It's the last Football Sunday of the season. Oh no! I was a little concerned about how I was going to keep my boyfriend distracted on Sundays from now on so that I can actually read and write my papers, but fortunately his new X-box arrived in the mail a couple of days ago and he now spends an hour every day yelling into a headset as he and his friends from back home play Halo, so I guess I didn't have to be concerned about that after all. Penn isn't much of a video game guy. In fact, prior to this week I don't think I'd seen him play a single game the whole time we've been dating. But some of his friends finally convinced him to buy an X-Box, and I have to admit that the X-box is sort of appealing, if only because it lets him keep in touch with friends. I think that's nice. That, and I can now play Katamari! I've been wanting to play this game for years, literally (although it wasn't a priority, obviously), so I was thrilled when a couple of Penn's friends lent it to us. I've already spent about an hour today rolling around and picking things up. This bodes well for my academic career.
[I interrupt myself to ask WHY do we care that Barack Obama is watching the Super Bowl? Why, why, why are they doing a pre-game interview with the president?! I'm just waiting for the anti-Obama backlash that is sure to start a few months from now. There's no way he can sustain this sort of celebrity/popularity/whatever it is. I mean, he seems like a nice guy, but geez. I heard on the radio this morning that he's having a bipartisan Super Bowl party at the White House. Oh hooray. Since when do we care what sort of social events are happening at the White House? I can't help liking the guy because he's just so darn charismatic when he gives interviews or speeches, but I just worry that we're being overloaded and the backlash is going to be really intense. We'll see, I guess.]
The first week of classes went well. The biggest thing that happened this week is that I paid for my visa to go to Russia. I'm going to Russia in less than two months! I'm going for a class. We study Russian stuff for the entire semester and as part of the class we take a really fancy field trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg over spring break. The best part is that the segment of the class when we're in Russia is purely "to experience Russian culture" and see some of the places we've been discussing all semester, so we're being encouraged to just have fun and take it all in. I don't even need to take a computer with me on the trip; there's absolutely no research component while we're in Russia. How cool is that?! Plus the trip is insanely cheap because I can use all of the yearly travel money my department gives me, plus an international student travel initiative is paying for half of it, PLUS the ruble is kindly falling in comparison to the dollar, which I hope continues to happen until March. Needless to say, I'm getting very, very excited. I just wish Penn could come with me. Then again, he went to Europe without me last summer, so I guess now we're even. :-)
The rest of my classes seem like they're going to be interesting and not a miserable amount of work, but none of them involve field trips to Russia so I won't be talking about them today. Instead, I'm going to go make some sauce for my jambalaya burgers (I made super burgers for the Super Bowl!) and pour another beer. Happy commercial watching!
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