing a tone I'd never heard before, and flashing an announcement at me: "Travel Paper Due 2:00! Travel Paper Due 2:00!"

The thing is, I didn't even know my phone could do that. I mean, I know I can set a basic alarm, but I can make it remind me of due dates, too? I had no idea. Even worse, I have absolutely no recollection of setting up those auto-reminders in not one, but two, e-mail accounts. Obviously, at some point earlier in the semester, I was seriously worried that I was going to fuck something up before all this was over, and I went to a bit of trouble to try and keep that from happening (Note to self: next time, remind yourself about writing a 20 page paper more than two days before the due date--when were you planning to do the research for that paper? The night before it was due?). And yet, I remember none of it. It's hard to believe I thought I was going to forget an entire research paper, especially since I only had one class this semester.

I think I'll go back to rocking now.

Ha. The original start to this post:

"I know, I know. We go through this every year. Every year, Susan processes 35 (36, 37, 38, 39, 40!) years of Christmas, and every year, we have to endure reading about her sad, sad December darkness and how oppressive it is, and how every year she has to work through it and come around to the point where she doesn't hate Christmas and how it's easier now than it was 20 years ago, but still, we have to do re-arrive at that point of acceptance and peace every year, don't we?"

Then I checked this blog and realized I'd either erased all those entries or never wrote them down for public consumption at all, so that first paragraph was pretty superfluous.

Anyway, what I wanted to post was a link to this:



because it forms the basis of one of my happiest Christmas memories, and I like to watch it.

I forgot to mention that I saw the picketers when we drove by CBS studios on our way to lunch at the Fairfax farmers market yesterday. No surprise to anyone, I'm sure, but I think Carson Daly is a loser, crossing picket lines to work on his show.

I've lost track how many times I've said "Susan? This is Susan," in the past few days. In planning a lunch date and a dinner, I exchanged many phone calls and left many messages, most of which said, "Susan, this is Susan. Call me."

So, coming back to L.A. after fifteen years has been mostly a good experience. My lunch with Susan yesterday was really nice, and really put some of my anxieties about my former life here in perspective. The fact that Susan was willing to have lunch with me even though I must have been the biggest freak show she'd ever encountered when we first met fifteen years ago was reassuring because, really, I was completely and absolutely screwed up back then. The fact that she didn't end up wanting to throw me off a bridge is really quite comforting. Anyway, we had a nice lunch, and she made me laugh, just like old times.

Today, I went to the Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits. Okay, here is one reason I was miserable when I lived in L.A. I was seriously, seriously poor--my T.A. stipend didn't even cover the rent for university housing. It made it very difficult to socialize with the other graduate students, because we'd go out for their version of a cheap dinner, and it would require me to spend three weeks worth of grocery money (not that there were any grocery stores in South Central L.A., but that's another post). Anyway, I used to ride my bike west on Wilshire from downtown to LACMA on Thursday (?) evenings, because the museum was free for the last few hours of the day. And when I'd get there, I'd always spend some time hanging on the fence in front of the Page Museum ( just next door to LACMA), looking at the bubbling, oily water, wishing I could go to the Page Museum instead of the art museum, but never feeling like I could spend the money. I couldn't justify the four buck expenditure when I could go to the Natural History museum at USC for free, or LACMA for free; four bucks--that's a chicken sandwich, after all.

So, yeah, a lot of hours spent hanging on the fence, wishing I could go inside the museum. So, today, I finally got to cough up my four dollars, and go inside. I spent two and a half hours there (small museum), in the museum, and at the pits outside. I guess most people wouldn't think it was ALL THAT, but to me, it was something I've been wanting to do for fifteen years. It's hard to explain to people why I get so angry at the class privilege I run into so often in academia. I'm not sure the average academic would understand how much it hurts to have to stay outside. Just typing this up makes me struggle not to cry--wanting something you know you'll never get, something most people take for granted, that will eat you alive if you let it.

The Page Museum is deliciously 1970s, exactly my favorite kind of building:










Even the birds like the mammoths:










Museum atrium with flowers and animals:












That small spot of bubbling asphalt in the parking lot fifteen years ago? It's grown:










I had dinner tonight with Susan (ha--fooled you, different Susan!) at the Newsroom Cafe. They don't seem to have a website, maybe it's already so famous it doesn't need one. Google describes it as trendy, a place to see and be seen, so maybe I shouldn't have worn a cardigan sweater to dinner? Never going to make a reputation in a cardigan. Just in case someone hits this page doing a search on "Newsroom Cafe Parking": instead of wandering the crowded streets looking for a parking space, go south on Robertson, turn left/east on Alden Drive (toward Cedars-Sinai), and then turn left into the subterranean parking garage. Expensive, but quick.

