Thankful Thirteen

1. I'm thankful for my terrific blog buddies. You are all such a great source of support and laughter and insight.

2. I'm thankful for my adorable puppy.

3. I'm thankful that when my adorable puppy threw up last night, she did it on the wood floor and not on the carpet.

4. I'm thankful for my parents who have supported me even when they didn't understand.

5. I'm thankful that fate/God/the universe always has a better plan for me than I do.

6. I'm thankful that I'm part of a fantastic cohort in grad school and that I've become friends with so many of them.

7. I'm thankful that I got a great grad advisor. Not everyone did and it makes a huge difference.

8. I'm thankful that I have someplace to go to celebrate Thanksgiving. Not everyone does.

9. I'm thankful that I have a safe, (mostly) warm place to sleep with a roof over my head (even if it is a very noisy roof!).

10. I'm thankful that I have a healthy, strong body. It may not be the ideal body, but I've got all my bits and they all work fine.

11. I'm thankful that Joss Whedon is writing a new Buffy series (in comic book form, but I'll take what I can get).

12. I'm thankful that I've had thirty wonderful and blessed years. And I'm looking forward to the next thirty.

13. I'm thankful that I don't look thirty. No grey hairs yet!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday Twelve

1. Six days until my next class!

2. Twenty-four days until winter break (I think).

3. Not that I'm counting.

4. In the next six days, I have approximately 13,459,342 pages of reading to do.

5. Or maybe 1,810 pages. Give or take a few.

6. I know it is heretical to say it, but I kind of don't even want to bother with Thanksgiving dinner this year.

7. A friend invited me over, and out of the 18 people (and growing!) who will be there, I'll know three: my friend, another friend, and myself.

8. I'd much rather make a big batch of corn pudding and stuffing for myself, curl up in bed with Rowen, and watch DVDs all day.

9. I got an A on a paper that I got back today.

10. Apparently, getting a B in grad school is very, very bad.

11. My apartment is so messy and dirty right now that I could probably qualify for FEMA funds.

12. Rowen has gained almost five pounds since we moved to Madison.

Thursday Thirteen

1. I bombed an exam this morning. Really. It's a lecture class, so I had let the readings slide. Plus, the first exam asked nothing about the readings; the questions were all from the lecture material. This exam? A full third of the questions were on the readings.

2. Thirty more days until Winter Break!

3. My absolute favorite Thanksgiving dish is corn pudding.

4. Alan Tudyk is a seriously under-used actor. He rocked a recent CSI episode.

5. Speaking of CSI and under-used actors: How awesome has Eric Szmanda been this season? I've always had a soft spot for Greg Sanders (gotta love the geek boys!), but the past couple of episodes, Szmanda has been stellar.

6. I've really got to break the swap habit. I don't have the time or the money for it, and it's gotten too stressful. People get really bent out of shape about what they receive or how what they sent was rated. It's like the office gift exchange from hell.

7. Speaking of time and money, I've been spending too much of both at the local coffee shops. But I've discovered that I get too distracted at home: Rowen wants attention, Internet "breaks" get longer and more frequent, and the bed beckons. And the campus libraries are further away and much less comfortable.

8. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate my upstairs neighbors?

9. I still have a cold. I think I've set a new world record for snot production.

10. I had to stop taking the Sudafed because it was making me very tired and very anxious. The second effect was the more worrisome.

11. I really ought to start running again. I'm developing a very academic ass.

12. I wonder if my inability to focus on my reading---and the fact that I get very, very sleepy very quickly while doing it---is yet another sign that I should get my eyes checked.

13. I finally got my tire fixed. Fortunately it just needed a patch.

Friday Fourteen

1. Snow! Real snow. As in big flakes falling for several hours, at least an inch on the ground, traffic backed up, buses running late snow.

2. Snow + Sudafed * Friday afternoon class = Unhappy Lisa.

3. Yeah, I'm on the Sudafed. I've got a cold. And, seriously, you'd think I have pneumonia the way I've been going on about it.

4. I hereby pledge that if there's a snowstorm and I'm sitting in a warm, dry car, I will stop at the crosswalks to let the pedestrians, who are trudging through the COLD, WET SNOW, cross the street and get to a warm, dry place as quickly as they can.

5. I recently watched the latest version of Pride & Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightly), and I've got to say that I just don't understand the fanaticism surrounding Jane Austen.

6. You're supposed to feed a cold, right?

7. Rowen has recently decided that she will only drink water that comes from the Brita filter. If I put tap water in her bowl, she stares at it and cries.

8. Rowen, however, thinks that snow is very tasty.

9. My MP3 player is busted. I am very sad.

10. I'm discovering that most anthropologists are, ironically, misanthropes.

11. Levi-Strauss ruined Christmas for me. And weddings.

12. I think Nacho Doritos are better than Cool Ranch.

13. One of my car tires is halfway to flat and I've been choosing to ignore it all week. I only drive my car every other day, and then usually just around the block to find a new parking spot.

14. I didn't vote in the midterm elections.

On the Pile (aka Yet Another Way to Procrastinate Writing My Paper)

Let's streamline this On the Pile post. Because as we established, I no longer actually finish reading anything. So here's the list of things I'm supposed to read this week and, if I'm very good and don't sleep until Friday, may get to skim the first few pages of:

* The Gift by Marcel Mauss
* "The Principle of Reciprocity" and "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology" by Claude Levi-Strauss (who is still alive and writing at the age of 98!)
* "Symbols in Ndembu Ritual" by Victor Turner
* "Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism" by Mary Douglas
* "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" by Clifford Geertz (which I may actually read out of respect; Geertz died last week)
* Culture and Truth by Renato Rosaldo
* "Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties" by Sherry Ortner
* Weapons of the Weak: Everday Forms of Peasant Resistance by James C. Scott

All in all, not a terrible week. I might even have time to shower.