Comped

I'm finished!! I finished my comprehensive exam essays and mailed the last two in this morning at 7:30. I wrote 95 pages in three weeks. I guess it's nice to know that I can do that when I have to, although I can't imagine that I'd ever want to do it again. I am not officially finished yet because I still have to defend the nonsense I wrote, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll pass at least some of the sections. Surely I won't have to do rewrites on all six essays...surely...Anyway, I have three weeks until my defense and I'm giving myself permission to take those three weeks off from school work. I didn't really get a real summer break this year because in theory I was supposed to have been reading for comps the whole time (so even when I was taking a break I felt somewhat guilty about it). The next three weeks can be a real break, though. Yes, I need to write and defend a prospectus and get going on the dissertation sooner rather than later, but there's no point in working on the dissertation until I'm sure I'm over the comps hurdle. So for once in my life I can spend three weeks reading novels and riding my bike and sleeping in and going on dates with my boyfriend without the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I should really be working.

I got myself through comps by bribing myself. "Just finish this essay and you can..." I'd tell myself. So now I have a whole list of ways I want to spoil myself. I want to get my hair trimmed, I want to buy new shoes, I want to buy new shower gel, I want to get a massage or a pedicure, I want to use my Barnes and Noble gift certificate. Mostly I just want to do all the things I didn't really have time to do for the past three weeks. This morning I took a four hour nap and when I woke up all I really wanted to do was bake cookies and clean my apartment and make a grocery list because I'll actually have time to cook this week. I'm easy to please, really.

The past three weeks have not been fun. I was in my home office all the time, and if for some reason I wasn't in my office reading and writing, I was thinking about how that's where I needed to be. It's an amazing feeling to be done. Tonight Nicole and I went out with our boys* for all-you-can-eat wings and beer to celebrate the end (for now, at least) of our exams and it was such a great feeling to not have to bring a school book on the subway and to not have to rush home to close myself in the office and get back to reading and outlining. I know I still have a lot of work ahead of me. There's that write-a-whole-book thing that I have to get through somehow. But I feel like in terms of compressing a massive amount of work into a small amount of time, nothing will be worse than the past three weeks have been, and if I can do that, I can do almost anything (for example, Mari has assured me that childbirth is definitely easier than comps).

I'm off to drink several glasses of wine and sleep for 12 hours. Good night!

*I think our boyfriends are happy to have their girlfriends back, too. I've pretty much only been seeing Penn in bed at night and I haven't seen him on weekends at all because he has been going to visit his friends in his hometown on weekends to give me guilt-free time to work. Which was nice of him, of course, but I've been missing him. Still, I know I'm so lucky. Some of my friends have significant others who have no patience with the grad student lifestyle. I have quite literally watched grad school end marriages (sounds ridiculous, but it's true. The combination of lots of work+very little income is hard on relationships, for some shocking reason). Instead of that, though, I have an awesome boyfriend who encouraged me to work all month, who gave me massages when my neck started hurting after hours hunched over the computer, who purposely tried to get out of the house on weekends so he wouldn't distract me, and who bought me "Congratulations on finishing your exams" flowers. He's still too good to be true sometimes, honestly!

2/3rds

I've written 63 pages in the last two weeks. I have at least 30 more pages to write this week. I really don't know what this exam is supposed to prove, since I doubt there will ever again be a period in my life when I need to write quite so much in such a small amount of time. It seems like the only point of this is the hurdle itself: prove that you have the tenacity to complete this assignment and we'll let you suffer through writing a dissertation for us.

While I've been holed up in my apartment, people have been going to Oktoberfests and football games and having actual weekends without me. I'm jealous, of course, and yet there are also moments when this is strangely soothing. Last night it was just after midnight and I was sitting in my home office finishing up last week's papers. My thoughts were flowing freely for once (the perfect combination of adrenaline and too-tired-to-waste-time-doubting-my-ideas), my fingers were clattering over the keyboard, I had classical music playing on Pandora,* I had a box of saltwater taffy on stand-by for when I ran out of steam on the typing. My boyfriend was in bed in the other room and, in addition to wanting to be in bed with him there were a dozen places I would rather have been at that moment. And yet at the same time there is nothing else I wanted to be doing more than what I was doing right then: reading, thinking, writing, putting the puzzle pieces of a theory together in a way that it clicked for me, even if it won't necessarily click in the same way for anyone else.

There are not a lot of moments in life when I am completely convinced that I've chosen the right career path, but throughout this process I've been reminded again and again that I am doing this because I want to do it, and that no matter what happens at my defense in a few weeks I am going to get over this arbitrary hurdle and finish this degree because right now I'm not supposed to be doing anything else.

