Kivrin

After much internal debate, I took myself out to lunch at the noodle place today. The internal debate, which was enacted while I wandered up and down the strip mall , consisted mainly of "Self, you said you'd take me out to lunch if I was brave and went to see my advisor today, and I did, so pay up! And I'll even do reading! I'll be more productive than if I go home and sit in front of Buffy Season Three (en francais)* while eating peanut butter crackers!" versus "No! No spending money! You'll be eating out this weekend. NO SPENDO!"

I caved and got a mediterranean salad and an iced tea, and read fifty pages about Lydia Pinkham and her vegetable compound, which interestingly was still being sold in the late seventies.. whodathunk?

The beauty of doing exams in a concentration not shared by anyone in the department is an unusual freedom in defining the reading list. The horror is having no idea whether or not some vital literature has been omitted. Particularly since bibliographies are optional in published books. FOO! It is strange, however, to find myself being grateful for end notes. If you have to mine the notes for bibliographical suggestions, it does help for them to be all together. *looks around at the turrets of books on Women and Medicine from 1850-1950* It helps some, at least.

In other news, a Michelle Branch song came on while I was in the restaurant, and I reflected that between songvids and glimmergirl I now recognize about 500% more songs that come on Store Radio. Now it's about one per shopping expedition - it used to be one to every five or more expeditions, that being about how often Paul Simon turns up.

*no, the humor really doesn't translate, but I never fail to be amused by Willow saying 'Mon oeuf est juif!' or Giles saying "Moi, je suis l'Observateur.'

Camp Duck returned to Falcon Ridge Folk Festival for a fourth triumphant year. The festival was expanded to four days, but somehow managed to speed past even faster than usual. Highlights included Arlo Guthrie on Saturday night (despite the fact that most of the 10,000 people on the hill were trying to share E's and my blanket and a folding chair kept falling on me), Richard Shindell's almost-all-new-songs mainstage set (despite the rain), being in the second row of blankets for the Song Swap on Friday night to see Vance Gilbert borrow Patty Larkin's guitar and to watch John Gorka, Patty, Vance, and Greg Brown try to figure out what the theme was... if any, Da Vinci's Notebook's "After All," Eddie from Ohio opening their Saturday set with "Old Dominion" and blowing the hill away with "Operator" on Sunday morning, and chatting over cold beer with our camping neighbors and fellow contra dancers.

Huh? moments included The Random Spoken Word Guy who told us that "Fear [is] just an emotion, moving like the Israeli army, flexible as Islam, forgiving as Christianity" and told us twice about "Wa-Ter dripping on stone" and RFK in South Africa banging locker room doors. Well, actually, he pretty much won the weekend sweepstakes for Huh? Though Maura Kennedy's hair was, as often, a close second.

The Capitol Contingent (your wayward narrator) arrived by the grace of Metro, family, Amtrak, NJT, and breadandroses (who not only drove but fed me scrambled eggs and cider and spotted me some cash for direly needed sunglasses.) The Sisterly Love Contingent, more commonly known as E, arrived earlier and by a more direct route which enabled her to make camp, weather a deluge, and get some contra dancing in before I had even changed from mufti to festivalwear. (The woman at Eagle Bay Traders tried to sell me another dress like the one I've got, but the Exchequer of Kivrin was not up to such expenditures. I had to get a hat (scalp sunburn is something you only endure once, even if you don't have a family history of melanoma) and eat and get a present for my girlfriend and cope with minor emergencies such as Joni Mitchell postcards and big emergencies like the Nields early work on sale for $10/disc.)
( More chatter follows )

In other breaking news, health insurance is a bureaucratic nightmare. [Arlo Guthrie] I'm just sayin'. [/Arlo Guthrie]

Wow.

After three weeks of wandering, it's good to be back in my own place. Maryland is welcoming me back with snow, to keep me from missing the northlands too much. I do like snow, except when plow-created piles make trouble for my car-driving friends.

It's even better, however, to be back online.

After my delightful visit with E in Philadelphia, I took the train up to Boston on Thursday Dec 19. Spent Friday helping my mother with the last of her Christmas shopping and wrapping, and had dinner with K before watching the extras from the FotR dvd. We have now added 'BRING THE PARTRIDGE!' to the lengthy list of Things Only We Laugh At.

