On Tedium and Past Lives

In my past life, I was a copy editor. This means I cringe at puns and alliteration and grammar mistakes and look down on people who don't know how to use the subjunctive (figuratively, obviously—the only people I actually look down on, height-wise, are children). This means that I look forward to being a TA and teaching (teaching might be a kind way of saying what I have in mind) all my students about how proofreading is necessary. This also means that I have an incredibly high tolerance for tedium. So, the fact that the task I am currently doing (which even involves a topic I am incredibly interested in) is one of the most tedious things I have ever had to do is saying something profound about the torture grad students go through.

In Which New Yorkers Don't Know Geography

Me: You should come visit me.

5-year-old brother: I can't.

Me: Why not?

5-year-old brother: Eema and Abba don't let me leave America.

Even after I explained to him that I do in fact live in the same country and that I live really close to attractions like Disneyland and Legoland (which I'm sure is exciting to a 5-year-old, even if it's less exciting to me—and to Alec Baldwin), he insisted that he didn't have the means or ability to up and visit me all by himself. Seriously.

Though I can't really complain about his lack of geographical knowledge when I might have maybe used my cool U.S. map cookie cutter to make cookies for my red, white, and blue meal and maybe made those cookies backwards. Oops.

But really what do you need to know besides for the fact that New York is the center of the universe?

משנה מקום משנה מזל

Yeah, yeah, I've been playing hooky on my blog lately. Sorry.

In the time since I last wrote, I spent two amazing weekends with good friends who were visiting from the East Coast, I officially moved (!) with the help of some incredibly dedicated friends, I unpacked many of my books (though am still trying to get a hold of one last bookcase so that I have space for them all, I scavenged Craigslist and yard sales for the last items I needed for the new apartment (folding wooden bookcase, $5; two bar stools, $10; hot water urn, blender, serving piece, 700 packets of Splenda and other assorted things, $30), I procrastinated doing schoolwork, I completed my flip-flop collection with USC flip-flops (from Target!), I discovered a good used-book store in L.A., I did the whole Tisha B'Av thing (though with less inspiration than I would have liked), I got a new power cord for my laptop because the old one was oozing brown goo (score one for Apple Care), and various other assorted things.

All of which is to say, I've been busy—but good busy (well, aside from Tisha B'Av and the brown goo)—and things are looking up. But I'll try to keep you updated more regularly from here on out. Also, I'll try to stop procrastinating and actually get my schoolwork done.

Great Mysteries, Solved by the NYT

So, I'm on quasi-summer vacation (which will end when my summer class begins tomorrow), and I really suck at being productive without any structure, which means I've been doing a lot of slightly premature packing and, um, watching a more than healthy amount of TV on Hulu, which means I've seen lots and lots of commercials for the Kin, Microsoft's smartphone. And I keep on wondering, Who the heck uses the Kin?

The NYT answered that for me. The answer is, no one.