So, someone once gave me some advice about my acknowledgment page of my future dissertation: start writing it the first year of grad school, otherwise you'll forget to thank someone important during the crunch time after the (successful) defense and before turning the revised thesis into the grad office. This seemed like super bad advice to me; writing acknowledgments for a project that I only have a 50-50 chance of finishing really seems like tempting fate. I did, however, start keeping a list of names of thankable professors, librarians, archivists, colleagues, etc. The list keeps growing, bit by bit--so far, no one I've added has made me angry enough to get themselves deleted from it.

Okay, all of this is just to say that I added one name pretty early on, with a phrase reminding me why I'm grateful to this person. Since that time, I've jotted down another reason, and another, and then another. And this week, I added another reason to the list trailing Beth's name. She totally bailed me a few days ago. It's a long story that can be summed up with the phrase "Susan failed to plan ahead," but the real point is this: I had only one day--Monday--to take photos for a paper I'm reading at a conference this weekend, and no camera. I was in a complete state of panic Sunday night when I realized I didn't have the equipment I needed in Illinois. Moreover, I was really resistant to Catherine's suggestion that I call around and try to borrow it from someone.

I finally caved, called Beth much too late for good manners on a Sunday night, and asked if she could lend me a camera. She instantly said, "Sure! No problem!" And not only did she lend me the camera for my work on Monday, she graciously offered to let me keep it so I could use it while I was in Los Angeles this week. Between my work in the archives, and my trip to the Getty Center this afternoon, I've accumulated more than 300 digital photos, all thanks to Beth. My talk for this weekend would have been impossible to deliver without those images from the rare book room. Less important, I suppose, are the photos I took today, but I'm still happy to have them. So, thank you, Beth, once more. Remember, you're supposed to be thinking about where I'm taking you out to dinner when I get back to Champaign.

Stupid Blogger. Now I remember why I don't post images here anymore.

I feel compelled to point out two things:

1) The AC is on in our Hindi classroom. It's 39 degrees outside.

2) Many fine people have helped me out during the past few months, both in Indiana and Illinois. Without them, my list of poor moments would have been much, much longer.

What to write, what to write.

Now that I'm off the five billion (okay, five) medications I was on, I've (re)discovered that words strung together in a somewhat straight line actually mean something. Who knew? Well, apparently I did, before I came down with the whoop. Here are some moments from the past few months of my life.

Moment 1.

Me: *cough* [reach for handkerchief] *cough*
Faculty Member B: Are you sick?
Me: *cough* [check handkerchief, think, "Christ, don't spray blood all over her office"] Yeah, pretty sick, actually.
FMB: With what?
Me: *cough* [check handkerchief, think, "Who the hell am I talking to, anyway? What was her name?"] Whooping cough.
FMB: Nice.
Me: Not very.

Moment 2.

Early morning. Sitting on the couch, eating my crunchy granola Cheerios. Swallow a satisfying bite.
[Vomit]

Moment 3.

Me: Hi, Aunt Rosie. Thanks for picking up my medication for me.
AR: No problem.
Me: I don't feel very good [sway].
AR: Do you want to sit down?
Me: [Sitting on step ladder in the kitchen] Actually, I think I'm going to be sick [sweating].
[Vomit]

Moment 4.

Me: It really seemed like something was happening to my heart, maybe not a heart attack, but something seriously wrong with my heart.
Doctor: It was probably just gas.
Me: You know, I don't think so. It's true that I spent the weekend throwing up, but it felt like more than gas.
Doctor: Well, we can do a test, but I don't see the point.
Me: Whatever [Dumbass].

Moment 5.

Sitting on bathroom floor, trying to catch my breath. Realize I've so fucked up my life, I can't even find a ride to the emergency room in my home town.
[Spit out mouthful of blood]

Moment 6.

Sleeping in the car. What's that noise? *(#$*(!
[Wake up as car crosses the rumble strips. Slam on brakes. Look at the field full of dead corn stalks standing straight ahead. Wonder how long I've been asleep behind the wheel.]

Moment 7.

Faculty Member A: Your dissertation should be the most important thing in your life.
Me: You don't really believe that do you? [Think about corn fields]
FMA: If you want to finish the program, yes, your dissertation needs to be the most important thing in your life.
Me: Whatever [don't cry don't cry].

Moment 8.