Thank God for intrinsic motivation.

*I used to scoff at the idea that classical music was helpful for studying, and yet personal experience has proven to me that a surefire way to really understand heavy reading material is to turn off all other technological distractions and listen to streaming classical radio. The combination of theory+classical music just clicks in my brain. I don't mock those studies anymore.

Where I'm At

From: My Former Undergrad Professor Now Working on Her PhD at A Different University
To: Me
How is the PhD stuff going?

From: Me
To: My Former Professor
I'm taking my comprehensive exams right now. Well, technically right now I'm on Facebook, but you know what I mean. I work on them for the next three weeks. I defend the exam in October. I'm dreading the defense even more than the writing. This is how I anticipate it going:
Prof: Why did you choose to cover Topic A instead of Topic B?
Me: Um, because I already had a bunch of books at Topic A at home so it required a little less effort?
Prof: You wrote about Era C, but you didn't bother to mention Very Important Person from Said Period. Why not?
Me: Because I don't really know anything about VIP, so I thought it was better to just pretend he didn't exist. Is that not okay?
Ugh. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

From: My Former Professor
To: Me
I have a strategy planned out for my comprehensive exam defense, too:
Prof: You wrote about Era C, but you didn't bother to mention Very Important Person from Said Period. Why not?
Me: (Take off all of my clothes. Smile broadly.)
My plan is based on the fact that two out of my three committee members are in their seventies. I figure the shock will kill at least one of them. The others will be in a stress-induced coma. When they ask me, "What were their final words before they died?!" I'll say, "They gasped and then said, 'You pass.'"
I will only resort to this plan if I have to say "I don't know" more than three times...in an hour. You are more than welcome to borrow my idea, although I am approaching 50 and I have a bit more potential to shock and appall my committee.

From: Me
To: My Former Professor
That's such a good idea! Unfortunately, my committee is relatively young and spry, so it might be harder for me to shock them to death. Although I have another plan inspired by a friend who defended her MA when she was nine months pregnant. She was a week away from her due date at the time, and she said that everyone was so terrified she was going to go into labor at any minute that they were basically like, "Congratulations, you passed! Now get out of here, you're making us nervous!"
Unfortunately, the whole be-so-pregnant-that-everyone-is-either-pitying-me-or-terrified-but-either-way-just-wants-me-out-of-the-conference-room plan couldn't be put into action for comps. But I suppose if I time the next couple of years verrrrrry carefully and get lucky (or unlucky, maybe...dissertating while pregnant doesn't sound fun) I could still put the plan into action for my dissertation defense.

From: My Former Professor
To: Me
Great idea! Hard to get pregnant at 47...bummer. I think you should seriously consider doing it for the dissertation defense. And, if the baby comes early, bring him/her along and about half an hour into the defense say, "Don't mind me, I just need to nurse. Continue with your questions." Ha!
I came up with one more plan: Walk in with a mask. "Hi everyone, I just found out I have swine flu! Don't get too close!"
Enough plans. Happy writing!

Also, there is this:

From: Nicole

To: Everyone Writing Comprehensive Exams
Does anyone else feel like all of a sudden they can only comprehend very simple ideas and write those in very simple sentences?
I like English. It is good. It tells stories.
(Don't use that, anyone! It's mine!)

From: Me
To: Everyone
At least you're writing sentences. I just keep thinking, "Wait, you mean I can't just keep reading things and making outlines? I actually have to write thirty pages at some point this week? Well, crap. Can't you just look over my outline? It makes all the points I would have made anyway, and you don't have to put up with the torture of reading my poorly strung together sentences."

From: G
To: Everyone:
I. Response
A. Same as *A*
1. Outlines

2. Ideas

3. Quotes
B. Different from *A*
1. Formulate outline with source in mind

2. Discover no English version of source, despite TONS of critical research found

3. To reformulate argument, check out more books

4. Almost hit borrowing limit from library

5. Drive 45 minutes to borrow book from J.

C. Subtext/Additional Questions

1. Why am I reading MORE at this point?

2. Why is it Wednesday already?

3. I wonder if wine would help this response?

From: J

To: Everyone
Women, please, some of us are trying to surf the net for critical theory Clifs Notes!

From: Mari
To: Everyone
We sincerely apologize for interrupting your Wikipedia time.
Also, do our committee members really find it necessary to write on every section of our questions that we should fully and accurately cite our sources? I think we've got that part...

From: G
To: Everyone
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Accurately cite that, bitches!
I am using the MS Word Thesaurus way too much. It first started when I appropriated Nicole's three word sentences that she already claimed. Now I think I'm just going to quote and cite Nicole's e-mail...which I would have to look up how to format Chicago style.

