You wanna see what I am currently reading? Since I am SUCH a celebrity, and I know you all want to model your lives after mine, I have included my reading list on the side bar. Its down there!
Yeah, I suck at this blogging thing. But, it was Christmas, and Chewie was here, and I have been having a helluva good time! So there.
So, to sum up my absence: Chewie arrived, yay, spent time with grandrents, went skiing, Orin and Chewie met each other, had Christmas and made out like a bandit, flew home, shared Boston with my best friend, at Malaysian and Indian food, shopped, Bhutto assassinated and thought of my Pakistani friends, worried about Shyam due to all the bad news coming out of Kenya and no news from him, finished my first scarf, played Kingdom Hearts on Ps2, heard from Shyam, said goodbye to my best friend and cried, experienced the coldest day I have ever had, and watched Obama win Iowa! Woot!
It was great having Chewie here, and it was even more heartbreaking watching her leave. I don’t know when I will be able to see her again. She is my best friend and sometimes, I feel lost without having her to talk to.
So, yeah, I made a green scarf out of crochet, and I sent Chewie home with it. It didn’t turn out too bad, but man, crocheting is addictive.
Yay for stream-of-consciousness entries!
I am reading The Geographer’s Library and it sucks… but I can’t stop reading it, because I paid for it and I feel like I have to finish it.
Pakistan…scary….
Kenya… scarier…. I miss Shyam and Sheila, and I am praying for their safety and their families’ every night.
Obama! Obama! Obama! I may feel differently about him when it comes time to vote, but right now, he is the candidate that least repels me. Although, I am a little nervous about his views on Pakistan.
Today was WICKED COLD! It was 5 degrees fahrenheit today when I went to the gym… AT 11:30 am! It is that cold that steals your breath. My apartment has been frigid, so I have spent most of the day in bed with my robe wrapped around me. Summer… Please!
Okie, I am going to bed. Night.
Also, today I had an almost, not quite creepy experience today. As I said earlier, I have been reading The More Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams. I came across this passage on page 317 of Life the Universe, and Everything, where this alien is reflecting on his own immortality:
“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you state at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on the four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark tea time of the soul.
Ok, so there is nothing overtly creepy about that passage but that while I was reading it, with my bath towel wrapped around my head, it occured to me that it was in fact a Sunday afternoon, and I whipped aroudn to see the clock and it was in fact 2:54… close but not quite. Still a little unnerving, however.
Again, the writings of Douglas Adams do weird things to your sense of reality and perception, and I swear mess with the fabric of the universe!
Oh, and I quite enjoyed the shameless plug for his other book, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul which is my favorite of his books, and I will be reading again soon after this! Cheerio!
So I am moved in, finished my Christmas shopping, and I have checked out every Starbucks in a five mile radius. I am bored. I just want Chewie to come and have someone to talk to that I actually know, and to start work. So, during my hours of excursions to the local SB’s, I have been keeping a haphazard, stream-of-consciousness journal to amuse myself. I thought I would share!
I have been reading The More Than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams and I think it is starting to warp my sense of reality. In my journal I wrote:
“ZB’s [Zaphod Beeblebrox] Peril Sensitive Sunnies—>useful—> similar to
Slate Magazine recently did a column on Robert Alter’s re-translation of the Hebrew Psalms. I often think about, when reading sections of the Bible, how different the version I read in English is from what the original must have looked like. Look at how different the King James version is from the New International version! And those are both in the same language. The bible we read went from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, to probably French or Old English until finally it was translated into what we think of as English. What errors and omissions would there have been?
I also wish that psalms were song more often in English. I often hear Hindu prayers, or Islamic, or even prayers in Latin, and they are beautiful, moving, and much more a religious experience than just simple words. For me, Protestant religions leave something to be desired, I guess I am more old-school. 
I am still alive. I promise. No, I am not still reading those books, and I will change them soon. Many new stories are on the way about Malaysia, and I have them all written down in my paper journal. I just need time to transfer them here. My dissertation is written, but not edited fully, and I have begun to pack. I have less than a week left in my room, and only a little over a week left in Cardiff. But that is another post.
I just got back from seeing Atonement. Wow. I hate Keira Knightly, but I must say, she was excellent. James McAvoy, or whatever his name is, is exactly the kind of British boy I have been looking for in my two years here. I read the book when I was 16 or 17, and I cried for a full two hours. Now that I have seen the movie, I don’t think I fully comprehended the book at that age. The movie made it better for me, which is something that doesn’t happen very often with visualized novels.
I knew how the movie ended and I was still gutted with how sad it was for all the main characters. I have been told I am an extremely intense and passionate person, and they have taken all that in me and put it into a movie. I was overwhelmed. Breathing was something I had to remember to do. The sex scene in the library was the hottest scene I have ever seen, and you never actually see anything. I am aware that I am rambling, but I can’t get this movie out of my head.
I must ponder this a little more. Maybe I will delete this post tomorrow and rewrite it when I am a little more controlled in my thoughts.
Goodnight.
As the first post of my new blog, I should be writing something insightful and witty, but truthfully, I am feeling neither. My dissertation has me running ragged and tonight is the night that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out. Although I myself am not in line, I am receiving constant updates from Britton, who is. I have read the last page of the book(thank you Internet), so the suspense is broken for me. But I like it that way! Now if I could just sleep so that I can get back to my dissertation and extracting the tiniest bit of information from St. Anselm. Until then!
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