Me: Well, I'm still vomiting a lot.
Doctor: I think it's just an allergy.
Me: That doesn't make any sense.
Doctor: A lot of people have a cough from allergies right now.
Me: But I got sick in India. If it was allergies, why would they still be active? Different country, different food, different clothes... And if I was allergic to something in Illinois, wouldn't I get better when I go to Indiana? Different state, different food, different clothes... And if I was allergic to something in Indiana, wouldn't I get better when I come back to Illionis?
Doctor: Maybe it's just acid reflux.
Me: Whatever [Dumbass].

Moment 9.

Scene: Conference Hotel, Madison, Wisconsin.
Action: Taking a shower.
Plan: Get dressed, find the appropriate room, read my conference paper before an audience of my peers.
[Vomit]

Moment 10.

Scene: Conference Hotel, Arlington, Virginia.
Action: Getting dressed.
Plan: Get dressed, find the appropriate room, read my conference paper before an audience of my peers.
[Vomit]

To be continued.

This past weekend, Catherine apparently told someone that I live in Illinois, and that she only sees me a few days of month. True enough, but god, how depressing to hear your marriage described in these terms. Don't I live in Bloomington anymore? I don't really live here, so if I don't live there, either... As of today, we have only had 3 days together in October. We've arranged for us to be in the same town Saturday through Wednesday of next week, though, so that will give us an amazing 8 whole days together this month (one of which is our 15th anniversary). Then I'm off to Washington, D.C. for a conference, and then I have a different conference paper due, so I'll probably need to stay in Illinois and work....

Anyway, I type this because this is what distance can do to you. Catherine has told me a MILLION times that she was going to be out of town today. We'd even discussed the transportation possibilities. She needed to go Indy, and I obviously can't drive her because I'm in Illinois, so she'd arranged to take the shuttle up to the airport. From there, someone would pick her up.

I KNOW THIS. Still, I must have called her office ten times today, trying to get in touch with her. Unusual that she was away from her desk all afternoon, but it's been a little unusual all the way around at her office, so I guess that's okay. Still, she wasn't home by 9:00 her time, and she wasn't at her office. And she didn't answer her cell phone. I don't know how many times I called home, her office, her cell.... I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I even brought up the webpage for the local newspaper in case to make sure there was nothing going on in town. And then I looked at the campus newspaper...could she be at some Dalai Lama event??? *I even looked at the page for the local hospital, wondering, should I call?*

And this is when I realized there was a huge problem with the way we've been communicating. What if something was wrong? I don't have our neighbors' phone numbers. I don't have the phone number for her assistant curator--only his long expired cell phone number. Who can I call, after hours, to see if she was at work? I have one phone number for some friends, and I didn't think calling them and saying, "Hey, would you drive by my house and check in on my wife for me?" seemed very rational, so I didn't call them.

In the end, I checked Catherine's e-mail. That is so incredibly unethical, isn't it? But I opened it up, and discovered she hadn't read any of today's e-mails, and then that really set me in a panic. Where IS SHE???? But then I went to the second page, and saw the subject headings for two messages marked read from yesterday, from the airport shuttle company. Mystery solved, suddenly I remembered, oh....yeah....we talked about that. Multiple times. Yeah.

And then when Catherine finally called me (she'd forgotten her cell phone at home, and couldn't call me during the day), I burst into tears.

It sucks to be me.

Well, I wish my cell phone had a camera, because I'd like to remember what the counter top around my laptop looks like after completing a sixth draft (Stardate 61223.3) of a fellowship proposal.

To my right is my wallet (open so everyone here can see my debit card and a completely pointless card for a download of some song Starbucks thinks I need from iTunes) (I feel like I should follow that up by pointing out that I'm NOT at Starbucks, but at a local coffee shop), a spent straw wrapper, and an empty glass that once held a sugar-free raspberry Italian soda. It's weeping condensation onto the countertop.

In front of me is, of course, the laptop, and the wireless network card sticking out from the side of it. I'm facing the window.

To my left are 9 out of 10 pages of an earlier draft of my fellowship proposal. I lost the first page on the way to the coffee shop, and I just now realized that I sent Beth a copy to read without having made corrections on page one because I couldn't find it two hours ago (sorry, Beth). On top of these pages are my cell phone (used to make an appt. with the infectious disease specialist about fifteen minutes ago), a blue pen, a wrinkled napkin (into which I keep coughing so I can't use it to wipe of the perspiration from the glass on my right), a little over a dollar in loose change, my keys, a flash drive with a bright orange University of Illinois lanyard attached, a case for my earphones, a black MP3 player full of Hindi music and dead batteries, a silver and turquoise MP3 player full of English, Russian and Korean music with partially charged batteries, and a credit card with which I'm purchasing Wil's newest book. I'm occupying a lot of territory here at the coffee shop, both physically and spiritually, I think.