From: Me
To: Everyone
We have to do this for seventeen more days? BLARGH!
P.S.-Resorting to drinking soon. It always worked for theory seminar response papers...

From: Nicole
To: Everyone
I think I have swine flu.
Really.
Great timing.

Don't you wish you were me right now?

Goodbye until October!

Conversations on the Way to the Beach

Me: I was just trying to figure out if I like to do anything crafty at all.
Penn: Crafty? Why would you want to do crafts?
Me: That's just it. I don't. I don't want to scrapbook or paint or crochet or do anything like that. Maybe every now and then, but not on a regular basis. I don't think I have any crafty hobbies.
Penn: No. You just like to organize things...That's about it.

Me:It really bothers me when song lyrics aren't correct.
Penn: I know.
Me: It's okay if someone writes a song that's all just grammatically incorrect nonsense. Like some of the Beatles stuff, that doesn't bother me. But you either have to make most of the song grammatically incorrect and just run with it, or else you can't make any mistakes at all. You can't just throw one grammatically incorrect phrase into the song. Then people wonder if you did it on purpose or if you don't even realize you released a song with a mistake.
Penn: People don't wonder that. YOU wonder that.

For the record, Maddi still calls me every time she hears that Fergalicious song from a couple of years ago just because she knows it infuriates me that the song puts an E in Tasty. It is a bit of an obsession, I suppose. It's not like you can't make grammar and spelling mistakes on your own, but surely with all the steps an album has to go through before release, someone could point out that "most loneliest" isn't acceptable.For example. I'm just saying.

You're Getting Very Sleepy...

I just got a letter from my landlord letting Penn and I know that we can renew our lease for another year. And she's not even increasing our rent! Hooray! That's a huge weight off my shoulders. Our current lease is up October 22nd and if we had to move next month the timing would be terrible. I'm writing my exams until the first week of October and I know these exams are going to be so time-consuming that it's going to be hard to find time to eat and sleep during the next three weeks, much less keep up with my assistantship and tutoring work. House-hunting would have been almost impossible. Then we would have had only a couple of weeks to pack and get situated in between my exams and our upcoming trip to Europe. [I'll have to talk more about that in another post; we're almost definitely going to Europe in November but almost all of the details--even seemingly obvious things like "where?" and "when?"--are still to be determined.] Basically, moving next month would have been a logistical nightmare.

Plus I just don't want to leave this condo yet. I really, really love it here. The location has proven to be even better than we anticipated. It's quiet, Penn and I both have very easy commutes from here (he can bike to work in five minutes, it doesn't get easier than that!), we can walk to the grocery store, our neighborhood is full of every variety of restaurant you can possibly imagine (Chinese, Thai, Japanese, seafood, Argentine, Italian, Peruvian, barbecue, pizza, wings, hamburgers, kosher, amazing Honduran taco trucks...), we can bike a mile to a path that takes us into the center of City A, we can walk or bike to the subway station and be downtown in 25 minutes or in our town center in 10. The biggest complaint I have about any of our neighbors is that one of them occasionally smokes on his balcony and on cool nights when our windows are opened we can sometimes smell the smoke. Big deal. I still love the way the owners painted this condo, and I'm really cooking regularly for the first time in my life, something I attribute almost entirely to our awesome kitchen that I love to use. And just last month I finally finished hanging all of the artwork Penn and I never took the time to frame when we first moved in together or aquired over the past year. I hung up all of our art (note: I'm using the term "art" loosely, as our art mostly consists of free postcards I brought home from Russia and maps and album covers) and now it feels even more like home here. Oh, and our new (to us) fifty-inch (!) TV was delivered the other day and I definitely don't want to carry that beast downstairs for at least a year.

Knowing that we can stay here for another year is a relief. And who knows what will happen by this time next year. There's a possibility that Penn's office may move locations and we may opt to move closer to it. We took a homebuyers' class over the summer and determined that we aren't ready to buy quite yet but we may be ready a year or two from now. Basically, being here for another year should be perfect, and I think by this time next year I may be ready to move somewhere else. But for now I'm just really, really glad we don't have to move this year!

