Monday, 6/21/04 - 17:08
Easter morning, diving in Malibu. Bad visibility made the kelp forest eerie. We saw all the usual suspects, plus a sea star with twenty one arms, a small shark, and numerous sheephead crabs, several of which were larger than the shark. Afterwards, we went the Neptune's Net biker bar wearing no underwear to eat fish and chips.
Then on to grandma's for dinner -- roast lamb -- more or less appropriate than roast bunny? My family never had a traditional Easter dinner, but I really wanted to dye Easter eggs this year. Grad school has sucked all the holidays out of me, and I'm more angry about that than about anything else that I've deprived myself of by studying all the time. I haven't carved a pumpkin or dyed an egg since I've been here, and we've only put up a Christmas tree once. But when it came down to it, I hate hard boiled eggs, and I couldn't bring myself to waste that much food, and I didn't have time to go buy something to blow the eggs out so that I could save the whites, and then we decided we'd both rather go diving.
I got an e-mail saying that our big annual professional conference was going to approve a second session for the Religion, Media, and Culture group, and would I like to present my paper on race and elves. A few days later, I got another e-mail saying that the session had not in fact been approved.
The Bible Hero (cf) returned from Boston on Walpurgisnacht. She came back for the weekend to see her boy, David the Lionhearted, and hear his band play the Cold Springs Tavern on Friday night. Her flight was late. We and soong and queen_of_wands talked for hours while we ate Vietnamese food -- well, pho for us and kung pao tofu and something else for them, but why do I remember any of these details months later? -- and then we studied the airport's Rube Goldberg machine and watched Soong do contact improv with his sexy new laptop and his sexy old Luscious. Then the Bible Hero finally arrived, lots of hugs, and we found ourselves racing up the mountain in our hand-me-down VW bus. We dashed into the tavern just as the Bible Hero's paramour was playing his last note.
Our timing would have been horribly annoying if it weren't so picture perfect. I tried, awkwardly, to hang out while the tavern closed; I admired how cute all our friends are in couples, and wished I had a beer. Then the Bible Hero and David the Lionhearted went home and the rest of us decided to get ice cream. Right after we arrived home with our cartons of McConnell's coconut, chocolate raspberry truffle, and Godiva dark chocolate ice cream, Curmudgeorama and his new girlfriend appeared like magic outside our glass door, the second bit of serendipitous timing for the night. Each of us had an appletini or scotch and we stayed up until past 2:00 on our way to getting hung over.
But that was pretty much the last fun of the quarter. At the end of every quarter there's a long dry spell when all our social relations shrivel up because everyone's insanely busy. When did it become reasonable to see your friends once or twice a week for dinner or coffee? I remember how it was in college when being friends meant eating with each other all the time and sitting on each other's beds to study, plus getting together on Wednesdays for Skiffy, Fridays to game, and possibly on Saturdays to see a movie or go downtown.
Long live Diaryland!
The five most recent entries:
More Naval Gazing - Saturday, 8/13/05
Anniversary Diving - Friday, 8/12/05
Academic Tip of the Week - Tuesday, May. 17, 2005
How to tell a Midwesterner - Sunday, 4/24/05
Academic Feelings - Thursday, 4/21/05
Ted's most recent entry:
Monday, May 12