On Saturday the 20th, brother J and dad and I loaded up the car to trek north to Vermont. Despite getting off later than we'd planned (due, as usual, to the complicated nature of getting presents for seventeen people, as well as the ones for among the four of us, into a sedan of modest dimensions) we arrived in good time to get the Chicago branch of the family at gate two of the vast complex that is the Burlington International Airport. After a full week of reunion with the extended family at The Ancestral Home (est. circa 1975), it was back to Boston for another week.

Between Christmas presents and an outlet-mall spree with L, I have some nice new clothes to wear that will ease the sting of returning to work tomorrow, some interesting new music to listen to, and Anne Lamott's latest novel to finish reading.

While I was home I reread Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes, Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun, parts of Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, and a whole bunch of Connie Willis' short stories.

I went to a Lori McKenna concert on New Year's Eve that I enjoyed very much, though an overactive lighting technician and an acoustical nightmare of a hall did their best to obscure her lyrics. ImprovBoston's first set, earlier in the evening, was not plagued by x-rated suggestions, but neither did they soar to the heights they did last year. By which I mean I never laughed until I couldn't breathe. Which is an unreasonably high standard to hold any group to, but they have frequently been up to it.

*bounce bounce bounce*

I went over to Ben and Melissa's to watch Buffy, and I got to have tea and play with their three beautiful cats and sit on the overstuffed couch with my knitting and talk about Things Buffyish and to laugh with Melissa at her husband being dopey and to gossip with Ben about stuff back at the library. And they say I can come back next week. And we're going to go out to eat in DC sometime not too far off.

I like them so much. It was really nice to spend an evening with them. Their apartment is so nice, too... not magazine-photo-spread nice, but well-lived-in-by-interesting-people nice, and cozy. It does kind of smell like cat box, which is not ideal, but otherwise it's beautiful.

R&L are coming to visit next weekend (not the one coming up, the next.) I wonder if I should try to organize an outing with Ben & Melissa or not? Probably not, as R&L will really only be here one evening. They'll get in late on Friday and leave Sunday about 6pm. I am trying to come up with a theater option for Saturday night. The Misanthrope will still be playing at the Arena Stage, but it's terribly pricey and as it will be the final weekend I don't want to depend on 90-minutes-before-curtain markdown tix. Because there are not likely to be many. The Shakespeare Theater and the Folger are dark that weekend, and the Ford is being renovated. I was so hoping for something good at the Shakespeare... not that it wouldn't be pricey, but I feel that it would be worth it not only for the caliber of the performance but for the accessible location and the proximity to Jaleo. Mmm.... Jaleo... tapas... mmm...

Well, I have been to the faire. I ate foods labeled with extraneous y's and e's, saw Richard III: Just Misunderstood, Othello: Having A Really Bad Day and THE BLOODY DRAMA {comedy show}, and bought myself a very pretty silk jacquard belt. As always, I drooled over the beautiful clothes at Wolfstone Kilt Company, but couldn't even get up the courage to try on a dress. The overdresses alone are $200-$300, and then there's the chemise and underskirt.

*sigh* Overdresses... there were beautiful jacquard ones at the place I got my belt... but really, I can't justify spending that kind of money on clothes that I can't wear to work. If I had that kind of money. Which, of course, I don't. Or, well, I do, but it's earmarked for things like rent, groceries, and flying home for Thanksgiving.

I saw jousting, I listened to bagpipes, and I discovered that belly-laughing at Puke and Snot is rather painful when one is laced tightly into a bodice. Not that that stopped me. Not that I really had any choice in the matter. After two Shakespeare Skum performances, though, my ribs demanded a return to the twentieth century, so I changed into the blouse I had prudently brought along. JF's boyfriend chided me that I should endure, that being the historically accurate plight of Woman, but I asserted my modernity and headed for the privies to change.

I don't wish to change in a port-o-let again. It was a reasonably clean and non-stinky "portacastle" as K's father once said, but it was mighty cramped and I still had little interest in letting anything other than the soles of my shoes touch the floor. Thus, the shirt-changing required some interesting contortions.