And now for a fun conspiracy theory: last night Penn and I were talking about the job he had when we first met (which he hated) and he said, "Did I ever tell you about how they tried to hypnotize us?" I started laughing and said, "Nooo..." and he proceeded to tell me a story about a particular training session he had to do at his old job. I don't want to say what exactly his old job was, but it was a job working for a, um, conservative branch of the government. He was stuck working with a bunch of redneck guys. You know the type, guys that have "These Colors Don't Run" American flag stickers on the back of their trucks and can't believe anyone wouldn't want to own a gun and refer to anyone with brown skin as "the Mexicans." He used to come home from work with t-shirts that said things like, "Support the Troops, Support Each Other" and featured screenprints of soldiers wearing gas masks and stick figures shaped like policemen and nurses and 1950s businessmen. Oh, and I think there was a shirt that pictured a ripped Uncle Sam with, like, missiles or something in the background (I never actually saw that one, Penn just told me about it). Anyway, that job was SO WRONG for him and we always joked about how so much of the job was an attempt at brainwashing, so I was amazed the hypnotism story had never come up before. But last night (interrupted by tons of laughter on my part) he described a training session where all the employees had to go into a room full of comfortable folding chairs and put on virtual reality-esque goggles that covered their eyes and ears completely and watch a film about having a positive attitude in the workplace. He said before the film started the trainer said, "Now, don't fall asleep! You'll want to fall asleep, but stay awake!" and then the movie started and at first it showed bad actors in a workplace scenario of some sort but then it switched to scenes of meadows and waterfalls with single words like "trust" or "unity" superimposed over them as soothing music played. And then Penn fell asleep and he woke up to the sound of the trainer saying, "Wake up! The movie is over!" After the training he talked to all of his coworkers about it and nobody, not one person, stayed awake for the movie.

Doesn't that make you a bit suspicious? It sounds like the video intentionally made everyone fall asleep. Why else would there be soothing pictures and music and key words to focus on? I don't know much about hypnosis, but isn't picturing soothing places and repeating mantras a big part of some versions of it? And I don't think there was any discussion about the lessons supposedly taught by this video after it was over. Just a simple, "Wake up! Go back to work!"
I told Penn that they probably were hypnotized and that at some point while everyone was asleep the trainer put some sort of code word deep in their subconsciences. And suddenly one evening at 9 PM the code word will be broadcast around the country via all radio and television signals and Penn will turn to me with a glazed look in his eye and slowly say, "Must. Attack. Red. China," and then he'll stalk out the door to buy his army fatigues and I'll be all puzzled, alone on the couch, and I'll never see him again.

In all seriousness, though, isn't that story sort of bizarre? I've been to a lot of training sessions in my life, but they always had clear objectives and they never involved personal video equipment.

Anyway, I'm going to the beach tomorrow for the last time this season. I'll be with Penn and his friends and the other girlfriends and I'm going to enjoy this vacation because it's the last free weekend I'll have for three weeks.

Things That Are Happening (or Have Happened)

• I haven't seen Creepy White Van guy since last week, so that's good.
• Here's a scintilating topic: My hair is now so long that it's starting to cause weird problems. When it's wet post-shower I have to keep it in front of my shoulders until it is dry because it's annoying to lean back on the couch against my own wet hair. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night now because Penn is accidentally sleeping on my hair, keeping me trapped in one position. Despite the fact that I've been growing my hair out for well over a year now, it has only been in the past month or so that it has started to annoy me. So, I may have reached the limit on how long I can stand to have my hair (for the record: just below my breasts. I may be able to handle another couple of inches. We'll see.)
• Penn and I did a twelve mile bike ride today. It was supposed to be a ten mile bike ride, but we took a couple of accidental detours. Also, we learned a valuable lesson: when there is a bike trail that winds from behind your apartment all the way to your destination in another city, just STAY ON THE BIKE TRAIL. Don't go getting any sort of crazy ideas about "saving time" by "taking a shortcut to 16th Street" because said shortcut will either a) not be a short cut because you'll temporarily get lost or b) will be a short cut, technically, but will involve a hill that's so steep you want to cry and it just won't be worth it. Trust me. With that said, we made it to our destination (a free outdoor blues festival) and it was a lot of fun and then we ate enormous sandwiches for dinner and then took our bikes on the subway to get home and all was well. That's the furthest I've taken the bike in one day (so far) and I'm up for more biking adventures in the future.
• Those adventures will have to be sometime after my comprehensive exams, which begin in just over a week. Ugh. I've long since passed the point of freaking out about the exams and am now just resigned to the thought that if I fail I can do it all again sometime and I'll eventually pass...someday. Because writing 120 pages in three weeks is something I can do twice if necessary. Right. My new attitude towards these exams may not be an improvement.
• My car is dead. Very, very dead. So dead that the cost to repair the car is more than the car itself is worth. So, no more car. Mostly this isn't actually a big deal. I hated having to spend money on anything car-related and it's as if deep down I've known for the past few months that the car was on its last legs (wheels?) anyway because I had gotten into the habit of biking or riding the bus or subway almost everywhere. I also stepped up my practice with driving Penn's truck, which is good because that stick shift truck is now the only working vehicle we own. I'm proud to say that I drove it to work on the Scariest Highway in America by myself the other day. As in, completely alone! I was the only person in the truck, Penn wasn't sitting there to say things like, "You really need to shift to fifth," or "The brake is still on." So, yeah, mostly I don't care that the car is dead and I think that for now Penn and I will be just fine sharing a vehicle since he walks to work and I take the bus to campus and we were both only filling our cars' gas tanks once a month or less before the Death of My Car anyway. Sharing shouldn't be a problem (and if it proves to be one, my dad has offered us his old truck. In fact, he's pretty much trying to force me to take the truck because he wants an excuse to buy his midlife crisis sports car. It's a nice offer, I'm just not exactly enthusiastic about the three-day drive it would take me to get Dad's truck up here, so, we'll see). Anyway, I did have an afternoon where I was a bit sad about my car because it's the end of an era. I'm pretty sure the days of two-seater sports cars are behind me, at least until I'm trying to pawn my Mom-SUV off on my hypothetical future child so I can buy MY midlife crisis convertible.
• On a vaguely related note, Penn and I opened a bank account together the other day. We're still keeping most of our money separate, but combining a little bit of it will make the day-to-day logistics of living together easier. I'm living with my boyfriend and we now have a joint checking account. That's still a little mind-blowing sometimes.

