One Month Later

Been a while since I updated. I'm sure some of this will be repeats from things I talked about before, but I don't care.

First things first: a map. One month from tomorrow (the 28th) I will be leaving Boston for here:

Boo ya Iberian Peninsula. I received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. I'll be doing some translating, some out-of-print document location, and a bunch of sight seeing. I'ma start in Lisbon, then move to northern Portugal, then hit Madrid, (hopefully) run with the bulls in Pamplona, spend a few days in the tiny, tiny country of Andorra, then Barcelona. I pulled strings to fly out of Rome, so Italy is on the list as well. I'm half tempted to put a change of clothes and a camera in a backpack and just wing it for ten weeks, but we'll see. To use an understatement, it's gonna be epic.

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That up there is a fancy tilde-denominated section break, if I do say so myself.

Tonight after our weekly student-only poetry workshop Danielle Dobson and I went to Snappy Sushi to eat some, well, snappy sushi. She told me her tradition is to get a few things that sound disgusting. I highly approve of that idea, so we got two: octopus and sea urchin. Octopus didn't taste like much and I kinda thought it was fun to eat (really gummy). She wasn't a fan of the texture. And sea urchin, well, that's somethin' else. Basically, it looks like crap and tastes like the ocean smells when it's at its worst. In other words it's highly disgusting, but totally worth trying because now I can say I ate sea urchin and I never have to do it again. We washed it down with lots of ginger and then got ice cream.

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Yet another sweet section break brought to you by the shift key and its partners. 

So...since all but shaving my head a few months ago, I have decided that I want to try growing my hair out for a year. I've trimmed my neck once or twice (gotta do that) but that's kinda it. It's to the point where I have to deal with it, which I'm not a fan of, but it also wings around the back of my trusty BSU cap (Go Broncos) so I'm a little bit okay with it. I haven't grown my hair out long enough for it to be curly for a while, so we'll see how long it lasts. Maybe I'll tell people that I want to grow it out long enough to be able to donate it. That makes it charity (which never faileth). I'm also thinking about not shaving while I'm in Europe, which will make me look amazing by the time I get back. I'll be an all star.

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I think this tilde thing is gonna be my new thing for a while.

I'm nearing the end of my semester, and consequently nearing the end of my time at BU, which is absolutely insane to me. It's amazing how fast time passes, but I'm ready to not be super-worried about writing and school for a little bit. I've compiled everything that will be going in my thesis, and I've revised about 15 of the 35-40 pages to the point that I'd like to. I have met one-on-one with both of my professors now, which is probably something I should have started doing before the last two months of my program, but I think it's for the best. A few Sundays ago I dropped by Robert's house (I still am amazed that I kick it with Robert Pinsky...and I'll never get sick of name dropping) after church to go over a few poems. It was a good experience. I met his cat, Bobo, who is a beautiful but sheddy animal. We chatted for a while and then went over three of my poems. As usual, he had some great insight. He told me that he finds that one of my characteristics he sees in my poetry is deflection. He said that I deflect seriousness with my wit, which might be more true in my life overall than I'd like to admit. Either way, I did write down my favorite thing he said word for word (mostly). He told me, "My reaction to your work is always admiration, followed by a burning desire to force you to be more serious." I took both as compliments.

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I have a feeling you'll get sick of the tildes well before I do.

So, yeah, things are progressing nicely. Chad gets married two weeks from this Friday, I taught my last day of class with my creative writing kids this afternoon (we acted out their one-act plays: hilarious), I rocked my second-ever poetry reading last night at the Boston Playwrights' Theater (hooray for the Writers at the Black Box series and my 25+ friends who came just to see me), I can almost bench 2/3 of my weight again (boo surgery), my thesis is getting where it needs to be, and I have no freaking clue what I'll be doing with my life come August 7th. But I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Life is good.