Winter Break

12/13/8 7.14PM PST
It couldn’t come soon enough. And now that I am on a plane headed east, I will declare it officially winter break. If nothing else, I was running around too much yesterday to really consider it a break until now.

Wednesday, SuperK turned in our African Theater papers, because he is the social one at 8AM, and he needed to head to the building anyways. I got a couple hours sleep before meeting a professor for a meeting that might just be more flabberwhelming during/after than it even was before. When I got home from that (and returning one of the piles of books that SuperK and I had checked out for the paper), I scratched my head over the whole meeting, then proceeded to write my grading memo for Pedagogy. How do you grade yourself? Without using personal OR passive? For a self-described medieval teacher? But once that was sent off, SuperK and I could watch all the stuff on the DVR we had recorded, guilt-free as we hash over some of the final minutia of the quarter, including my meeting, the responses to the grading memos, and the impressive apathy in the apartment. And of course, some snarking about our least favorite people.

That night, another grad invited us over for dinner. She used to be a chef (frommagier to be specific); her research is food; she has pretty food art at her apartment. Needless to say her “simple,” and “just homestyle” was still some of the best stuff we had eaten in weeks. Chicken kebabs with homemade yogurt sauce, Armenian-style stuffed grape leaves, rice and salad. Yum! It was extra-special since the night before, SuperK and I were eating cold nachos as we were reading each other’s papers. It’s just fun to hang out with people, especially without the guilt or deadlines.

Today, SuperK drove me down to LAX, and my what a beautiful drive it is. Sparkling water, green mountains, palm trees. Oh and the damn 405. But SuperK is much more conscientious and punctual than I, so I got to the airport with plenty of time. I was more impressed how much stuff I managed to cram into my carry-on. What will be even more impressive – the pile of stuff I must have forgotten in order to pull that off.

Now that the quarter is over, perhaps I can try to play a little catch up with my blogging.