I am a terrible friend, sister, daughter, knitter, and blogger

I am in the final stages of the diss, about 20 pages to go on the last real chapter, a conclusion chapter (which, I've already determined, will be short and sweet), loads of revisions, some images, and a defense.

I'm also fighting the clock. I MUST finish this chapter this week. I MUST get a defense date scheduled, and this defense date MUST be before the end of the year or else my committee chair will scuttle back to Rome and the whole thing will delayed until Fall 2008. Which is unacceptable.

And so I am head-down, trying to finish. And therefore I can only send sporadic emails to whomever happens to send me an email first (reply is so much easier than compose), make occasional phone calls only to my parents (I don't want them to worry; I figure everyone else can deal), knit nothing, and, well, write this one post and this one post alone.

But here's a recap of what's been happening in the months since I posted:

• ATHE was a success and New Orleans was fun
• My honey and I vacationed in Maine and Nova Scotia - amazing!
• I started back up on the yoga
• I went back to smoking, quit, and now occasionally smoke
• My honey and I did an amazing group ride over the historic bridges of downtown LA
• We cast our play
• I started a dramaturgy blog for the show
  
• I agreed to write an article in the middle of this diss-ness
• My honey and I chanced upon a Punk Rock Puppet Show and Spoken Word event on a corner in Koreatown

I'm sure there's more, but that's what I remember right at this moment. And now, back to the diss.

There is a world outside of my dissertation

I've been so wrapped up in pounding out this chapter while concurrently getting the ATHE stuff together, directing my staged reading, and planning for Devildare auditions that I feel like I am cut off from the rest of the world. More specifically, I feel that I am cut off from the political realm that, normally, is at the forefront of my mind. Just to prove that I am not the total diss navel-gazer I feel that I am, I want to sound off about a few recent political issues that have managed to force their way into my consciousness.

• Planned Parenthood funding-cut amendment fails! Thank goodness for that. With the recent Supreme Court ruling against the open communication and decision-making of a woman and her doctor, I was beginning to feel like we were turning back a century (or more) to a time when old, white men got to make all the decisions for women. Don't get me wrong, they are most definitely doing that now, and it is repugnant to think that somehow this is considered okay (poor, weak, emotional women just don't know what's best for themselves), but at least Planned Parenthood can continue to do the good work it does. In this era of reduced rights and crappy health care, I have turned to PP for my own health care and am thankful that it exists because without it, I would be forced to take stupid chances and forego my reproductive health care because I just don't have the money to go somewhere else. And I consider myself to be, socially if not economically, in a very favorable position. I am educated; intelligent; in a stable, monogomous relationship with an amazingly thoughtful and caring man; not without access to financial assistance (although I am unemployed (sort of), this is only a temporary situation and is indeed a luxury at that, allowing me to finish my diss, graduate, and get a very respected and secure job once I am done); I live in a progressive state that values women and their health; plus I'm white, which alone grants me a lot more freedom in decision-making than many other women. Yet without PP, I would be screwed (no pun intended). I'm glad this crazy Republican didn't get to fuck with my body.
• Bush, Gonzales, Cheney. Good Lord are these the worst criminals in history? It makes me sick to hear any of them speak, and it turns my stomach to see how they have completely taken away so many of our collective rights, how they have completely bungled the "War on Terror," how they have forced a lot of crazy faith-based programs down our throats (Hello, abstinence-only education? It doesn't work, and it masks its misogyny (again, women can't be trusted to know how their bodies even work, much less can they decide what to do with them) with bullshit morality from a very skewed, particularist reading of the Bible), how they have literally shat all over The Constitution. To quote my play, I dream of attaching electrodes to their respective genitals and torturing them Gitmo-style. I would never do this, of course, because I don't believe in torture, but they do, so in a way I guess they have it coming.
• Michael Vick and dog fighting. Okay, this one came to me in an email, without which I wouldn't have known about it and in response to which I took about the lamest amount of "action" one can take - I signed an Internet Petition. Woo-hoo! Watch the world change with my measly e-signature. Dog fighting? Really? That's how you get your rocks off? Gross. Barbaric. Unbelievable. Although I suppose it isn't surprising that the ritualized violence of football would bleed into the overt violence of cruelly treating other animals for one's personal pleasure.
  
• The primaries. Can we somehow get away from soundbites and hand raising and actually talk about something? Something other than $400 haircuts and cleavage and who's using what name and who's black and eloquent? And please, please, please, something besides who has how much money? For the record, I am, per my usual, currently backing the long shots: Dennis Kucinich and, slightly less improbably, Bill Richardson.

See, I do know that there is a world outside of my diss. That is all.

Things That Have Happened; Hollywood Bowl

I've been busy:

• Organized for ATHE
• Made a quick trip back to Minnesota
• Directed a staged reading at NOTE that went off really well
• Suffered from an unpleasant stomach bug
• Wrote a few more pages
  
• Went crazy, got uncrazy

Hollywood Bowl:

Mark this under events that could only happen in Los Angeles. We scored box seats - box seats! (Thanks Richie!) - to the Hollywood Bowl for Cafe Tacuba. Imagine the most beautiful summer night you could ask for, a nice bike ride (with a deadly hill I had to walk my fixie up at the end), some delicious fizzy wine, a cool breeze, and 18,000 people grooving to the incredibly groovy sounds of this amazing band. The band only spoke really fast Spanish that I couldn't understand (although at least half of the audience could), but they laid down incredible beats that were universal in their commuinicative coolness. Me and my honey danced. So did the band. My honey acknowledged that he had a slight man-crush on lead singer "Pinche Juan," Ruben Isaac Albarran Ortega (because his spinny dance moves and Mush Mouth hat cannot be beat), while I preferred guitarist/keyboardist "Meme," Emmanuel del Real Diaz (because I like 'em long and lanky; cf. Adam "MCA" Yauch, Big George Hincapie, and most of all, my honey himself). The best part was seeing their smiles - and yes, we were so close that we could actually see them without the aid of the Jumboscreen - as they left the stage, knowing they had nailed this show just like everyone there knew they had nailed it.

So great.

And I thought California summers were for laying on the beach

So busy. So very very busy.

1. Trying to get this chapter going.
2. Coordinating ATHE project.
3. Working on two plays.
4. Balancing our budget (stress).
5. Running annoying errands that take three times as long as they should.

It leaves no energy for blogging, alas.

Signs That I Am Old

1. I've complained several times about the impending increase in the price of stamps.

2. My honey and I were thrilled to make the Early Bird Special at Clancy's Crab Shack last night.

3. I have called friends to marvel about the cleaning powers of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

4. My honey and I purchased comfort insoles for our shoes and more than once commented on how comfortable they are.

5. My legs hurt! (Said in the voice of Homer Simpson's relative)