Baby, it's cold outside...

School is good. Cat is well. Neighbors are fine, with one exception. Nasty situation, but it's being taken care of.

All in all things are pretty dull but in a sort of calm-before-the-storm kind of way.

I did go out last night with no expectations and had a great time. Saw "A Queer Carol" with Lindsay. We stopped for a drink ahead of time and I was reminded of the value of medium- to good-quality gin (as opposed to low-quality, anyway). The show was cute. Lindsay put it really nicely: "You can't really wreck this kind of play." It certainly put me in the festive mood. After that I grabbed a bite of dinner (they've changed their goat cheese nachos, but they are still pretty phenomenal), and then went by Clare's house. Hung around for a while and then Steph stopped by to say she and Clare's old bikester crew were heading to their bar. Steph and I talked a bit about starting a sort of traveling intellectual talking group/reading session at a local venue, where a group of us would get together and read aloud some of our research for the public or young-academic/intellectuals or just ourselves (the cool stuff...they forbid me from talking about stem cells, which was fine with me, considering my new-found discipline). It sounds like a great plan. Clare and I stuck around for a while and looked over her awesome paper on non-normative gender performance in Wisconsin, Samoa, and Japan, and decided to totally join the initiative; I volunteered to help with marketing (sometime when I have some free time ever). Eventually we headed out (slowly, I fucked my knee up on the Wisconsin weather), and met a whole bunch of people there. We drank and played foosball and generally had a good time, and Steph and I spent a lot of time talking about our various arts disciplines and what we thought of theatre and visual art respectively, and UW departments in particular. It was great, but damn was it cold walking home. I had been drinking and could still feel the wind cutting through my coat and hat...I must upgrade my winter gear. But I didn't die of hypothermia, and for once my house seemed warm to come home to, so I consider the evening a success.

Now I just need to finish up this semester, grad school apps, and my holiday shopping before I get a good 10 hours of knitting and hanging with the family, and a good few days of seeing the MN friends for the holiday season.

I hope yours is equally wonderful.