Seattle

Hi there. I need to catch you up on a lot of things, don't I? Well, maybe not a lot of things. It's not like anything of earth-shattering importance has happened lately in my world. But I feel like I haven't really updated this thing in weeks so here we go:

The trip to Seattle with my grandparents and sister was awesome. (It was this trip, the one we'd been planning since December of 2007) First, the opera part of the trip: I watched 17 hours of Wagner opera over the course of the week. The Ring Cycle is like some sort of crazy triathlon of operagoing. We went to operas on Monday night, Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Saturday night. The last two operas were each five hours long. There were a couple of half-hour intermissions in the longer operas and we had tickets to a VIP room where we could move around and stretch and get free wine and small meals and coffee (which didn't help me much because I'm not really a coffee drinker), but still, that's a lot of time sitting and watching opera. I was actually surprised by how much I ended up loving it. Prior to the trip I'd only seen a handful of other operas in my life and never anything by Wagner. Sometimes I felt like the only person in the audience who wasn't a hardcore Wagnerian. (There are people-incredibly wealthy, insane people-who spend the entire year traveling the world from one Ring Cycle to another. I loved the cycle, don't get me wrong, but I kept wondering if these people realize there are other art forms out there...or even other operas, if they don't feel like branching out that much.) Anyway, the production itself was very impressive. There were flying mermaids and cliffs flickering with actual fire and a horse and, well, the spectacle was really amazing. I also loved the music, although I'll admit that I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the singing (it sounded good to me!). Anyway, I really enjoyed the cycle. The fact that my mind keeps traveling back to it on a regular basis two weeks later means it definitely made a major impression.

I would definitely attend the whole cycle again...provided I could ever afford to do it on my own, which is sort of unlikely. The one downside to the experience was the conflict I always feel in these...well, "rich people" situations (for want of a better word). There's a part of me that really loves it. I'm never going to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about being related to people who can afford to fly me across the country, put me up in a really nice hotel, and buy me tickets to absurdly expensive entertainment. I love the feeling I have when I'm dressed up with a glass of wine in one hand and a plate of tiny crabcakes in the other. I like when someone leaps to my service to valet park my car or carry my suitcase. It's great to be able to pick a restaurant based purely on what sounds good and not even have to look at the prices on the menu because whatever it costs I know we can afford it. I guess what I'm babbling about is this: the trappings of wealth are really pretty damn fantastic. I feel extremely blessed that my grandparents have lived their lives in such a way that they can afford to do such nice things for me and my siblings and cousins. But I always feel conflicted because, first of all, as much as people like to think they get rich through hard work, I know that most of it is just luck and could easily slip away (illness could bankrupt a family, we could become--GASP!--a socialist country, etc.). I don't understand how people come to feel entitled, to feel like money is just a given thing in their lives. That emotion doesn't exist for me, and so it sometimes rubs me the wrong way to be in a room full of people who don't appear to feel lucky for what they have. I'm in the VIP donor room just marveling that I get to be there at all, while around me old ladies are shoving chocolates into their purses and complaining about how there aren't enough and in my head I'm shouting, "Seriously, people, you have thousands of dollars to donate to something as frivolous as an opera performance and yet you're concerned that you're not getting enough foil-wrapped chocolates?!) It's doubly frustrating because the half of me that can't believe how much money people spend on the arts when there are so many people in need wars with the half whose ENTIRE CAREER hinges on the fact that people remain interested in and continue to donate money to the fine arts. My other conflict in these "rich people" situations stems from the fact that I grew up solidly middle class and will likely (hopefully) raise my own family in the middle class so I didn't grow up my whole life in this world. Sure, I grew up with a lot of privileges not everyone has. We always got to take summer vacations, we always got new back-to-school clothes, we never wanted for any of the basics, ever. But it was only recently, when my dad's business started doing particularly well, that my parents upgraded from La Quintas to Hyatts, you know? And, like I said, I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't get used to the nice opportunities I can have spending time with my family because it could all slip away just as easily. I look at the life Penn and I have supporting ourselves, and it feels perfectly nice. There's honestly not much we need that we don't have right now. We have all the basics we need and we have quite a few luxuries, too. We can afford a few vacations a year, we can afford to go out with friends on weekends, etc. We have to watch our money, but we don't have to stress constantly about it. And this lifestyle is perfectly satisfying to me. I'm rambling, but I guess my point is that I really enjoy the opportunities afforded to me by my grandparents' money, but I don't feel like the "fancy" part of my life is a right. It feels like a privilege, always, and I wish more of the people I was at the opera with realized exactly how privileged they are.

