Final countdown

Now, before any of you two or three get all huffy, I just thought I would clarify the edits I've made to the blog while I'm procrastinating writing another paper. Why I am writing a paper in July is another story for another day.

I'm ambivalent about maintaining this blog because, well, I haven't really done a very good job of it in the last year or so. The archives are pretty fun, especially the parts before I told my mom about it, but I just seem to have lost the energy to write as regularly. Right now it's sort of a "whenever-I-feel-like-it-or-when-something-is-due" blog, and that's not reliably readable. I do want to write about my travels, though, but maybe that's for another day.

I still reserve the right to begin blogging regularly in the offchance that me publishing that I am considering stopping will subconsciously change my mind.

In any case, "final countdown" still seems to capture the "old" vision of "old lady syndrome," since aren't all old ladies just in their own final countdown, anyway?

At least that's the story I'll stick to when I delete this post and begin regular posting again.

I'd say 'stay tuned,' but I think that's a bit disingenuous.

Big surprise

Wait, the people who had a right to do stuff to their own property won three lawsuits that challenged them?

Who knew justice could be so cruel?!

It would seem the hippies just invested hundreds of thousands of dollars (on their end and the end they're repaying the university) to come to the same conclusion the university made when it decided to cut down some trees in the first place.

American Cultural Reacclimation

A summary of the last 8 hours:

I have been sitting around the house catching up on Kathy Griffin reruns, writing to-do lists and reading junk mail. During commercials I read job listings, wash the dishes and tear out coupons for dish soap at Walgreens.

And I'm not even kidding. All I need now is a husband, two and a half kids and some Valium, and I am the ultimate retro housewife.

Jake is at work, not distracting me with his company, and I should be using this jobless and school-less day to do any number of productive things like finish moving in or my homework. But my dedicated readers (Mom and Christine) should know me well enough to know I would rather pretend I have absolutely nothing to do.

Old habits die hard.

Guess how far I am in a 5-page paper that's due in two and a half hours?

ONE PAGE.

I may have said I was excited to be back in school, even summer school (and it's true!), but that didn't mean I'd stop procrastinating. Sometimes I disgust myself.

Also, I had to cross a stupid picket line to sit here and procrastinate over coffee and bran muffin and Henry James. Whose brilliant idea was it to strike at 6:15am? And why do some of the protestors have to cross the picket lines themselves in order to pee in the same establishment they yelled at me for entering? I could go on for years about how it's just silly to hold labor protests on Bastille Day (also Becca's birthday!), the French independence day, because that seems like an organized effort. Everyone knows the French don't work, and while of course they would also not work on Bastille Day, it is for entirely different reasons than custodial workers here wanting a living wage. Perhaps the symbolism is lost on me.

And now there are news helicopters circling campus and DISTRACTING ME. Not that everything hasn't been distracting me this entire weekend, like trying to sleep past 8am, moving in, or my neighbor's kitchen (which I can hear more clearly from my bedroom than I can my own kitchen).

Oh, Right

I'm back, by the way, to the dollar and my new and exciting apartment and school and work. I guess I like to hit the ground running.

Still contemplating future blogging. We'll see how inspired I feel, and how this double-major-in-one-year plan goes through.

Roma, mamma mia!

I am currently writing from my Couchsurfing host's flat in Rome, where I have had simply a fabulous time. All of the hell I went through to get here, namely lugging my entire world across Europe only to end up paying 45 euro for my pithy 3 extra kilos of weight in my luggage (thanks, Ryanair!) and then paying another 26 pounds to mail those extra kilos home, was totally worth it.

London was great, but the weather reminded me too much of mid-spring Holland. The weather here, however, is beautiful. So is the city and all of its people.

I do miss Holland, but I'm rooting for the football team secretly from afar, since their win last night in the Euro Cup brought them one step closer to edging Italy and France out of the competition. Not that I don't want Italy to do well, mind you-- anyone who spends more than an hour would be easily charmed to their side-- but Utrecht has been my home for the last 5+ months, for better and for worse, and that won't change just because it's sunny and gorgeous here in Rome.

In any case, I am sure there is plenty more to say, but there is plenty more here to do.

The final hurrah of my itinerary includes Zurich, Basel, Berlin (briefly, again), Tallinn, and Oslo. Perhaps more updates then?

Catching up

There are a lot of things I've been catching up on while I bask in the Dutch humidity-sans-sun, among them: sleeping, eating ice cream, and sleeping.

I suppose it's time to catch up on the blog posts, too, but it's always harder when it's been longer since the last time. What to talk about? I went to Eastern Europe the night finals ended and met privately with members of Estonian Parliament, representatives of the Latvian Finance Ministry, and assistant directors of the Vilnius European Capital of Culture Project.

I'd like to say that I suffered a great deal of complicated hoop-jumping to grab those opportunities (and the stuff!) but our fellow student and fearless leader, Hans, did everything. As it turns out, in this case by "everything" I mean he just emailed the aforementioned figures, who apparently were so tickled Western Europeans were interested in visiting that they pulled out all the stops.

The biggest boon of my previous weeks of utter suffering has been finally having the time to enjoy Utrecht. Almost for the entire semester, I have used Utrecht as a means to other ends; for the HEMA to get A4 paper, for the Albert Heijn to buy a snack at the train station, for the Dmitri's to get a delicious 5 euro gyro. For the first time, I get to enjoy the city on its own terms, and that's a relief. It's almost a shame, then, that I am only here for another few days before I am off again.

I pick up a Berkeley friend studying in Lyon later this afternoon at Utrecht Centraal, and who knows what a homework-free weekend will bring.

At this point I am trying to tucker myself out as much as possible, in hopes that I will be thankful to take my summer course the day after I get back to the US.

In the meantime, I'm going to take another nap.