It’s really not…

It's really not all-work, all-the-time, though it feels like it. There's bits of other stuff snuck in. Some of it's cooking -- I pulled out my George Foreman grill a few weeks ago, because I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, and I thought it might be easier to do it there than on the stovetop. It's so much easier. It's a breeze, and so Kevin and I have been making all sorts of grilled cheese sandwiches. Grilled cheese and tomato. Grilled cheese with honey mustard and hot sauce. Grilled steak and onions and cheese. (Okay, that's barely a grilled cheese, but it's the same basic principle). Very comforting on all these grey days that we've been getting, especially since we're both sick now. I'm just hoping we have the same sickness, because if he manages to give me a different one just when I'm finally starting to get over this one (down to just a scratchy throat and slight congestion today), I may well go mad. (We've even refrained from kissing for at least a week now, in order to minimize cold communicability, and while I'm not yet willing to say the prevention is worse than the disease, I *am* willing to say that it's getting pretty darn annoying. Adding insult to injury, that's it. I knew there was an applicable proverb around somewhere.)

I occasionally see other people too; I went in to the UIC campus for half an hour yesterday -- picked up the Clifford essay from Nnedi Okorafor and had a nice chat. She's had a busy time since I saw her last -- got married last fall, and is pregnant now (due in June) -- all this while finishing revisions on her first novel, due to the publishers in August, and teaching and taking classes in the first year of her Ph.D. program in creative writing. Oof! I wish we had more time to talk to each other; we have a lot of similar interests -- she's probably going to end up doing post-colonial lit. stuff too. Maybe next year.

And when I came back from UIC, Kevin was tying his shoelaces, preparatory to heading down to U of C to attend a talk. I had asked him (last night) to bring me back some samosas from the Reynolds Club. He asked me if I wanted to just come down with him. And it sounded nice, so I packed my bag with books and computer and we drove down to Hyde Park (street-cleaning day, so a hellish time parking) and he dropped me off at the Reynolds Club and headed off to Eckart. I had samosas and shumai and chai and read the Clifford plus all of Homi Bhabha's Nation and Narration, huzzah! Very productive, and comfy studying in those curved wooden chairs that are really remarkably comfortable over long periods of time. I would be tempted to steal one and bring it home with me but we have nowhere to put it right now. Maybe later. :-)

And in the evening, we had leftovers from the previous night (when I spent two hours cooking Asian braised lamb with bitter greens and mashed sweet potatoes, yum) and watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets -- good fun! A few sit-coms followed, and then we both collapsed into bed around 10:30. I don't know about Kevin, but I slept like a log. A good day.

Today, finish taking notes on the Gates, take notes on Anzaldua and the Bhabha. Go to the gym and the grocery store. (Now that the grocery store is right next to my gym, I buy only enough for a day or two; we're eating better, fresher food. It's very nice.) Read Eagleton's Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature, which is a skinny book, thank the gods (or my committee -- at this point, they're starting to blur together). Possibly take notes on that and Gombrich's Buddhism Transformed (which I've read before).

Somewhere in there, I need to check the publication date of Anderson's Imagined Communities -- I had it down for 1991, but that can't be right, since Bhabha refers to it in the 1990 Nation and Narration. So it's probably earlier, which means I should review it and take notes on that too.

Plenty to keep me busy today. :-)

2 thoughts on “It’s really not…”

  1. here I am, goofing off at the reference desk by reading blogs, when lo, you put a reference question in your entry and suddenly I’m no longer goofing off! Anyway, Imagined Communities was first published in 1983. The 2nd ed, “revised and extended,” was in 1991.

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