A bit of everything

When my plane came in for landing last weekend, late Sunday or rather, early Monday, the pilot came from the south into LaGuardia. The length of the island of Manhattan flashed by at increasing speed and decreasing height, and the dark of the darkness surrounding those millions of lights felt like a blessing. The rows of streets- when we got low enough, I could see all the way to the Hudson on the other side of the island-- made me feel, ironically, like a Western girl because they looked exactly the way straight crop rows look when you drive past them. Flashing past, radiating towards and away with always one pointing straight at you. Only they were yellow and red striped lanes, and there's something striking about tall buildings split into small blocks. It was the most incredible landing I ever had, and it was damn deserved after the worst travel weekend of my life. Friends don't let friends fly American Airlines.

This week I am: sick, stressed, hard-pressed for time. Also I have about 3 friends within 3,000 miles. I messed up a project and the director of my program didn't even let me finish the presentation before telling me so. Then, I turned it around into a (I think) success in 24 hours, but we'll see about that next Wednesday. Oh, Whine Whine Whine! (Wine?)

So I took a walk, had 2 sorbet bars and a veggie burger for dinner (no wine. I'm sick remember?). Then this trailer made me think, Screw this, all I want to do is read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I never read, and I know hardly anything about the story other than It Is Not Intellectual Reading. ...I wonder why it calls to me now. Also, there is something universally attractive about the way the Lisbeth character is portrayed here- just someone different for mainstream audiences, someone strong and weak in ways we hardly ever see, someone whose motivations are different too. (I'm a fan of that.)

SO I am not beating myself up for not Going to Enough Career Fairs! Doing Enough Reading! Making Enough (any) People See the Awesome Maria! or anything else. I'm human and I need a break sometimes, so is everyone else in my program, and smack me the next time I even think I'm the only one who feels this way. I would be a robot if I could do a one-year Masters and never miss a beat or need a break.

I always feel bad for my boyfriend: if, as I assume, he reads these posts, he never gets any new material. He's the only person I talk to every day (though that's been off this week...time difference finally causing trouble) and he gets the same stuff here. Well then, a few new things: My Energy Policy professor is the former Minister of Energy of Portugal. Things are crazy on campus this week, because of all the UN activity- plenty of events as foreign dignitaries come to the city, and all the protestors that follow them. I'm too tired to think of anything else, and run the risk of just giving up on the entire post, so there's this: the boyfriend, the crazy smart sweetheart, found out today that he's a recipient of the Brown Scholarship. Here's $10,000, NBD. And it's only appropriate that that is at the end of the blog post, because it was at the end of the phone conversation too---after I told him all this stuff above.