on our way we shed our certainties like clothes
It is my birthday! It has been my birthday for a whole hour, and I am twenty-four years old, what the hell is that about. The last time I had a birthday in this house I was eighteen and Bush was taking office for the second time, welcome to adulthood, yeah. I'm older than Wikipedia and the Liberal Democrats and the National Lottery, a little younger than the mobile phone and Matt Smith, and much younger than John McCain and the Grand Canyon. I was the only post-1963 generation not to have grown up with Doctor Who, the youngest to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the last to remember a time before the internet.
Here is something nice that has happened on my birthday so far! I am signing up for my one permitted non-law-school course this semester, a grad seminar in the school of government; the professor knows me, and was happy to sort out the admin for me when I emailed her. "By the way", she wrote, "congratulations on the award you won in my class in the fall, it was well-deserved."
I wrote back to say what award.
Apparently the law school thought it not quite worth mentioning to me! But I won something we-know-not-what for my work in the normative political theory colloquium, and when I return I shall find out what it was exactly; in the meantime I have that, and I took honours in three of four classes anyway, so I'm on course to doing okay, and I'm happy.
Here are some other nice things that have happened to me recently! Last week I went down to London to see
gavagai, and we saw lots of people-including-
happydork-back-from-Americaland, and Laura bought me a pendant from Claire's Accessories that says "I Love Werewolves", and it may be twelve years too late but I love it very much. And hey, I live four thousand miles away from my best friend and it sucks but over a couple of days it didn't suck, and we ate pancakes and she showed me Huge and The Good Wife, and while I liked the latter, we then sat down and watched seven more episodes of the former. I really, really like it; it's so clever and witty and endlessly sweet. I think Laura's right and it would have been less fun to watch ten years ago, because it does capture teenage drama and the life-and-death aspect of it all very well, but from this elderly wrinkly distance it is great fun.
And then there was my birthday party, and that was very lovely; Shim and I piled a bunch of people we know and love into the living room and plied them with drink, an approach which has never failed to work well. There was mulled cider and pink wine and sweets in glasses, and some rumoured spring rolls, but mostly people. I spent another couple of days with Shim in Oxford, which is murky and wet, as it always is in mid-January, and it's comforting to know that nothing ever changes there, and comforting to know you can step into the well-worn grooves of your life even if you can't go home again, but there was still an unease there. You know what, long-distance relationships suck, don't do them. They really suck. They involve crying on railway station platforms in the pouring rain and then telling yourself sternly that this is no way to behave, this is not a romantic comedy, this is real life. And then you feel obscurely worse.
Here is the not-very-nice thing happening to me soon: I am going back to Ithaca. Yes, soon. Very soon. But not today, and not tomorrow. On Friday morning I am departing and on Friday night the South African Siren is putting up with me on her sofa, because she is kindness itself and everything I own on that side of the pond is in nine not-very-large boxes, but, but, I deal with all that when I come to it.
How can I be in my mid-twenties you guys. I should sleep.
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.
Here is something nice that has happened on my birthday so far! I am signing up for my one permitted non-law-school course this semester, a grad seminar in the school of government; the professor knows me, and was happy to sort out the admin for me when I emailed her. "By the way", she wrote, "congratulations on the award you won in my class in the fall, it was well-deserved."
I wrote back to say what award.
Apparently the law school thought it not quite worth mentioning to me! But I won something we-know-not-what for my work in the normative political theory colloquium, and when I return I shall find out what it was exactly; in the meantime I have that, and I took honours in three of four classes anyway, so I'm on course to doing okay, and I'm happy.
Here are some other nice things that have happened to me recently! Last week I went down to London to see
gavagai, and we saw lots of people-including-
happydork-back-from-Americaland, and Laura bought me a pendant from Claire's Accessories that says "I Love Werewolves", and it may be twelve years too late but I love it very much. And hey, I live four thousand miles away from my best friend and it sucks but over a couple of days it didn't suck, and we ate pancakes and she showed me Huge and The Good Wife, and while I liked the latter, we then sat down and watched seven more episodes of the former. I really, really like it; it's so clever and witty and endlessly sweet. I think Laura's right and it would have been less fun to watch ten years ago, because it does capture teenage drama and the life-and-death aspect of it all very well, but from this elderly wrinkly distance it is great fun.
And then there was my birthday party, and that was very lovely; Shim and I piled a bunch of people we know and love into the living room and plied them with drink, an approach which has never failed to work well. There was mulled cider and pink wine and sweets in glasses, and some rumoured spring rolls, but mostly people. I spent another couple of days with Shim in Oxford, which is murky and wet, as it always is in mid-January, and it's comforting to know that nothing ever changes there, and comforting to know you can step into the well-worn grooves of your life even if you can't go home again, but there was still an unease there. You know what, long-distance relationships suck, don't do them. They really suck. They involve crying on railway station platforms in the pouring rain and then telling yourself sternly that this is no way to behave, this is not a romantic comedy, this is real life. And then you feel obscurely worse.
Here is the not-very-nice thing happening to me soon: I am going back to Ithaca. Yes, soon. Very soon. But not today, and not tomorrow. On Friday morning I am departing and on Friday night the South African Siren is putting up with me on her sofa, because she is kindness itself and everything I own on that side of the pond is in nine not-very-large boxes, but, but, I deal with all that when I come to it.
How can I be in my mid-twenties you guys. I should sleep.
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.