Ketchup: Before the trip.

DIARY

Before the Vacation

The week before the week we went on vacation now feels like so long ago, I don't know if I can properly talk about it. My schedule had become so busy, with one deadline basically on top of another, that I divided my schedule into chunks so that I could prioritize more systematically. I called that week "power week" because I was allegedly going to finish both my taxes and my literature project.

The first was a funny situation. In the big mix up of 2006, we had not submitted our state taxes (by "we" I principally mean "me") and of course, owing us money, neither Illinois nor New York followed up. So I was really doing two years of taxes, since I had to reexamine our federal returns to figure out what the deal with the state was. I am pleased to say that they got in on time, albeit barely.

On the second front, things didn't go quite as hot. The argument in the literary project was tending toward concepts of authorship in/vs. postmodern literary theory. I'd gotten through several essays by Foucault and Barthes. Everything seemed to be going pretty well. Then I picked up Derrida. By the end of Thursday, I'd only gotten through about half of my paper, and it was entirely the easy part.

From my notebook:

LIT. PROJECT - Look Up on Wikipedia

1. Primo Levi (+ books)
Elie Wiesel (+ books)
Holocaust
2. MCIS songs
Andrew Mellon
3. Mallarmè
Valèry New Criticism
4. Surrealism Marxism
Futurism Freudianism
T.S. Eliot (+ books)
Ezra Pound (+ books)
Ethnographics Modernism
Linguistics Structuralism
5. Roland Barthes (+ book)
Jorge Luis Borges (+ Pierre Menard)
Deconstruction Postmodernism
Poststructuralism
Lacan Zizek
Adorno Benjamin
Derrida (+ book) Beaudrillard
Foucault (+ book)

I got through perhaps ten of these.

But Thursday was a gorgeous day, when I was able to (briefly) leave the apartment and walk to the corner deli for a beer (Coors and Steel Reserve are $1 for 24 oz. - I prefer SR, but Coors is always in stock).

Earlier that week, Jess and I ate Indian food and were very happy with the outcome of American Idol.

On Thursday night we had a bottle of wine that we discovered in the bowels of our apartment, left from the wedding no less, and watched Casino Royale, which was generally delicious (although I totally didn't buy the last half-hour).

Then, on Friday, after Jess left, I wrote some emails, did some packing, and took a cab out to the airport.

END OF POST.