Wow, I didn't realize I needed to get that off my chest. Sometimes these entries go places I wasn't expecting.

Anyway, there was also a lot of the Seattle trip that had nothing to do with opera. It was great getting to spend time with my grandparents, and I also spent a lot of one-on-one time with my sister. We so rarely get to do that anymore, so it was really nice. We did a lot of the Seattle tourist things: Pike Place Market (AMAZING!), the Fremont Troll, the Experience Music Project, the aquarium. We even took a ferry to Victoria, Canada for the day and went to the Buchart Gardens (also AMAZING). I really, really loved Seattle. It's a very pretty city with a lot of great restaurants and a perfect mix of urban culture and outdoor activities. I could see myself living there, actually, which surprised me because I thought I'd pretty much determined that I'm an east coast person. I'm looking forward to going back someday.

I was going to update you on the rest of my life but this got lengthy so I'll save it for another entry, I suppose.

Creep

I'd like to tell you about my awesome opera trip to Seattle last week. I'm not quite as excited to write about my return to work now that the school year is starting, although that's the big news around here this week so I could be writing about that.

Instead, I'm writing because I just had a freaky experience and I feel the need to share it. I took the dog on a walk just now, and as I was walking through my apartment complex parking lot on my way home I noticed a white, windowless van sitting in the driveway preparing to turn out of the complex (yes, the cliche white van!). I noticed the van because the car waiting behind it eventually pulled up and went around it to get out of the lot since the van wasn't moving. That's when I realized the man in the van was watching me. At that point I had to pass beside the van to get to my apartment. It was either that or abrubtly double back the way I'd come and go around the back side of my building, but there's no entrance on the back side so I was screwed, basically. Anyway, I was already creeped out enough that I stayed many yards away from the door of the van as I passed by, and I wrapped my hound dog's leash tightly around my wrist several times, trying to silently communicate to the (probably useless in dangerous situations) dog that I might need him to protect me. In other words, I was getting a very, very bad vibe from the situation even before the man spoke to me.

And then he rolled down his car window and said, "Can I ask you a question?" I pretended I didn't hear him and kept walking and then he called after me, "I just want to talk to you." I said, "Sorry, I have to get the dog inside. He's overheated," (which was true, actually) and the guy said, "I just want to ask you one thing." I was really freaked out by that point because this clearly wasn't just an attempt to get directions. So I said, "What?" and kept walking and he said, "Can we be friends?" and I didn't answer and then he put the van in reverse and started following me up the hill. What the fuck?! I continued to ignore him, picking up the pace of my walk and thinking, "WhatdoIdo,whatdoIdo,whatdoIdo?" It was bright, sunny noon, but there were no other people around but me, the guy in the van, and a few cars driving by on the road that likely wouldn't have noticed if something happened. Then he shouted again, "I just want to be friends!" and I said, "I don't know you, sorry!" and he said, "Do you live around here?" and I didn't answer but at that point he was still following me up the hill. I knew I couldn't go into my own building because I don't want him to know where I live, but it felt too unsafe to just continue walking through the parking lot with him following me in the van. I briefly considered running for the pool, but the pool doesn't open until 2 so I knew no one would be there yet, and past the pool is just a few more apartment complexes and then a dead end very, very far from the main road.

