Time flies

When you're flying out of the country. Parked my car at Dulles under a green tree last week; today when I got back in from Amsterdam it was half red. What is it about saying the words, "Oh, I'll be out of the country for a week," that's so much cooler than describing domestic travel? Even though my trip was mostly just for a workshop related to the language family that I work in, people kept on describing it as sounding glamorous. I think it's maybe the Europe thing? Although I did give my first international invited talk while I was there, and that made me feel kinda fancy.

I'm trying to stay awake until 8 o'clock. Grading homework is probably a more productive way to do this than blogging, so I'll just have to post more about my glamour-trip (!) later. But for now, here's a picture of me dying of thirst on a south Netherlands sand dune...

Insights

Spent 29 hours in the New York metro region this last weekend in honor of Dad's 72nd birthday. The highlight of Saturday afternoon was a somewhat raucous gathering in an East Village cafe (and NB that even before the raucousness the innocuous-looking manager of the cafe seated everyone in a somewhat secret back room while I was outside on the phone giving directions to J-ka and then when I came in and couldn't find anyone he said to me, "Oh, your family? They left without you -- didnt' you see?"). At one point our college-age waiter called me "Ma'am," which caused me to start lamenting that now that I'm a certain age (early late thirties, for those of you who have forgotten) no one calls me "Miss" anymore. "I don't know," said J. David, "I think that when people call you 'Ma'am' it's just short for 'mammary'." And the waiter didn't disagree, so maybe my cousin -- a man who, to the best of my knowledge, basically never interacts with mammaries of the female variety -- is right?

Better now

Clothing put away, most objects locatable, kitties have found new sleeping spots where they can pose adorably, endless trash and detritus left behind by slobby former tenants mostly gone, roof deck with lovely view of the city (including the national phallus) enjoyed at least 5 times. But still no real time to post, even though plenty of entertaining stories to tell -- this whole teaching thing takes up a lot of time, esp. when you have to lecture on things you, um, don't know all that much about. I will just say for now that living in Spookytown proper has actually significantly improved my quality of life -- I'm walking places every day (even walked to temple twice on Yom Kippur, which was maybe not so swift given the fasting thing) and running into people on the street (as opposed to isolatedly driving about) and commuting via public transportation and going to cafes and other good things just blocks away. In fact, as I said to Stovie on the phone the other day, I'm actually not totally hating living here. How 'bout that?

More later, once the 8 things at the top of my to-do list get taken care of.