A Girl With a Sword

I got a camera phone

Went to Chattanooga this weekend. I arrived Friday night, after troubles with Atlanta traffic that only my trusty This American Life podcast could get me through. Ashley, Tuggy, and Hannah gave me French onion soup and wine. It was beautiful. Ashley also gave me this shirt, so I could know my role.

On Saturday I finally got to go to Aretha's! We tried to go for breakfast, but there were far too many people there. There were people sitting on the roof, hanging off the porch by their fingers. It was crazy busy. But going at night was better because then we got to have Guinness. My cousin Sam hung out with us that night. He enjoyed the Guinness.

After that we went to Parkway and played some pool.

The next day Ashley and I walked to church with croissants and mugs of coffee, like little French children. I found Dr. W there and we chatted a bit among the pews. Sunday night we played Settlers at Earl's house.

Now that I know that I can get the pictures off the phone I'll have to take some pictures of my apartment, also my syntax books, you know you want to see them . . . I got the camera phone as an early birthday present from my family. Yay for early birthday presents.

the chairs were hard, but they had bagels

Last weekend I went to my first conference in grad school. It had way better coffee than the Wheaton Theological Conference I went to as an undergrad. Anyway, it was MayFest at the University of Maryland and it was a happy little no-stress conference for me because I wasn't presenting and I'm done with the semester. It was exciting, but frustrating because the presenters would realize they were going to run out of time and so skip introductions and explanations and my little fresh-out-of-finals, not to mention first-year brain had trouble following things. By the second (last) day I was beginning to get the hang of things again and I was all ready for the conference to keep going for another day, but it was over sadly and we all went drinking at a little bar in DC.

The conference was about hierarchy in syntax, so basically whether the structure is flat and each piece is on its own, or whether the structure is made up of pieces made up of other pieces. It was like stepping way back from everything I've been studying this year and looking at it from far away, which really made everything hard to recognize. I wanted more context, really. Some of the presentations were intensely opaque. Some were very tense--the question sessions would come around and I was sure someone was going to get physical at any moment. My friend and I translated the questions to each other: "he just said 'so what the hell are you doing here?'" "then he said 'everyone who disagrees with me is an asshole.'" Most of the people, though, were really interesting and very friendly. I wanted to go talk to some of the presenters, but I was so afraid that as soon as I asked a question my brain would shut down and I wouldn't understand the answer.

I realized from the conference that I really am interested in this stuff, which was helpful because I kind of wondered when I decided to specialize in syntax whether I was just responding to my professors' enthusiasm. And there's not much scarier than thinking about getting a PhD in something and then realizing that I don't really love it. But I do love it and I'm starting thesis research this summer and going to the exciting LSA Institute (at Stanford! which I always associate with the comic PhD . . .). But I feel like these blog entries keep coming back to the same topics--me trying to figure out my academic life. What was most exciting about the conference for me was the opportunity to socialize with another department. Maryland is amazing! We stayed with students and talked to other students and they're all just such cool linguisticy people. Plus, their professors are linguistic rockstars. That was the most fun and most intimidating part of the weekend. I would whisper to my friend "oh man, look, that's Norbert Hornstein! There's Howard Lasnik!!" so exciting.

edit: okay, I know I'm confusing. The Medieval Studies conference I attended a few weeks ago was technically my first conference in grad school, but since it was only one day and at my university I guess it didn't quite register in my head. MayFest was the first conference I had to travel to get to and my first linguistics conference, so it was more momentous in the scheme of things.

The Bull Flame of Desire

I finished my last exam and bought the new Bjork CD on my walk home. It is a true celebration. I just noticed, too, that iTunes decided that track three is called "The Bull Flame of Desire" a title I especially like, even though on all the other track lists the song is called "The Dull Flame of Desire." I think it's a very nice typo. I think maybe Bjork will change the name and re-record the song in honor of it.

happenings at the library

So today I was at the local library, which is a pretty cool library, and I was down in the children's section and I kept hearing these bursts of song and seeing people in really strange fuzzy feathery costumes with horns wandering in and out of the little auditorium they have. So I went over to check it out and . . . it was so bizarre, it was like a musical/opera strange combination of Where the Wild Things Are and The Magic Flute and A Midsummer Night's Dream--they had Max and Puck and Papageno (and Papagena, a female monster with a moustache). And most of the music was from The Magic Flute, but they changed the words in all the arias to make them about the monsters and children. And half the dialogue made no sense, but it was so amusing, at one point the Papageno monster went running around the room with half the cast following him reading a list of foods for each letter of the alphabet, with other characters commenting on them ("V is for Vegetable Soup!" "Multicolored!" "Q is for Quizno's subs!" "We can share, they're big enough!"). And then later one of the characters shouted "Let the rumpus return!" and all of the audience members stomped and yelled and waved pieces of gauze. Oh, and what made it all more bizarre was when I looked at the program they gave me and found out most of the actors were trained professional opera singers who weren't even from Columbia. I don't know what it was, but I really wish other people had been there with me. I felt like I had walked into an alternate dimension.

end of semester celebrating

Made it through the week, thank God. I turned in my syntax paper at the bar. Last night was the monthly celebration we like to call "first friday" when the department all gets together and goes to the bar to drink strange and magical beers from around the world. Lately I've been really into brown ales, my latest favorites being the brown from our local brewery at the "Hunter Gatherer" my favorite bar in Columbia, also the more accessible Brooklyn Brown, which tastes like sunshine and flowers and Rogue Honey Brown Nectar, which takes like beautiful caramelly sunshine and flowers. Lots of B-vitamins, and calories, yum. Also, South Carolina just passed a law so we can now get Trappist beers and barley wine (which is very very sweet and I'm not sure I like it much, but right now it's exciting and new). I also had Saison Dupont, which was just like a sunny afternoon in a nice Belgian field (yes, sunshine and flowers, that's what it all comes down to for me). Anyway, gotta go get some library books and have a nice relaxing weekend now.

P.S. Thought I should add, no I did not drink all of this at one time. I had two beers, that was all. Two.