So I did the only thing I could think to do: I walked briskly up the stairs into the building next door to mine. The two buildings are connected by an underground tunnel that runs between the basements. The tunnel and basements contain the storage units for each apartment and a shared laundry room. All I could think was THANK GOD Penn had discovered the connecting tunnel just a couple of months ago. I never knew I'd have to use it to escape from a creepy stranger in a white van, but I'm glad I knew about it. I ran downstairs to the basement as fast as I could. The door to the storage units/laundry room has a keypad on it so I typed in the code, ran inside, and slammed the door, hoping the guy wasn't following me. Then I ran through the tunnel to my apartment building and into the laundry room. One of my neighbors was down there doing laundry and I'm sure she was wondering why the hell her sweaty neighbor and a panting hound were bursting through the passageway from the building next door, but whatever. I ran all the way upstairs to my apartment and locked myself in and now here I am.

To add to the creepiness, I just remembered that yesterday when I was waiting for my bus to campus a man in a white van drove by and honked and waved at me. To be honest, the honking/waving/catcalling men in cars routine is not unusual. It happens at least once or twice every time I bike or walk the dog or stand at the bus stop. It's just something that happens to women who have the audacity to venture out in public solo (well, it happens to me, anyway, so I assume it happens to other women). I wasn't concerned about the guy in the white van yesterday, but now I'm paranoid that it's the same guy that creeped me out today, which means he lives in the neighborhood, likely even in this complex. Actually, that's a better thought than the alternative, which is that he doesn't even live here at all and is just stalking me. Ugh.

What should I do now? Anything? Maybe I'm being overly paranoid. Lord knows I am capable of making mountains out of molehills when it comes to finding things to worry about. [Case in point: I worked myself into tears the other night thinking that Penn had had a car wreck when he was twenty minutes late to pick me up at the airport. Turns out he was outside the airport all along, our phones just weren't connecting to each other for some reason so we both kept trying to call each other and failing.] Honestly, though, I did not get good vibes from the guy and I don't think it's innocent and normal to roll down your van window and ask a woman you've never met to be your friend. Should I get Penn to walk around the apartment complex with me later to try to find the van and write down its license plate number? The van is white with no windows and nothing written on it. The guy is thin, youngish (I'd guess mid-thirties or younger), black, no facial hair, from his accent I'd guess he's probably African (which makes me hopeful that there's a language and culture barrier and maybe he really does just want to be friends; he could just be confused about social norms and not malicious. Not that that's going to make me give the guy an actual chance at friendship if I see him again, because what if I try to be polite and it turns out I'm wrong?). Do you think I'm overreacting? Do I need to have my pepper spray handy when I stand at the bus stop now? Why does being a woman suck so much sometimes?

Taking Manhattan

I'm currently on the bus on my way home from New York City. The driver is quite a character. He keeps referring to all of us as "family" and he just informed the bus family that we may need to take our patience cards out of our pockets, swipe them, and use a little bit if we hit traffic on the turnpike. Um, okay. Will do. Usually the bus drivers don't chit chat at all, so it's a little strange to have one so outgoing and not surly.
I had a great four days in New York. I was there for a conference, presenting a paper on an "emerging scholars" panel. For the record, I think this will be the last time I can pull the debut scholar card since I now have eight or nine conferences on my resume, including this one, which is the biggest conference in my field. Anyway, my panel went well and I got good feedback on work that will ultimately be part of my dissertation. People seem interested in what I'm doing, and that's a good feeling. I rocked the networking this time. I'm getting better about just putting myself out there and introducing myself to people I know I need to talk to. This time I forced myself to go to a panel on publishing reviews and I introduced myself to various editors because I know that with so many conferences under my belt the next step is getting something small published. So I'm going to try. I don't think I'll get around to it until spring, but at least I have faces and personalities to go along with the editors' names now, so the process of submitting work seems a little less intimidating. I also reconnected with my old department chair from my undergrad department, and he seemed thrilled to hear that I'm working on a PhD and he promised me that if I stay in touch he'll help me however he can in the future. Sometimes reconnecting with old acquaintances is as important as cultivating new ones.
I also just met a ton of people at this conference. I think part of the reason why networking was easier is that some of my friends from my MA program were there, as was Anna from my current program. So they all introduced me to their friends and faculty in their current programs or, in Anna's case, introduced me to friends from her MA and undergrad departments. As a result, I now know approximately two dozen people I didn't know on Friday. That's pretty good! Sometimes it helps that this world is small and incestuous. It's easier to get a foot in the door. God, who would have imagined I'd become this networking, conferencing person? The sick thing is, I even sort of enjoyed it!
I did try to see a bit of the city. I was staying with Kiki in Astoria, which was nice and meant I got to spend a little time with her (not enough time, since we were on utterly different work and sleep schedules the whole time I was there, but we at least got to eat a couple of meals together). Maddi was also there for the conference and I got to meet her new boyfriend, which was fun.
It was great getting to see my two best girlfriends in one weekend. Next time I go to New York I just want to see shows and play, though. No more of this hanging out in hotel meeting rooms and working nonsense! The best ideas we had all weekend came out of boozy dinners, anyway. Isn't that always the case? I think conferences should forgo panels and awards receptions and just lock everyone in a ball room with an open bar for three days. That's when real innovation happens. Seriously.