Jason-from-work and I were wondering how the bagpipes developed. I suggested that the instrument probably came about quite logically, through people looking for a way for one person to play a melody over a drone. It's easier to imagine the invention of bagpipes than, say, the invention of mayonnaise, which I find most mysterious. I find it hard to imagine someone just saying one day "Hm, I think I'll beat oil and eggs and see what happens. Perhaps that will make a tasty all-purpose sauce for sandwiches and salads!"

The day went extremely quickly up until four o'clock, at which point we all began to get tired. Even cinnamon-roasted almonds, ice cream, and lemonade failed to rally us, and so after some final shopping we departed. Now I'm very tired, and my throat hurts in a rather worrisome way. I am quite seriously not interested in getting sick.

So there I was, in the hotel room, blowing up lubricated condoms and sticking slips of paper with instructions like 'Get a guy to buy you a Sex on the Beach' in them when a bright light started flashing, a siren wailed, and then a recorded voice began to proclaim "Attention! Attention! An emergency has been reported in the building! While it is being verified, please proceed out of the building by the stairs!"

(As I said to L later... "So there are Beccah and me, the resident virgins, blowing up brightly colored lubricated condoms while Miss Sexual Experience is in the other hotel room watching an Olsen twins vehicle on cable and Miss Maid-of-Honor-Who-Came-Up-With-This-Idea stands by to assemble the condom bouquet... and then some dork pulls the fire alarm so we can all start thinking about terrorist attacks." Though really, I can't imagine that the French Quarter Holiday Inn is much of a terrorist target, or New Orleans for that matter. Even though the cityis currently hosting International Powwow, which has large purple posters and is apparently the yearly convention for travel agents.)

So there were five of us, eating Cheeseburgers in Paradise(tm) or in my case a Jamaican Jerk Chicken Sandwich and drinking margaritas at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville (which has possibly the most frighteningly overdecorated restrooms of any establishment I have ever entered... really, I don't need outsize painted technicolor parrots watching me in the stall.) I was one of two not eating the pickle that came with every meal. Beccah and Monika, who, the weekend made apparent, must have been separated at birth, were going into raptures about dill pickles. But at that moment a rift developed between them, for Beccah did contend that pickles are not cucumbers, while Monika insisted (along with the rest of us) that pickles are cucumbers that have been pickled. "I've had this argument many times," Beccah said. "Everyone is wrong." When the waiter came to check on us (perhaps because we were arguing so vehemently,) I said, "We need you to settle a question of biology." (My mother subsequently pointed out that it is, of course, an issue of botany, but in the partially margarita-induced heat of the moment I said biology. Truth in reporting, and all that.) He agreed that pickles cannot be plucked from pickle plants. Beccah remained unconvinced. We gave up, remembering that this is a woman who irons her pajamas, and allowances must be made for the mentally ill.

So there was L, the bride-to-be, strolling down Bourbon Street in a kicky little black skirt, a lovely pale-tangerine top, black sandals, and a veil her cousin Monika had decorated with inflated condoms and small plastic penises, when a guy grabbed one of the condoms on the veil and asked if he could have it. L said he could. He removed it, untied the knot in it, and told us (the Six Bachelorettes, though I think we had been reduced to four by that point) that he was going to snort it up his nose and pull it out his mouth. He made several attempts, and even dropped the condom in his beer to lubricate it more, but ultimately gave up because, he said, his fingernails were not long enough to grab it from the back of his throat. As a consolation gag, he put on the condom like a hat, pulled it down so it covered his nose, and then inflated it by breathing in through his mouth and out through his nose until the thing popped. "I feel like I'm eighteen again and out with my rugby mates!" he crowed.

Then there was the part in which I made L take a picture of the giant neon Walgreens sign on Canal St., and the part in which Beccah tried to charm the crew on the Creole Queen into letting her run out on the bowsprit to do the Titanic "I'm king of the world!", and the moment at which we discovered that reason you see people walking all over the French Quarter carrying paper cups from Pat O'Brien's is that Pat O'Brien's hurricanes are so vile-tasting that they are actually impossible to drink. Monika and I tried, but as I said at the time, "If I wanted to stick a straw in a bottle of rum, I'd stick a straw in a bottle of rum."