HOORAY for Macedonian songs.

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.

There's something about the University of Michigan campus . . .

. . . that gives me a little gushy feeling in my heart sometimes. Like, oh my GOODNESS, THIS is where I go to school.

Fun Center for Sick Detroit Kids

I have some ambivalence about this whole "click here to vote for which resource-starved human services institution is going to receive money from our corporation" business, but nonetheless, it would be cool for kids at a children's hospital in Detroit to have access to a "fun center" for play. So, if you like, click here and vote for Detroit to get Colgate's money and in the process, contribute to Colgate's self-congratulatory rhetoric. You can do it once a day, if you want.

The Chocolate Cake Doppelgängerin

I am making yogurt, seven-grain bread, and broccoli mushroom quiche, while trying to think of what else besides Fionn Regan, Jenny Owen Youngs, Tricky, and Nouvelle Vague to put on a mix for Katie and John.

It's been quite a lovely weekend, with Friday night dinner with Zac, Alice, and Victoria in Zac's new abode, a cabin in the arboretum, a drink at Bab's with Ms. Isolt, leisurely Saturday brunch at Angelo's with Jeremy and Erika, a visit to K & J's place and an excursion with them to the Detroit Auto Show, perfectly sumptuous mole enchiladas (like I hadn't had since Austin!) at El Barzon restaurant (with an ecstatic private celebration happening next door), then a drink at Baile Corcaigh (I think that was the one, right K&J?). They gave me the most incredibly perfect Irish coffee I've ever had, with thick, sweet Irish cream on top. Gorgeous.

I got back home to the cottage after all the fun and collapsed for a good twelve hours of sleep! Today I've been totally useless, playing around on the internet and considering reading for my course on Material Culture and the Built Environment, and for 101 this week, but not. I finally went grocery shopping at about 9:30, and that was the first I got out of the house at all.

There was something that happened on Saturday night that was so quintessentially of-my-life in that serendipitous way I can never quite fathom, but that always peeks out its head when I'm least expecting it. John asked me just as I was leaving Detroit, "Are you going to blog about that, or are we?" I said that I would. But I don't know that there is a way to capture it that really does it justice. Well, I will try. And John and Katie, you can do too, if you like. ;)

We were just arriving at the pub, settling our coats on the bench as we sat down at our small round tables nestled among the dark wood paneling and stained glass. And a man strode right toward me, saying: "Are you the chocolate cake girl?" I said, "No." He said, "Oh, my goodness, you have a double." And I said, "Can I be the chocolate cake girl?" He told me yes. Katie, John, and I sat, and after a minute or two of giggling about the oddness of this puzzling encounter, we had a lovely, intimate, far-reaching conversation with discussions and stories about life and relationships, work and Middlesex, friends and who knows what-all. We'd completely forgotten about the Chocolate Cake Fellow.

But then, just after we'd paid our bill and zipped and buttoned up our coats and jackets and were about to walk out the door, he came back, walking right toward us with a thick slice of luscious, rich chocolate cake on a plate with three forks. He said, "Wait! Don't you want your chocolate cake??" And we laughed with surprise, and still a good degree of puzzlement, and he said, "Let me wrap it up for you." I thanked him profusely, he disappeared and reappeared a moment later with the cake neatly hidden away in a to-go box, and I introduced myself, and he told me his name was Jeff. We left with the cake, never quite knowing what it was that I'd done to deserve the cake.

This morning, I had chocolate cake for breakfast with my coffee. It is so rich, I hardly made a tiny dent in it.

Magnetic Fields -- Distorted

For those of you who love Magnetic Fields as much as I do (Oh, 69 Love Songs -- who can resist lyrics like "I can keep it up all night, I can keep it all day; let's pretend we're bunny rabbits, until we pass away")!? you can listen to their new album, Distorted, for a limited time streaming on their myspace page. And, other exciting news -- they'll be on tour soon. Perhaps worth a drive to Chicago. hmm.

Flight of the Conchords Ep2 She's So Hot - Boom

Megan is the boom queen. She's so hot, she's making me sexist.