More from the Oddball Files

Today my friends who visited a couple of weeks ago sent me this picture from their trip:

Look closely. What's wrong with this picture?....Oh, I don't know, could it be the dog sitting at the dining table in the middle of a busy outdoor cafe?!

It's no secret that I love my dog. I love my dog to the point that some people might think I'm a bit obsessed. There is a wide range of dog people. There are the people that believe that dogs should live in the backyard and as long as they get a daily meal and a walk once in a while then they're fine. There are the people like me who like their dog to be indoors, who don't mind if the dog lies on the couch, who feed the dog high quality food and talk to it as if it might possibly understand English and maybe even take it to special dog-related events. To be honest, I think this isn't so bizarre in our current culture. People tease me sometimes for being so in love with my dog, but the fact that there are dog stores and community dog fairs and restaurants with "Yappy Hour" in the first place means that I must be pretty normal, right? Obviously plenty of people are patronizing these places to allow them to exist in the first place.

Still, I don't care how much of a dog lover you are, there is a place to draw the line. And this man is someone who has crossed the fine line between Dog Lover and INSANE. We were sitting down having a drink when we saw this man walk up to the cafe pushing his little dog in a stroller. A stroller! Now, even that I can sort of maybe kind of understand if you have an old dog who can't really walk anymore. But this dog was young-looking and seemed capable of moving just fine. So the stroller was just ridiculous. Then he ordered his food at the counter and pushed his dog over to the table, where he proceded to lay out the white towel you see in the picture and place his dog on it. What you can't see clearly is that he ordered four sandwiches: one for him, one for the woman he was with, one for the kid, and one for the dog. The dog had his own sandwich! The woman sat there and tore pieces off it and fed them to the dog that was sitting at the dining table.
Why?! Why does a dog need its own seat at the dining table? I should also note that the man had a second dog that he was carrying in a shoulder bag. For some reason the shoulder bag dog wasn't allowed to sit at the table, though.

I'm trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just doing this to amuse the kid. Maybe it was the dog's birthday or something and the little boy suggested having a party for the dog so they pretended to treat him like a person for the day...Seriously, I'm a crazy dog person and I want to justify this, but I just can't. It was bizarre. And you should have seen how angry Penn was about it. I could practically see the veins bursting out of his forehead as he tried to control himself and not storm over to the table and confront the guy. He kept muttering, "It's. A. Dog." (P.S.-The other thing that enraged Penn that afternoon: Ultimate Frisbee. Apparently he has no patience for competitive frisbee throwing. Truth be told, that didn't surprise me. He barely tolerates baseball. In his mind it's not a real sport unless there is physical violence and preferably blood involved. This boyfriend of mine, he hasn't exactly evolved into a sensitive, 21st century guy.)

Speaking of oddballs, please explain this to me if you can:

We have a pool at our condo complex and I've been swimming laps a few times a week. Sometimes when I'm at the pool there's an older guy there, and this is what he swims in:

A purple t-shirt

Black shorts

Suspenders

Flippers

A swim mask

A snorkel

First of all, even if he was just wearing swim trunks the whole flippers/mask/snorkel ensemble would be a bit much. It's not the ocean. It's not even a lake. It's not even an Olympic size pool, it's maybe a third the size of that. Why would anyone need a snorkel and flippers for the pool? The first time I saw him I assumed it was new gear and he was testing it out, but every time he's at the pool he has all the gear with him. He puts it all on and then does his version of lap swimming, which involves slowly (verrrrry slowly) swimming around the perimeter of the pool.

So that alone would be a bit strange, but the t-shirt and suspenders just puts it over the top. None of the clothes are waterproof, they're just regular clothes. Although he does wear the same outfit every time, so clearly that's his swimming ensemble.

Please enlighten me. Is there some sort of event that I'm not aware of that he could be practicing for? Or is he just...unique?