My family has the best luck on Christmas

Last year, my grandmother fell and broke her hip as she was walking to the car after Christmas dinner.

This year, my aunt is in the hospital waiting for surgery to remove her appendix.

Who will it be next year?

In happier news:

This year my dad bought two presents for himself, wrapped them, and put them under the tree. He acted surprised while opening them.

Excellent. I love family. And there was a case of Black Butte Porter waiting for me in the fridge when I arrived (sans luggage).

!!!!!

After compulsively checking my e-mail all day hoping I would hear from the PiA program about whether I got an interview for the position teaching English in Kazahkstan, by 9 pm I had finally given up. But then...at 9:01 pm...I got an e-mail saying that...

I got an interview! I could potentially be going to Kazakhstan!

I'll be going to Princeton in January to, hopefully, win them over with my charm, good looks, and spirit of adventure.

Now I really won't be able to focus on studying for my probability final...

No, I haven't died...

...I've just been up to my ears in uteri and torsion of shafts and forced vibration and Markov chains. But soon (oh very very soon) I'll be up to my ears in quality microbrews, temperate weather (I hope?), books, fleece jackets, amazing sushi, running trails, urban forests, and everything else that makes Portland great.

I feel like a neglectant parent, so...

Here:

The view out my window

No way!

Right now there's a simultaneous blizzard/thunder-storm. This is by far the craziest weather I have ever experienced.

Trying to get from one building to another a few minutes ago (a distance of oh, about 50 meters), I:
-almost got run over by a bull-dozer clearing snow
-slipped and fell
-couldn't get inside the door because it was too gosh-darn windy
-got completely coated ice and snow...completely...

Insane. Absolutely insane. How am I supposed to focus and do work when there's lightning intermittently blasting through the white-out...right outside the window...

And the saga continues...

This message was misdirected, but obviously meant for me:

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From: Jitka Stiger
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 8:58 AM
To: Cirillo Mallen
Subject: Re: spumy elves

obviously-see that the car is missing and get out of there fast, gunning your engine. And leave you alone? cried Alex. Its the only way I can take him. The only way he can be taken. Lunacy! spat out Krupkin, his jowls vibrating. No, Kruppie, reality, said Jason Bourne simply. Its the same as it was in the beginning. One on one, its the only way. That is sophomoric heroics! roared the Russian, slamming his hand down on the back of the seat. Worse, its ridiculous strategy. If youre right, I can surround the armory with a thousand troops! Which is exactly what hed want-what Id want, if I were Carlos. Dont you see? He could get away in the confusion, in the sheer numbers-thats not a problem for either of us, weve both done it too

---------------------------------------------------

I find this endlessly amusing. Apologies to those of you who look to this blog for more, er, high-brow entertainment. Right.

Leaky Vessels

(Sorry about the high frequency of random--and inane--posts as of late...I'm a bit scatterbrained and stressed and stressed and scatterbrained...)

What an opening sentence for a paper:

"The incontinence on which this essay will focus is not the relatively comfortable subject of sexual incontinence in women but its much less comfortable analogue--bladder incontinence."

(From Gail Kern Paster's "Leaky Vessels: The Incontinent Women of City Comedy")

It's relevant, I swear!

Oh man...man oh man...

re: hunger

Possibly the most intriguing piece of spam I have ever recieved:

------------------------------------------

From: "Mattithyahu Borgman"
To: "Poncio Dumbleton" [that's me, apparently]
Subject: Re: hunger



Wrap things up there and wait for the car. Ill take this one! No! Not unless you want to blow everything. Weve got time. Wrap it up out there. Cactus ... hes hurt-shot. Ill call Ivan. Hell get back in a hurry. Theres one brother left-only one, Alex. I killed the other two-I was responsible. Cut that out. Stop it. Do what you have to do. Goddamn you, I cant. Someones got to be here and I wont be! Youre right. Theres too much to keep under wraps out there and youve got to be in Montserrat. Ill drive out with the car and take your place.

------------------------------------------

Wow, I'm not quite sure what Mattithyahu wants me to do (and he probably isn't either), but I'm about to run out and do it (or stay here and do it?).

Why don't my friends send me e-mail like this? Seriously.

From my cave...

I just read a really pretty sentence:

"For as Lear's undone button invokes nakedness and the heath, Bosola's departure is seaward, to the galleys, to the pathless wilderness from which he entered the play, a castaway looking for solid ground to call his own."

It's from "Sexual and Social Mobility in The Duchess of Malfi" by Frank Whigham. And that's the kind of thing my life is about right now...

I miss Oregon...

Wow...Portland is so pretty.
I especially love the pictures of bridges.

Also, browsing the Library of Congress online prints and photos catalog is so fantastically addictive. At least for the moment I can claim I'm legitimately using it for homework...

A few notes...

First of all:

My dad sent me this link. Scary. Especially since I was attacked by a squirrel once. A black squirrel that looks just like the one in the story lept out of a trash can and used my shoulder as a spring board.

Second of all:

How odd is it that I go my whole life without running into so much as a single cheese phallus, then today I encounter two (yes two!) completely independent towers of chevre within a 6 hour window. Weird. Very very weird. (I took one home with me.)

Third of all:

K.T., I thought of you as I posted that essay...I somehow knew it would get you going.

Fourth of all:

That's it, I'm done.