movies and stuff

I haven't posted in awhile because I have been busy getting stuff done! I submitted my first ever (first-authored) paper for publication last week. Only after at least 15 revisions (true) and working on it for about 3 years (true). I really hope that my next two papers will be a little easier and quicker or else I am in serious trouble! I also applied for a job in Wales and am meeting with someone on the committee on Friday (here in AZ). I started new experiments to try and get something together for AGU this year. I also really started freaking out about jobs and the future and what the hell I am doing.

I am missing pub gulf in Berkeley tonight (sad). I am going out for someone's birthday to a bar with dueling pianos. I have never seen dueling pianos and don't think that it will be something that I will want to repeat. If only we would go out for karaoke. I keep dropping hints but everyone ignores me.

I went with a friend to see "little miss sunshine" on saturday but it was sold out so we saw "heading south" instead. It is about middle-aged women going to Haiti in the 70's to have sex with very young men. I assume the title is also a pun. I thought it would be really bad and glorify the women as liberated etc. It was actually pretty good. It did not provide cheery prospects for middle-aged women esp. middle-aged single professors. It also contrasted these women with the poor people living in Haiti and made the women's concerns look pretty trivial. Speaking of trivial concerns of aging, I turn 30 in less than 2 months. I didn't even realize that it was coming up until a week or two ago. I am sad that my 20's are coming to an end.

I did get to see Little Miss Sunshine this week and it was really funny. They played a Sufjan Stevens song (Chicago) during the movie except they edited it so you could never hear the lyrics, which was kind of dumb. One of the characters was a professor that studied Marcel Proust. Every time he brought this up (it was often) I remembered not being able to finish Swann's Way (for a class) because it was so boring or difficult to read or something. We also read an insane amount of Kafka in that class, which I actually liked (except it was all sooooooo very depressing).

I had 3 students knock on my door yesterday with wonderful questions. One was "Do you know where the Intro. to Ethics Building is?" I can imagine an Intro. to Ethics course but an entire building?! It was not on the campus map. Big surprise.