Sputter.

I've done something I really didn't think I'd ever do for this whole year. I've skipped class and work 2 days in a row. NBD, I'm not really that sick, I'm just kindof gross and probably shouldn't be around people in confined classroom- or office-sized spaces. I also think that after roughly 2-odd years of living together, Charlotte and I are completely immune to each other. In fact, I've secretly been coughing all over her belongings and food for the past three days. This is a lie, but we're in such close quarters I'm sure it wouldn't make a difference.

All my dear little friends from Raleigh are either already home or get home tonight and I am super excited to see them. I do, however, dread the trip home, because I have to fly home at the asscrack of dawn on Thanksgiving morning. This is just about the last thing I'd like to be doing in the recovering stages of a phlegmmy cough, as I'm a bit of a germophobe to begin with and really all an airplane is is a goddamn germ capsule in the sky with no escape.

Speaking of flying, I went to Williamsburg a couple weekends ago for the 7g new kid show. It was delightful and quite funny. There also seems to be a lot of 7g incest and 7g fringe incest. Fun for the whole family, I guess. I had mama steve's twice, and I don't know how this happened, but I had Taco Bell and didn't even get the normal exorbitant amount of food I typically order, and couldn't finish it. It was really weird.

School is getting tougher. My classmates feel burned out and cranky and have lost the will to read. I still manage to soldier through the reading because if I didn't, that would sort of defeat the purpose of my being here. I seem to spend a lot more time at work, too. Like more than I'm technically supposed to, but whatever, there's a lot to do and someone has to do it. Except for yesterday and today, of course.

I'm really excited about next semester's classes. I'm taking Subcultures and something about cyberculture crit theory. Both very useful subjects. The third and final class is the ma projects course, which I really know nothing about. I am assured by many, however, that "don't worry about it, it'll work out." Oh, okay.

It now seems that the MA class has divided into three parts: 1-those of us who never had any intention to apply for the phd (this is where I fall), 2-those of us who were pumped for the phd from the get-go and are still gunning for it full steam ahead, and 3-those of us who were pumped for the phd from the get go and gave up because they are burned out or maybe think perf studies isn't exactly what they bargained for or have just run out of steam. You can tell who belongs to what category really easily by their attitude and form of caffeine glued to the hand that isn't clutching a macbook with a dog-eared Foucault volume stacked on top of it.

And now I return to the vicious cycle of reading, sleeping, and guzzling water until the Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion show. That shit is my guilty pleasure. It makes me oddly homesick.

tale as old as time

Hey e’rybody,

Yeah so where the hell did Dave and Andy go? Hellooooo there don’t disappear on us

I have been wanting to write about this fantastic experience I had last week. Bear with me, it’s nerdy.

I have been working at the museum for a while now, and one would think that by now I would have an idea of my building’s layout, and that I would perhaps become friends with some of the staff members and learn about what they do.

Well that isn’t quite the case. My vague employment status here, coupled with the building’s central purpose of being a storage facility for the museum’s hundreds of thousands of objects and therefore having crazy security, has limited my knowledge of my workplace to an insane degree. However, by some stroke of luck, that all changed last week.

Last Tuesday, I was eating lunch alone on one of the patios outside when a lady came and sat next to me and started talking to me as she ate her lunch. Now I am no longer surprised when people stop to stare at me, as I am sure they don’t know what to make of me—this random girl who has taken up quarters in one of the curatorial offices (my boss is on a trip! For 2 months!) and reads/yells at people over the phone in Spanish (it’s for work, I swear) all day. But this lady actually wanted to know who the hell I was, so I told her. She ended up being very nice—she’s one of the conservators (i.e., object babysitter/restorer/handler) for the collection and has been with the objects since they were housed in New York. Her specialty is the Latin American collection. Just my luck. She offered to take me on a tour of the collection/conservation lab the following day.

Nice conservateur lady picked me up the next morning, took me to collections, and after punching in the secret code, I was in! We took a look at the conservation lab and the objects they were working on at the moment—beautiful pieces for the upcoming horse exhibit—and to the mountmaking studio (badass), and then, on to the 3-story Collections vault/warehouse located deep in the bowels of the building.

Do you guys remember that scene in the Disney classic “Beauty and the Beast”, when Belle goes to the castle library for the first time? Yeah, that’s how I felt when I walked into Collections.

There were 3 huge floors, connected by a central staircase, with endlessly high metal storage cabinets for the objects. They are catalogued by archaeology/ethnography, medium, and region, with random assortments of things like huge totem poles and statues resting in the corners of the bottom floor, from which we entered. She took me to the area where some of the Latin American objects are kept, and we started opening cabinets. Pure joy, man. The variety of objects in the collection was greater than anything I had ever seen. I didn't get a chance to see the gold and precious stone stuff as they have it locked away somewhere else, but I did, however, get a chance to see some incredible textiles and qhipu-the amazing knotted ropes that the Inka used in lieu of a writing system. Needless to say, it was ridiculous and I did not want the tour to end at all. I was so happy that someone finally took note of my lack of knowledge and involvement in other museum activities outside of my little Inka road bubble.

So despite my hazy state of employment, I will continue to work at the museum because I truly love it there, despite being well on my way to poverty. I am currently housesitting and spent most of my weekend walking around in my underwear and watching lifetime movies in the house’s master bedroom, because what else do you do when you have a house to yourself? Don't answer that.

Lastly, I would like to make a suggestion for this blog. There are loads of things I would like to do on the weekends in dc but often I don’t have any way of getting the word out so that interested partiescan join me and I can actually end up doing the things I want because I am in good company. Would it be crazy to list upcoming fun weekend plans and see if anyone in post-williamsburg wants in? example:

- the National Zoo will soon be getting rid of its only hippo, aptly named “Happy” (see; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201169.html). I thought it might be nice to go to the zoo and pay him a visit. I also want to see the pandas. Also the zoo is 2 blocks from my house so I don’t have to walk far.

- Thao is playing at the Black Cat next Thursday. I know you want to go.

So anyways, let me know what you think. Thanks for reading my rambles. Have a nice dayyyy