Ooops.

I, ummm, seem to have surpassed the word limit.

Oh well.

"But if memories were all I sang, I'd rather drive a truck" *

When I posted about my visit to the Bodleian a while back, Greg left the following comment:

You know, whenever I think I'm over my horrible envy about your academic situation, you post something like this. Grrr...

Hang in there, I'm about to do it again.

Last night, Mark and I were invited by Eleanor to the Christ Church GCR Garden Party. Garden Parties are very classy events, where men wear suits and women wear lovely dresses and everyone hangs out in the garden and does classy things like croquet and punting. Unfortunately, the weather was questionable, so we couldn't punt, but the party was still (or perhaps even more) amazing: it was moved to the cathedral cloisters quad, the first time in the history of the college that a party was held there.

So there we were, looking classy, having a great party in these centuries-old cloisters, which are, of course, featured in many scenes of Harry Potter movies. There were maybe three tables of food (I didn't get to try it all - the crowds ate it up fast - but it was good), and two tables of desserts, including two chocolate fountains, and a whole bunch of cakes. Their GCR (what we call an MCR) has its own CAKE REP - that is, someone whose sole responsibility is to make cakes for graduate events! Amazing!

Entertainment was provided by a classical music quartet and then by the Oxford Gargoyles, a jazz a cappella group. They were very cool, and made the ambience very classy. I've seen them before in concert, so it was cool to see them again.

And of course, as we do at virtually every other event in existence, we took photos of ourselves looking gorgeous:


More photos on the Flickr!

At the end it was getting a bit coldish, so we headed out of ChCh and over to the graduate apartments for tea and cake and stuff. It was lovely and classy and very Oxonian.

In a few weeks we will be having our own garden party, so I hope to steal some of the best ideas I've seen/heard from other garden parties and use them at ours!

Well that was fun, but I have to work today and get stuff done...
Much love,
Me


*Bonus points to anyone who knows why this song lyric is relevant!

How YOU doin'???

Of course, whenever I have a paper due, I spend my time doing important things like checking Facebook. I think many students do the same, as I tend to see the most activity during heavy exam and due date times. This is the time when groups are created, photo albums are posted, wall messages left, and friends poked.

But my favorite feature is the new "status" section, where you can put down what you're doing at the moment. They have a list of pre-made choices, like "at work," "at home," and "at a party," but the best ones are the custom messages that people write. By reading these, you really get a feel of the atmosphere in the colleges right now.

Here is a sampling of my friends' status messages, which should give you an idea of how stressed out everyone is right now:

"Michael is looking into heat separation at the rotor-bristle interface within a jet engine's secondary airflow."
"Tom is wrestling his dissertation to the ground."
"Mark is giggling nervously. His dissertation is shit from start to finish."
"Ruth is hoping her supervisor likes section 2 draft 2."
"Elise is in the library until June 1st."
"Ebba is is killing herself trying to finish a draft version of her manuscript. Hopes to resurface next week."
"Christopher is gnomically palimpsestuous, wondering when it's all going to end."
and one of my personal favorites, "Justin is in hell."

I didn't go to guest dinner tonight because I'm going to two garden parties tomorrow, so I decided to save my liver get some work done so I can have fun. I'm wearing the aforementioned green dress to these parties, so you will get to see it in my photos!

G'night and Godspeed -
Me

Happy Anniversary to Me!

Hmmm...I know what you're thinking: what on earth is this girl talking about? Allow me to explain.

Today, May 22, is my 26th anniversary of being adopted. I was born in March and was adopted two months later. So this is the anniversary of the big day, and it's right up there with celebrating my birthday in terms of big deal-ness.

I celebrated the big day by purchasing a snazzy green dress ("but not a real green dress, that's cruel" hehe), and a magazine containing photos of Prince William. The green dress is for upcoming end-of-year fancy events - I'm getting so tired of the same black dress, over and over. I was also going to add a bottle of Pimm's with free jug to the lot, but it was pouring out and I hate lugging things in the rain. Oh well, that will be for another day...;)

Some people think it's weird to celebrate adoption days. But in a family of adopted kids, it is very special. Ask your parents if they remember the day you were born. Well, this is "that day" for my parents. A lot of the same things happen: you wait, you have showers, you pass out cigars, you go around telling people, "It's a girl!" And babies are babies no matter how they get to your family, so all new parents face the same issues of learning how to care for a child.

One of the best, most truthful, nicest, most non-stereotypical stories of adoption is the story of how Harpo Marx adopted his kids, which can be found in his autobiography, Harpo Speaks! He once said that he wanted to adopt as many children as he had windows in his house, so he could look back and see all of his kids waving at him when he left the house in the morning. Here is a nice story from the book about Harpo's daughter, Minnie, and her reaction to adoption:

"A year or so later Minnie came home from school one day very amused. A girl friend had asked her what it felt like to be adopted. 'Of all the silly questions!' said Minnie. At first she'd told her friend that there was no 'feeling' about it. Then Minnie corrected herself. Yes, there was. You felt you were the luckiest person in the world, if you were adopted. You hadn't just happened to your family, like most kids. You had been picked, out of hundreds of candidates. You were somebody very special. 'Gee,' Minnie said to us, 'I hope I didn't make her feel bad. I certainly didn't mean to.'"

Isn't that a nice story? I think I'll end with that.

Have a great day, everyone!
Me

PS - A shameless bit of unrelated promotion: my friend Mark is running the British 10k and is looking for sponsorship. The money he raises will go to the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, a very good and meaningful and worthwhile cause. Why not check out what the CWMT does, and then mosey on over to give Mark a donation? The donation amounts are in pounds, so the corresponding US dollar amounts would be about double. (A donation of £10 would cost you roughly $18.50, for example.) Cheers!

Kicking it up a notch

May I take a moment to direct your attention to the Dissertation-o-meter at the right of the screen. Take a good look at it, as I expect it to fill up before this weekend.

Now is the time to send things into high gear. Please harass me about my dissertation. Ask me how it's going. Accuse me of not having an argument. Tell me to get off the damn Internet and get back to work. (This especially goes for anyone who has been lurking around and has never commented before.)

Greg has been especially good at this. Yay for Greg, he is awesome. Go check out his blog, say hello to his beautiful daughters (Mia and Norah), and then get back here and continue to harass me about my dissertation.

Tomorrow is big-deal-draft-deadline. The full-scale D-Day is Thursday, June 1.

Hang in there, folks, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Edit, 5/21/06, 2:21 p.m.: I handed in 9,669 words to my supervisor on Friday. I still need to make some brief formatting corrections, change one or two citations into Latin, and elaborate on something I neglected to mention. This is all on top of whatever corrections he asks me to make. So we have until June 1 to see the dissertation-o-meter's final result. But the word limit was 8,000-10,000, so technically I have met the goal...