Dancing with Myself

So, my dear friends, I have a new mix I've just finished for some friends, called Dancing with Myself, with a few requests, lots of unexpected, silly, and creative covers, some French pop and bossa nova. Maybe it's not totally perfect and seamless in its transitions, but I'm calling it done and I'm ready to burn it for them. And just for fun, I'll share it with you too. [EDIT: Having added lots of details, I'm sending you to the annotated version of the playlist!]

It's got a much more upbeat tone than the breakup mix I just made for myself when I was moping around the cottage a week or so ago. I'll share that one too, shortly.

It was a fun and productive weekend, with lots of socializing as well as plenty of quiet time at the cottage. Friday was a quiet day of work on my FLAS (Foreign language and Area Studies) application to the Center for Russian and East European Studies and a brief meeting with a professor -- since our 101 lecture was canceled due to the heavy snowfall. I went to Kelly's going away party, since she's taking off to the field tomorrow.

I had had a super long day on Wednesday that started without power and ended with a class presentation I'd stayed up most of the night to finish preparing for. So Thursday, when I realized I was going to be outrageously late to Arc if I went, I stayed home and paid all my bills from my newly arrived paycheck, and worked on personal business and schoolwork until evening, when I went into Ann Arbor and went to watch the season premiere of "Lost" with Anneeth and her roommates. Anneeth and I went together to Hilary's going away party, since she's leaving the program. I spent the night with a friend in A2 because I was there late drinking, and was also expecting the storm.

After Kelly's shindig on Friday evening, which was an early get-together at Leopold Brother's, I came back home and collapsed into bed at 10 pm. When I woke up at 4:30 am on Saturday, though, I realized I just wasn't going to fall back asleep, so I got out of bed and got moving. I cleaned out my inbox (it had gotten back up into the 600 email range from being empty a week or so ago) and sent out a whole bunch of emails I had been neglecting. I cleaned my kitchen thoroughly, vacuumed all but my bedroom, and did laundry, even the shower curtain and hand washables and things I usually skip. I organized my whole life and schedule, made new lists for myself, and sorted out files that had been neglected for close to a year. I took a little nap, then started my reading for Kriszti's class. Then I took off for more partying. I went to Alice's place, where we drank her fabulous pomegranate martinis and ate her homemade biscotti, a crowd of us went off to Vinology, and then I meandered over to Anneeth's party with Erika. I made it back to the cottage finally at 3 am.

So I slept until 2:30 this afternoon. Today's been a slow, quiet day at home, with some more emailing, a little reading, and a big grocery shop at COSTCO and Busch's. I came home and made several liters of beautiful, rich stock, roasted a pound of asparagus, baked banana bread, and prepared a modified sort of tabbouli salad with tiny grape tomatoes, Italian parsley, red onion, feta cheese, a mix of whole wheat couscous and brown rice, lemon juice, and lots of salt, pepper, and olive oil. I'm getting creative and experimental to see how well I can eat on a tiny food budget. It's a good thing I really love brown rice with a little butter and soy sauce, because I think I'll be eating a fair amount of that. Today I added a Japanese topping that includes toasted sesame seeds, seaweed, and a few other ingredients. Mmmm. It inspired me then to make a simple soup of carrots, onion, garlic, broccoli, and red bean miso paste. Mmmm, again.

Well, it's going to be another busy week. I need to make some calls & emails to Budapest tomorrow and write and submit my application for summer departmental funding for pre-dissertation fieldwork in Hungary in July and August. I'm dreading writing out a budget more than anything else. And I have to plan for teaching on Tuesday and write a quiz for the students, and hold office hours. And John Creswell, Mr. Mixed Methods, is coming to give a methods workshop tomorrow, so I'll spend most of my day at Rackham doing that. Tom and I are collecting questions from the GSIs and making the Anthropology 101 exam this week. And I got a message from the head of my program asking if I'd present my work at a brown bag in Social Work on the 15th, so I need to start thinking about what aspect of my research I'm going to talk about, and get a presentation together. Never a dull moment, clearly.