This, by the way, is actually the reason people blog

I got innundated with compliments this week. Mnh! that feels good. Especially when someone walks over to you just to drop that info bomb, then walks away.

Imma write them down, so that I have something to read while I eat this extra pan of tiramisu that I made.

"He said he thinks you're so beautiful he can't concentrate in class."

"I'm really enjoying the feminist reading seminar."

"That was a good question you asked."

"I like your hair like that."

"By the way, your presentation was really great."

"You made this?"

Moving

See, I meant to blog this story, but I ended up telling it to a couple of people already, and now I feel redundant blogging it. Even though I only told it to two people, and a good 7 read this blog. I keep this blog so I don't have to talk to anyone. Individually, like. But then it kind of undermines me when I get home and people say "SO TELL ME A NEW YORK STORY" and I don't know whether they are one of the 7 people who read my blog, where anything remotely interesting that happens to me is reposited, and I would feel like an ass telling the same mediocre (non)story twice, and so I just stare at them.

Yesterday I moved out of the dorm. Yep, I am no longer a Financial Districtite, which is really weird, since I lost my bed and roommates and living space and grocery store and neighbours and street and subway stop and zip code all at once. I moved my stuff into the storage space a ten-minute walk away. I had a hell of a time getting a cab to take it all there. After being turned down a few times, one guy spelled it out for me:

[thick NY accent] "Look lady, it's a $2 fare, and I have to do all the heavy lifting. Forget it."

I wasn't letting this guy go - he had a minivan. So I bribed him with a $20 tip. Isn't that cool and spontaneous of me to make a side deal with the cabbie like that? I am proud of myself.

So that was a long effing day. I had to lug my giant suitase and a couple of bags across the East River on the subway. People kept offering to help, but I turned them all down. And now I am squatting someplace temporarily, before going someplace temporarily-permanently. By some confluence of parental aid and being in the right place at the right time, I actually am getting MY VERY OWN APARTMENT, four subway stops from school. This is a New York miracle. Oh man. Sometimes it all works out.

In a few days, I will have an entirely different life

I miss my blog too, when I don't post. It's my very own internet diary.

Thursday or Friday: Drunken end-of-semester farewells in the dorm include an impromptu turn naming as many African countries as you can in three minutes (on pen and paper, each to his own). Oddly enough, all three of us came up with 24. I thought I had 25, but I named the same country twice, once under the colonial name.

Saturday: Brunch at a South African place in Fort Greene. I read James Michener's The Covenant in grade 9 in Belgium. I finally know how to pronounce bobotie.

Sunday: The nearly yearly ritual of sorting through everything I own - that is, my life - determining what is significant, what is worth remembering, what I will look at again, what heuristic ornaments I do and do not need. Programs from the Rockettes: out. Ticket stub from the ESB: in.

OMG, internet. Let's be best friends

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic. You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense. Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

What Color Is Your Brain?

You May Be a Bit Borderline...

Your mood swings make a roller coaster look tame! When you're up, you're a little bit crazy... And when you're down, your whole world is crashing Scary thing is, these moods can change by the minute!

What Personality Disorder Are You?

Your Celebrity Boob Twin:

Angelina Jolie

Who's Your Celebrity Boob Twin?

Look at me

What with Kate & Mike in Africa and Nicole Kidman (?) back in Australia, as of this week I've finally been hit by all five continents.

(Disclaimer: that's a six weeks' worth of hits in that chart, not one. I had to do that because I didn't receive a hit from every continent in a single one-week span. So I had to expand the date range. So basically, my blog's not as popular as it looks here. I didn't mean to imply that I got all these hits in a week. If you look closely, it's not actually implied by what I said. But still, not bad, right? That's kind of a lot of hits. Although I think a lot of that is random one-time visits from the blogger homepage, when I update my blog. It's still exciting, though. Of course, if I really wanted lots of people to read my blog I would give the url to people in New York. Like, besides Suz. Or I could put my webpage on my commenter profile on Gawker. But you know, it's hard enough to find a voice you're willing to exercise to the broad spectrum of people you know back home, including your mother; adding people here to the mix - people who are with me when I have the experiences I blog about - just seems like it would make me feel hemmed in. I mean, those people could call me out on all the subtle massaging of the truth that one does in order to turn out good copy. Mind you, it's not any more than most people do in a casual retelling of a story to a friend, but still - I've become more and more of a Kantian with regards to lying.)

Toasted Cocoa Madeleine Clusters

Grace and I had a beer tonight at the cutest, most elegant little candle-lit bistro bar in the West Village. And they were playing Frank. Sigh. Then we drank espresso and read.

If any of you see me slacking off in the next few weeks, kick my ass back to work, because a maelstrom of academic fury is about to rain down on my complacent self. Madame Kristeva returns next week, with a 7-book syllabus we are supposed to have read before she arrives don't waste this woman's time, I have a ten-page paper to write and present for Gadamer on March 15, the same day a ten-page paper is due in Spinoza, and any minute now I may get an email from those journal editors to whom I am overdue with a book review. Plus two reading groups, logic tutoring, bla bla bla.

What on earth have I been doing with my time, you ask? Well, I've been buying a lot of cereal lately, especially since friend reminded me, Proust-like, of the teenage indulgence that is eating a giant pastabowl of it in the evening when it's totally not even breakfast time. I've been revisiting all of my favourite kinds too, like the little wheats with cinnamon frosting on one side (that's the side you want to be face-down when you eat it. Sometimes you have to spend a long time bobbing them around in the bowl. This gets harder as you run out of milk), and Cinnamon Toast Crunch - did you know Cinnamon Toast Crunch is now whole wheat and has SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT less sugar? Jesus, that is (was) a lot of sugar. You can't even tell, though you can tell about the whole wheat. Thumbs down on that. I'm now on to Golden Grahams, which sog really effing fast. I mean, I like my cereal to be a little mollified by the milk, but these things peak after about 10 seconds.

I've also been coming up with new things to blog about every day.

Blogxistentialism

You know, you bring a blog into this world, and you love it and care for it and nurture it, and worry about whether it's getting enough pictures and how it's doing in the internet, and then one day you realize that it's not really yours anymore. It has its very own personality and independence, and you can no longer control it, and you just have to step back and allow it to be free. There will be surprises - things you never expected it to do or say or become. Some of these will be bad, others good. But the bottom line is, you have to allow it to find its own way.

That is the difference between "it's" and "its".