Snacks in the Age of Globalization, among other AWESOME THINGS

[jess]

Good luck with the grad school apps!

It looks like I'm going to be co-authoring my first book chapter soon! This probably means I should wrap up that lingering other manuscript ASAP, and also that my life in October is going to be hellishly intense, but at the moment I'm just super excited about the awesomeness of it all.

[girl]

Well done, jess!

Also, I thought I already wished pollo luck, but I don't see a post from me, so good luck with grad school apps, pollo!

[diesel_powered]

Good luck with the grad school appage, everyone! Hopefully you'll all get into the schools of your choice with a shit ton of grants!

[jebreject]

Jess, awesome!

[auto-da-fey]

Jess, that rules, and pollo, good luck. I like Hunter a lot--there's a guy there who's sort of become my unwitting model--same grad school, same advisor, same transient years of contingent appointments followed--in his case--by a well-received book and ace tenure-track appointment. I'm also pretty sure he peer-reviewed my highest-placed article, but I can't tell whether he wrote the scathing critique or the glowing change-nothing one.

My awesomeness: out running the other day, east along Chestnut, I came across a sign for the National Archives and Records Administration Mid-Atlantic branch, which I didn't even know existed. I got excited but couldn't figure out why, until hours later I realized I'd been meaning for years to track down transcripts for some late-60s obscenity cases emanating out of the Baltimore customs office, and I'd just assumed w/o looking they were in Baltimore, disincentive enough to further bother. Turns out they're here, five blocks from my apartment (the epiphany-ringing bell was my memory of once pursuing Memphis trial transcripts to their counterintuitive home at the NARA Southeastern branch in grim East Point, Georgia, right outside Atlanta). I'm pretty psyched, and I'm giving myself one more week to flounder and get my shit together before I delve back into research, which is really one of my favorite things. These transcripts are as exciting to me as the pulp crime novels I've been reading.

[alexandra]

I'm teaching myself to moonwalk. AND IT'S WORKING. world domination, next.

[Anne the Man]

Awesome things about choir tour this weekend:
*Breaking into song at random and having everyone know the words and be able to harmonise is cool.
*We fucking kick ASS at that song We Shall Not Be Moved. If I find a video of us singing it I will link it here because the arrangement is wicked awesome.
*The hostel we were staying at had a party bus which we all piled onto and played drinking games, sang and went around the circle telling the most exciting thing we'd ever done.
*Singing a love song to each other across a bridge on the way back from concert
*Finally have a person to have ridiculously long pun battles with outside my family
*I convinced some 12-year-olds at the park, who we were disgusted with for singing about weed at that age, to come smoke a 'joint' made from grass and a receipt. And made up a national dance for our old country when they asked where we were from. Basically got on a fucking roll to a point I never yet had with my choirmates. And got to ride one of those tiny trains!

So I think I may finally be 'in' with choir. There were long bits of boredom and frustration but they were pretty much wiped out by that last bullet point, which was the best Sunday I've had in awhile.

[clare]

Yay! (ask me about clearing a restaurant with 'sideways through the sewers of the strand' some time) I wish I was still in a choir.

[diesel_powered]

Just got an email from my old boss saying that riots are breaking out since school is back in session and I'm not around to put out fires. It doesn't do anything to improve my finances, but it feels good to be missed.