Sorry to leave everyone hanging there, me in a bad mood, threatening to leave everything behind without so much as a backwards glance. It's unfortunately true that I have been really sick, and I will be counted as one of the approximately 1,500 cases of whooping cough in my state this year. The infectious disease specialist was friendly and thorough, but he took entirely too much pleasure in telling me that in China, they call this "the cough of 100 days." It sounds so benign, doesn't it? Cough for awhile, get over it. But I've pulled several muscles in my chest and back, and I'm pretty sure I've separated a rib from whatever it was supposed to be attached to (better than cracking it, I guess, which seems to be a common side effect). One other lovely symptom of the disease is the vomiting--I've lost a few meals this way, and I'm thinking of going on an all-liquid diet until I get over that part. Last night, not only did I vomit, I got to enjoy spitting up blood. I'm pretty sure something is torn inside my throat, I can feel it inside, and also when I touch my neck. Another reason an all-liquid diet sounds good.

Okay, I realize that is way too much information, and I'm not really asking for pity from anyone. I am asking for patience, though. It's going to be awhile before I feel better, and when I'm sick, the more challenging aspects of my personality are definitely amplified. My goal is not to do any irreversible damage to my interpersonal relationships with illness-inspired temper over the next three months. Wish me luck.

Okay, sorry. Yes, I made it back to the U.S. last Saturday, and I apologize for not letting people know. In my defense, I've been pretty sick. Why didn't I go to the doctor that last week when Neelamji asked, "Susan, do you need to see a doctor?" That would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, I ended up bringing a respiratory infection back with me, and it's making me and everyone around me miserable. At the risk of sounding like a baby, stupid, whiner, I would like to point out that it almost impossible to recover from jet lag when you are up all night (alas, not an exaggeration) coughing up a lung. Well, I'm three days into my antibiotics, and I feel better, but I think I've made a lot of social and professional mistakes over the past week that I might not have made, had I been feeling better.

Anyway, school is back in session, I've attended my first Advanced Hindi class, and I'm happy to report that I'm not the weakest student in the class, although there's still time for me to devolve. I'm feeling a lot less positive about my program than I was three or four months ago, and I'm starting to wonder in a more serious way if I will even make it to ABD. Hopefully, this is just the bacterial infection closing down my creative thinking channels. I seem to be unable to figure out how to get from point A to point B in my career right now. Actually, while typing this, it became clear to me exactly how deeply sad and depressed I am at the moment. Again, hopefully it's just the time change and being sick, because, damn...I don't have time for more therapy right now. Must.move.forward.Must.make.progress. I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, in about eight hours, I will be starting the 24-1/2 hour trip home to Indiana. I've been sick all week, so it's pretty much just been a painfully long slog through desert heat, monsoon rains, and final exams, and that's not much fun to write about.

I managed to stay upright long enough to go see Chakde India last night. I think I should have enjoyed it more than I did--it's possible I'm just too sick to enjoy a sports movie right now. I liked the scene right before the intermission the best. I'll see it again sometime when I'm feeling better, it will probably please me more. Actually, seeing a movie that's not in Hindi (and Panjabi, and Marathi, and Telegu, and Tamil, etc.) would probably please me more.

I have some small bit of shopping to do today, and then I am just going to lay in my bed and read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I've read 240 pages so far, and that's a lot of Hindi words, but I'm never going to finish it before I go to see the new movie with Catherine this next week.

Sorry, I'm too tired to write anything more. Maybe one day next week when I'm up at 3 a.m. from jet lag I can fill in some of the gaps. See you all on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean (or Pacific Ocean, depending on which direction you like to circumnavigate the globe).

To, yes, I am done with my final presentation. I don't think it went very well because afterward, everyone said, "You had really good photos!" not "You have really good Hindi!" All I have left to do is the highly Sanskritized standardized Hindi exam. Ordinarily, I would not worry about this, because if you don't want to know your score, they don't tell you, so I can continue on in life pretending it never happened. However, because I'm on a FLAS this year, I have to report the test scores from the beginning of the summer as well as from the end of summer. This....sucks.

I'm fighting a head cold and feeling sorry for myself. The trip back from Varanasi pretty much killed me. It all went smoothly, but I woke up at the Midway on the Delhi-Jaipur road with a sore throat and a cough. It's just gotten worse the past two days. Not the best way to spend the last few days in India, but as long as it's over with before I have to fly again, I'll be happy.

