yum

We are still enjoying our turkey-day feast- all three of us. When you make the whole Thanksgiving dinner for three, it lasts. But not as long as I thought. We're running low on stuffing/dressing and I admit that's my fault. I love stuffing. Year after year, it is the highlight of my Thanksgiving dinner and I always take seconds. It is such an odd food - admittedly, all parts of a Thanksgiving dinner are strange. How does stale bread, spices, butter, onions, and celery become such a wonderful treat? Anyway, during one of my post-stuffing carbohydrate-induced dazes, I wondered what you all think of dinner - what's your favorite part (if you can narrow it down to one)?

characters

and. . . . done. Whew.

I finished my grant applications and I got them in. The grants I applied for were all on-line which made it easy to upload my stuff at the last minute (actually I had about 15) instead of finding a printer and then flying off to the post office. The one major drawback to the application process was that they limited my response to some questions by the character - including spaces! I spent far too much time searching for a shorter word, like "study" - or better yet "work" - instead of "dissertation."

One of the applications asked for a "personal narrative" which was pleasantly narcissistic for the first hour. Then, it just became tedious. How may different ways can I say I'm desperate for money - in 2000 characters?

Now that these ap's are in I should take a day off but I can't because I'm tired and when I'm tired I have a hard time managing my anxiety/sleeplessness. So, I still feel an urgency to plug away at another chapter. I hope this next week will break me of the stress/fatigue. There's turkey in store and we've installed window-darkening curtains in the kid's room (she decided that 5:45 - when the sun comes streaming in her window - was a good time to get up for the day, ugh).

history

Many years ago I read this smart and innovative history - The Technology of Orgasm. The author - a historian of science - explained in the preface how her colleagues and academic presses would not take this work seriously and the struggles she went though to get it published. The book jacket listed her as a visiting professor - something I thought was all part of the flack associated with pursuing the study of a taboo topic (assuming, of course, that histories of women, sexuality, and sex were just not "serious" history of science).

I was please to find out I was wrong. I just read this article and discovered that not only was her book an academic success but it is now a documentary.

This is my inspiring, unexpected-victory story for the day.

halloween

This holiday is so much fun with a kid to share it with. My little "Hermione" made all of our Halloween decorations including this skeleton.

She also planned out and executed the perfect face for this jack o'lantern.

And here's Hermione on the big day demonstrating the use of her wand.

I hope you all had a good holiday!