reading reading reading

Hey all!

Sorry (once again) I haven't been posting as much as I usually do/would like to.  Not to sound like a broken record, but life is fiendishly busy--the amount of reading I have to do before the end of the week is more than a little horrifying to me, and despite having spent in the last two days more time reading than sleeping, I've barely made a dent in my pile of books and articles.  And I desperately need to clean my room, and I don't have time.

Despite the fact that I have North Ugandan politics/indigenous identity/Swedish coming out my ears, I'm having a brilliant time, grad school is the shit.  No, really, it is actually the shit.  My advisor (which I already have?) is awesome, I met with him today and we kicked around ideas for my thesis.  From the looks of things, this is going to get done in slightly unorthodox fashion--it appears that I'll be taking a semester off to do six-nine months of research in what will probably wind up being either Australia or Wales.  Why do your degree in four semesters when you can spend nine months chilling out in a (new!) foreign country, I ask!

In sad news, the Kiwi has left for Indonesia on a fieldwork trip that will probably be less than a year in length, but still feels way too long.  I miss her to pieces already.  We had a pretty fabulous last-night party though, the couchsurfers met up for drinks, I brought a whisk, and (like you didn't know this was coming), we all piled outside the bar for a couple rounds of possibly the most intense flunkywhisk game ever.  The first round was briefly interrupted when a punk guy with pink hair peed on a statue and then stomped on our flunkywhisk can.  The second round was equally entertaining, even though no statues got peed on, and we even got challenged by a random group of students who wanted to play the winner.  We obliged, and kicked their asses.  I say "we" like I played, but really I was just the ref.  But I am a really, really, really good ref.

Saturday morning Al and I woke up bright and early to meet the Kiwi at the train station and see her off to Indonesia, and it was sad.  I spent the rest of the weekend alternating between being sad and reading.  And then Al and I tried to watch The Town, but I fell asleep halfway though.  And now it's Tuesday and I need to go read shit.  I don't know if it's exhaustion or just the fact that I haven't been academic in almost two years, but you know when some bastard carves your brain out of your skull with a teaspoon, mashes it up, molds My Little Pony action figures out of it using the Play-Doh hair salon set, and then shoves it back into your cranium?  My head feels just like that.

Much over-highlighting,
Tina