I seem to be slowing down with the blogging again, but lately it's been hard to find the good few clear minutes I need to write down what I've been up to and how I've been feeling. Usually, if I get those moments at all, it's at a time when I really ought to be doing something else, like homework (such as right now). Still at the same time, I feel odd to think of vast amounts of my life passing undocumented.

So, what has happened lately? I have eaten a lot of indian food, both at restaurants and home-made, in the last two weeks. I went to Tokyo and saw a woman I met two years ago at the University of Chicago present her dissertation research findings, and I told her a little bit about what my experience of grad school had been like. I tried and failed to bake pumpkin bread in a microwave/oven hybrid at the house of some friends. I slept on floors, and had strange dreams. I drank coffee without any sugar or cream. I saw a great deal of art. I missed more school than I feel comfortable with, with no pronounced negative effects (yet). I saw many, many cherry blossoms, and then days of rain washed them away. I smelled a cherry-blossom impersonator flower, that smelled like anise. I got angry at the Chinese government and made untenable plans to go to Nagano to raise a Tibetan flag as the torch passed. I drank organic wine from Chile. I swept my floors, many times, and ran my shoes through the washing machine. I bought hair-ties for the first time in a year, and started to use them every day. So, you know, I was alive.