reviving

I've had this blog for awhile, as any reader can see from my first post (March?), but I didn't want to maintain it for awhile. . . but now that the great dispersal of friends has happened (is that a diaspora?), I like the idea that some people might be curious enough about how I'm doing to occasionally take a look at my blog. Also, I am jealous of Marie and her excellent blog, hence starting my own blog on the same website. Livejournal, I have decided, is irritating.

My roommates et al (Dan, Jason, Karen Sarah, Dan's sister, and Dan's sister's boyfriend) have gone on a road trip to Las Vegas for the weekend, and so I am using the opportunity of having the house to myself to play four Hilary Duff songs loudly on repeat! I swear, I don't know how I can admit this, but I think her song Come Clean is one of my absolutely favorite songs ever. Anyway, I would be far too embarrassed to play loud bad pop music if there were any human beings in the vicinity. . . but I think I do miss out on a large degree of fun.

I'm surprised I'm still up, because I was really tired today. I got up extra early (7 am) this morning to open up the Humanities Center since Jan, the other temp person there who is actually supposed to be at the front desk, had to go have her TB test checked. I fail to understand why the Humanities Center needs to be open at 8 am. Who on Stanford campus does anything at 8 am? Oddly, however, I rather enjoyed unlocking all the doors and such this morning and making coffee. There was something comfortingly routine about it, which I haven't experienced in a long time. I also felt more like myself today than I have in awhile. Maybe it was because I actually dressed like myself for once, and didn't limit myself to extremely boring work clothes. I was wearing that amazing turquoise/blue skirt I got at Urban Outfitters in DC, my mint green wrap sweater that Corinne got me at the Gap last December, over an ancient once-white Banana Republic knit top, with my silver/feather icicle earrings, and J. Crew boots for which I was charged L20 in taxes when my mom bought them for me and sent them to Oxford. And of course my BRIGHT RED hair.

Work was ordinary. . . I spent a lot of time writing email and occasionally doing something 'productive.' Jan tried to tell me about the history of the area she's from in Scotland, but I seriously was going to fall asleep. I was very sleepy all day. Oh, but what was great is that she's brought in a huge bar of Cadbury chocolate, and so in the afternoon when we get too bored she breaks off a strip of it for each of us and we stick it in our tea and let it melt before eating it. Sooo good. Oh, and then at lunch we started "movie lunch," which is apparently a Humanities Center tradition, and watched half of Roman Holiday.

Ran into Brad, a former TA of mine who is one of John Bender's advisee's, at Tres Ex after work. He's been doing work at the Humanities Center too, and we've kind of ran into each other variously over the past few months but always slightly confused about why we look familiar to each other, and so we sorted that out and hopefully he can help me with some advice about grad schools, since he does 18th century and such. Anyway, since I don't know many English grad students it will be good to talk to him, and he promised to stop and chat the next time he passes by the front desk.

Went home, studied for the GREs, watched the roommates run around packing. . . and now, Hilary Duff at top volume.

You know, this post is so trivial and self-centered. It's fantastic.

Maia