It's starting to get chilly. The fall color is gorgeous. My heat has been shutting off intermittently for no reason and is really hard to get back on. Today the landlady finally hired a specialist who fixed a number of things and installed a fancy new thermostat. It seems to be working fine, but the next 24 hours are key. There is some sort of an animal in the attic, or was. My landlady sent her ex-boyfriend-turned-handyman up there and he cleaned up a lot of critter-refuse. So far it has not returned.
I gave a talk at Nearby University today for my early modern reading group- a talk on part II of my final chapter, the one I'm calling Chapter That Is Spiraling Out of Control. My audience was really gracious, sitting through all 45 minutes of me throwing various forms of information at them, including bits of history, philology, inventories, travel writing, commodities, and some Really Difficult poetic syntax and language. Their comments and suggestions were remarkably helpful and I'm blown away by the fact that they appear to have actually understood what I was trying to say. Maybe I need a new nickname for my chapter.
No more fellowship applications due for another two months. Yay! To take advantage of this small respite, I'm dreaming about throwing a "Great Depression" party. We could dance to early jazz, wear fedoras and boas, drink gin out of teacups, and party like it's 1929.
4 comments:
I'd attend that party, if I could!
For Halloween, in 1998, I dressed up as 19*28*--the boom before the bust: top hat, opera scarf, bow-tie, and lots and lots of cash spilling out of my pockets, sleeves, etc. (Don't ask me why I own a beaverskin top hat. I just DO.)
Given your deco avatar, I knew you'd approve. That sounds like a great costume. And the fact that you own a beaverskin top hat is phenomenally cool.
My best Halloween moment occurred when my gradschool boyfriend and I went as Edward Gorey characters with lots of dark eyeliner and neo-Victorian clothing. We flailed. And spoke ominously about ourselves in the third person ("Harold glowered at the gramophone").
I would also attend that party if I could. After all, having written about the Great Depression, I'd be a natural. And I own a fedora. But I'll be in the UK on Halloween. Do they celebrate Halloween there? (Congrats on your talk going so well; it's always nice to see virtue rewarded.)
Yes of course they celebrate Halloween in the UK- any excuse for a costume party, after all. What they don't do is go trick-or-treating. Instead they have fireworks and bonfires on the days leading up to November 5 (Guy Fawkes Day).
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