If I owned my cottage, instead of just rented, I would totally want to add a few feet of chain-link fence and a gate to my garden area and bring in a goat, a sheep or two, a cow, and a chicken or two. I don't know if it's allowed in our subdivision, but I'm just fantasizing anyway, right?

I've been thinking this for a while, since I haven't been able to find anybody out in my area who sells local milk, though there are lots of eggs available. And then I saw a Gourmet special on New Zealand that really got me thinking . . . and then of course there was the "Interview with a Goat" I read this morning.

I'm in such a good mood this morning. I was having a crazy craving for red meat last night, so I bought grass-fed Michigan beef at Arbor Farms and made an astonishingly good burger last night with cheddar and sauteed onion on a gorgeously soft, sweet toasted bun from Avalon bakery and washed it down with a few beers. It had been such a long day of work (I woke at 5:15 and spent a few hours reading a fabulous essay on gender and social welfare systems in Gal and Kligman before I went to Ann Arbor to run a dozen errands, including processing a loan and ordering a sexy new desktop computer, then had my four-hour afternoon class on film in Central Europe, and took care of a few emails before I left campus.)

By the time I got home at 8:15 I was starving. . . so dinner tasted SO good. Then I watched the creepy Robin Williams episode of Law and Order, then called my Mom and two of my dear friends at home, hearing Ms. Marta's little girl in the background talking to the kitty.... And this morning I slept until almost noon, waking to lovely sun shining over the lake. Vacation time is SO GOOD.

My iPod even seems to know that it's time for bossa nova in the shuffle.

. . . Magic.

And now it's just about time to go back home and lounge with some cafe con leche with freshly ground nutmeg, and do a little cleaning.

A friend has pointed me to an emerging cultural tradition in Hungary: Dinner in the Sky.

OMG! I wish I could go back to Cali for the Herdeljezi festival this year. Petra and Gogol Bordello and Carol and Sani . . . argh.

A kingdom for a UC job at the end of my Ph.D. program.

oh. my. head.

why? why?

Finishing up the term

As my dear friend alluded to in her last comment, I am without internet at home. My computer crashed a couple of weeks ago, and since I don't have the money to get it repaired, I am just making use of the public library machines once a day to get my internet needs met.

I wouldn't be able to manage completely without internet, but I've actually gotten quite comfortable with my routine; I like the environment here, it's cool and relatively quiet, except for a lot of really cute kids who float in and out with their parents and their storybooks. I mostly get a great deal of uninterrupted time on the relatively new HP desktop computer, though sometimes I get knocked off by someone who comes along if the other machines are also being used. I find that the most important stuff can usually be finished in half an hour, and then I move along to the rest.

Meanwhile, the word processing, I do at home, on my father's ancient laptop. The battery can't run without the AC adapter, and it has no wireless card or ethernet port, and it runs on Windows 95, but it's good enough to write on, and I can save my work to an old 3.5 inch floppy disk I had hiding around in a nook or cranny.

This way, I've completed a draft of my research internship paper that I wrote for my built environment and material culture in postsocialism course, and I've been working on my archaeology exams.

I did my grading the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper, on a clipboard, overlooking the lake. It's been incredibly sunny and beautiful in Michigan recently after an unbearable and seemingly unending winter. So it's really something, sitting there, sunning my legs, reading undergraduate papers.

Having finished both the grading and the first version of the research internship paper, which I need to LET GO OF for the moment, even though it needs a ton of work, because it's 46 pages (!!), I have to move on to my archaeology papers. I hope to finally be caught up with my coursework and all, and finished with my research internship, by the end of the spring term in June, and on to my social work prelim. I'm actually really looking forward to the summer. I feel I've already set the pace of it with my quiet mornings spent reading and writing overlooking the lake with a mug of cafe con leche, and afternoons at the library. I wonder -- could I cancel my cell phone and my internet for a few months, and hide away in glorious, hermetic, spartan calm?

Mabfataah

I miss my old kitty. Neener sent these photos. Aww . . .

Chain of Lakes tour

A light-hearted video tour of my beloved chain of lakes . . . Never mind the sort of annoying framing; enjoy the scenery. :)

Sunrise on the lake

And suddenly, just like that, water is water again.