Well, I had more to type about paying off a policewallah in Varanasi, and about the group of boys who followed me around Sarnath trying to convince me to buy something (Beth, the story ends this way: you now own a terracotta Buddha statue, artificially aged with green paint), and about how horrible it is to hear Spanish/French/Italian tourists whining to/chastising hotel staff in English. That story ends with me being glad that I was the only American in the hotel--those other people are.not.my.people. But, really, I'm too tired and headachy to type much more. Tomorrow is Independence Day, so everything will be closed. Thursday is my final exam, then we're going to a movie. And then Friday I have to do a small bit of shopping here in Rajapark, then fly to Delhi Friday evening. A week from tomorrow, I will be sitting in the basement of FLB, pretending to be happy to be in Advanced Hindi class.

Oh. When I came home from class today, I discovered that the hotel boys had taped up Indian flags on my door only in celebration of Independence. Those boys, they make me laugh. The best line of the summer has been "Koi bat nahin, esa mera duty hai" when I made one of them get up at 2:00 a.m.to let me in the front door of the hotel. They are funny.

To.

That sounds like "toe," not "too," and means "So," at the beginning of the sentence. For some inexplicable reason, I now start every sentence with that word, even though no native speaker around me does. I usually get my bad speech habits through imitation, but this one seems to be all my own. I have also, thanks to either J. K. Rowling's inept writing, or some other person's inept translation of Harry Potter from English to Hindi, began starting every other written sentence with the "baharhaal," the Hindi equivalent of "At any rate..." Stupid language.

To, yes, I'm in Varanasi with a pretty decent internet connection for the first time in 9 weeks. Okay, I had no sooner finished that last sentence when the power cut out. Luckily, Blogger automatically backs me up these days.

I spent some time at the observatory today. I had it all to myself, I was the only person who visited those poor A.S.I. workers who have to sit there all day and wait for some tourist to discover their site. That's going to be a long, lonely wait. I went twice, once in the morning, and once in the afternoon, because I've noticed that if you leave, and then come back, they think you're really interested and will be more willing to talk to you.

You have to go the observatory (and all the bathing ghats) on foot, bicycle or motorcycle, so I left my rickshaw wallah sleeping outside the Mazda picture house and walked to Man Mandir ghat. I did this twice, which wasn't really all that great of an experience because Saavan ka mela (the monsoon month(s) festival, roughly translated) is going on and there are pilgrims everywhere, people trying to sell me things, etc. The second time through, on my way out, one man did the "Helllloooo Madam!" thing to me, no idea what he was selling. But then another guy said right away, in English, "No, not her, she's Indian, she lives in Jaipur, she has Hindi." I looked back over my shoulder, and the guy was leaning out of the store, giving me the thumbs up sign. How did he know?

I may go to Sarnath on my way to the airport tomorrow, I haven't decided. I'm really tired, and I did go to Sanchi already, and how many stupas does one need to see in a summer? But, I'll probably go, even though I need the sleep.

At this time in a week, I will be hopefully sitting at O'Hare. I had a long post planned about multiple levels of homesickness, but that will have to wait for later.

Well, and I'm just generally in a bad mood. It's hot in here, I have a headache, and I'm tired of writing in Hindi. Plus, I got into two arguments at the Institute today. And, I have to say, I feel like I was in the right both times, but wouldn't you think that in 40 years I'd learn how to walk away from a losing battle? If someone says to me, "It's possible that women are discriminated against in academia, but don't you think it's more likely they're just not as capable or competitive?" you know I should just cut that conversation short, because there's no winning with that one. Likewise, if someone says "I didn't like this film, it was full of stereotypes and big budget scenery, and it was too serious," and I know that the person speaking was doing homework during the first half of the film, never once looking up from his paper, and then wasn't even in the room for the second half, is it even worth responding? No, it's not, and I know that, but still, I engage, then get pissed off when the other party continues to say stupid, completely uninformed things.

I seriously need a vacation, a week or two when I have permission (self-granted?) not to think about work, exams, Hindi, or anything else. Just me sleeping on the couch, reading books with which I'd be ashamed to be seen in public, watching Perry Mason re-runs, and talking to the cats. And maybe drinking Diet Coke, but I think I'm going to try and give that up since I've gone without cold drinks all summer.

Okay, here are the temps for my time in India, from June 8 through today, August 8.

June
105-107-113-109-107-109-107-105-96-95-96-98-95-100-102-100-102-96-98-100-91-91-96

July
96-89-82-84-84-93-93-87-86-86-86-86-93-91-96-96-98-96-96-98-96-95-95-93-91-91-91-93-96-95-96-89

August
93-84-84-89-89-91-87

So, you might understand why I am having no weather sympathy for anyone at this point. I feel like I've done my time in the heat. It's definitely cooled off with monsoon, but we're supposed to climb back up for the next week and a half to 104-105.