A good day bonding with a good new friend and catching up with some good old friends
Today has been a good day. Yesterday was too in fact. Much improved from my stressful state on Thursday. I think I just needed a break, and this was the perfect way to do it.
Today Casey and I had lunch with Koen and his fiance Julie, which was great because not having any classes with Koen this semester means I have hardly seen him! Travesty! It was nice to catch up and I really enjoy Julie. Plus, the delicious Pear/Blue Cheese/Pecan/Chicken/Balsalmic delicious salad that I attacked and conquered at Bar Louis really upped the enjoyment factor. It was nice to be out with Casey. The other night he and I went out for dinner at Culpeppers, and recently we also saw Easy A. It's been wonderful to DO things with my husband again - I've missed him so!
And then after our long late lunch, I picked up Leah from her hotel, and we explored the medieval collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum together. I love her. She's a PhD student from Tennessee that's come to work in the VFL for two weeks and then attend Manuscripta. She's working with Dr. Burman (jealous!) on Christian-Muslim relations on a broad scale, but knows a lot about the small aspect of that that I study too, and even sent me this Marti Quran notations document she compiled. So helpful and nice! She works primarily with manuscript evidence and wants to branch out into illuminated images of the religious other. Fascinating stuff. She's also just working her way through Arabic this year using the same textbook, she's fascinating and cool and nice and normal and I wish she and her husband would just move here so we could work on projects together and be bestest friends. We worked our way through the art museum, and when it closed we explored Forest Park a bit and then got identical raspberry-banana-blueberry smoothies at Coffee Cartel. I had so much fun and the time just flew, like, we'd been friends forever or something. I met her when she came to work at the VFL for a few days this summer - I organized the gang and we all went out to dinner at Llywellyn's.
Seriously, hanging out with her and just talking nonstop about medieval history, art, grad school, life, movies, people, etc, it was just such a breath of fresh air and made me realize how much I miss my female friends. I feel closer to the history guys than ever, and I really enjoy them very much, but it's amazing how different it is to interact with a girl. A normal, cool, smart girl who doesn't have a competitive ego. Yes!
It's amazing how much we have in common, academic interests wise, and how easy it is to just get along with her. We talked nonstop for hours, and we had even seen each other the day and chatted a lot the day before cause we all (Phil K, Phil M, Casey, Ben, Shannon, Frank, Me, Leah, and Kyle) went out to dinner at Mi Ranchito after happy hour after Ben's presentation yesterday. That dinner was an interesting experience cause Kyle was very drunk and VERY obnoxious. Anyway, I wish she were around more. But it's great to make another friend, and since our interests run so parallel I'm sure we'll keep running into each other and converse often as our academic careers move forward. She was saying how cool it would be to one day work together on a project detailing this network of Christian-Muslim late13th/early14th century religious/intellecutal interaction, and I was just so excited about it because I was JUST talking about how fascinating I found that very topic just a week ago in Fr. Schoenig's office, though I was more specific in focusing on the Dominican network. They make up such a big part of that though. I really like the idea of continuing to help each other out and maybe working on some project together some day when we're both much older and wiser.
It's just been a good day. Plus it was 85 degrees and sunny.
:-)
Today Casey and I had lunch with Koen and his fiance Julie, which was great because not having any classes with Koen this semester means I have hardly seen him! Travesty! It was nice to catch up and I really enjoy Julie. Plus, the delicious Pear/Blue Cheese/Pecan/Chicken/Balsalmic delicious salad that I attacked and conquered at Bar Louis really upped the enjoyment factor. It was nice to be out with Casey. The other night he and I went out for dinner at Culpeppers, and recently we also saw Easy A. It's been wonderful to DO things with my husband again - I've missed him so!
And then after our long late lunch, I picked up Leah from her hotel, and we explored the medieval collection at the Saint Louis Art Museum together. I love her. She's a PhD student from Tennessee that's come to work in the VFL for two weeks and then attend Manuscripta. She's working with Dr. Burman (jealous!) on Christian-Muslim relations on a broad scale, but knows a lot about the small aspect of that that I study too, and even sent me this Marti Quran notations document she compiled. So helpful and nice! She works primarily with manuscript evidence and wants to branch out into illuminated images of the religious other. Fascinating stuff. She's also just working her way through Arabic this year using the same textbook, she's fascinating and cool and nice and normal and I wish she and her husband would just move here so we could work on projects together and be bestest friends. We worked our way through the art museum, and when it closed we explored Forest Park a bit and then got identical raspberry-banana-blueberry smoothies at Coffee Cartel. I had so much fun and the time just flew, like, we'd been friends forever or something. I met her when she came to work at the VFL for a few days this summer - I organized the gang and we all went out to dinner at Llywellyn's.
Seriously, hanging out with her and just talking nonstop about medieval history, art, grad school, life, movies, people, etc, it was just such a breath of fresh air and made me realize how much I miss my female friends. I feel closer to the history guys than ever, and I really enjoy them very much, but it's amazing how different it is to interact with a girl. A normal, cool, smart girl who doesn't have a competitive ego. Yes!
It's amazing how much we have in common, academic interests wise, and how easy it is to just get along with her. We talked nonstop for hours, and we had even seen each other the day and chatted a lot the day before cause we all (Phil K, Phil M, Casey, Ben, Shannon, Frank, Me, Leah, and Kyle) went out to dinner at Mi Ranchito after happy hour after Ben's presentation yesterday. That dinner was an interesting experience cause Kyle was very drunk and VERY obnoxious. Anyway, I wish she were around more. But it's great to make another friend, and since our interests run so parallel I'm sure we'll keep running into each other and converse often as our academic careers move forward. She was saying how cool it would be to one day work together on a project detailing this network of Christian-Muslim late13th/early14th century religious/intellecutal interaction, and I was just so excited about it because I was JUST talking about how fascinating I found that very topic just a week ago in Fr. Schoenig's office, though I was more specific in focusing on the Dominican network. They make up such a big part of that though. I really like the idea of continuing to help each other out and maybe working on some project together some day when we're both much older and wiser.
It's just been a good day. Plus it was 85 degrees and sunny.
:-)