Your Favorite Adventures

I taught/did client stuff/was basically Extremely Professional for sixteen hours Wednesday, roughly fifteen hours Thursday, and then another 9 hours Friday.

Got home yesterday, passed out in the bedroom for about three hours, went to bed at a reasonable hour and slept until almost noon.

So, uh, yeah. As much as I'm like, "ah yes, I love teaching! This is so easy!", uh...

Not really?

(It's done, office hours Monday, this is fine.)


Woke up with a migraine from referred pain, which may explain the whole "why I slept as late as I did" thing. Oops?


We went wine tasting today! Which is to say, did the wine tasting that was free as we picked up our half-case from the winery. Good times. Last time was a total mess (the guy overpoured; Max ended up drunk after I tapped out and went, "I cannot do this and drive" — it's supposed to be like, enough to sip twice, and this was literally 3 oz/pour... — the fact that the wine was also not to my liking probably did not help anything?), but this time was great. Box has the brut in it again (YES THANK GOD), a bottle of the pinot blanc they do that I like, their rose (which is very solid), and...YES, HAHA, YES, a bottle of their cab sav. Which. Hell yeah, give it to me.

(Cabernet sauvignon is my favorite style of wine, surprising absolutely no one who has seen what else I drink. It's...fine? Probably?)

Picked up lunch, came home, ate, ran D&D. Today was the weird, "so you've been flipped into a mirror universe..." game that I have been hoping to run since literally August; worked out okay, I think? Players had fun, set the stage for what has to happen next, and...yeah.

Tomorrow is more D&D and aside from that, absolutely nothing. I'm going to make empanadas, probably, because the weather has turned and I have been wanting to, but, yeah.

Otherwise?

I met up with the guy who wants me to hold hands and jump off the startup cliff with him. It was very —

At the university I did my PhD in, my name in the department is basically verboten and has been since my first week of graduate school. This has absolutely nothing to do with me (so far as I can tell), and everything to do with Bad Academic Politics.

I am sort of used to starting from less-than-zero when I interact with people — like, whenever I do anything that is tangentially tied to that department, I feel like I need to project intensely that I am a Friendly Normal Person, Please Like Me!!

Right, so, yes.

I figured that he would meet me and that would be the end of it. But no.

I met him in a bar in the city, and the first thing he said to me, after the preliminary greeting, was, "so, what do I have to promise you to get you to agree to do this with me?"

I sort of blinked. "Uh...I mean, I want to see how [specific stuff] shakes out?"

He nodded very seriously and asked if he could take me out to lunch while he's up here next week. I blinked again and said sure, as long as it wasn't the days that I'm traveling (out of state wedding).

So. Um. Yeah.

It's...complicated. There is almost certainly no money in it, at least not immediately.

It's also something where I understand the science fairly well (which is a relief, it's physics-based this time), and they don't want me for the science part, they want me because they think I'd do well as the CEO.

...yeah, even typing it feels weird.

(I said that I would think about it.)

(I think what's strangest for me is that I get it. Like — I understand why he wants me to lead it. I know exactly why. It even makes sense. I just. HOW?)

I think about the uphill climb I have with anyone up here, where it's like, oh it's you, and my reputation was ruined by factors beyond my control before I started my degree, and where what acceptance I have has been in departments that aren't mine. (The College of Engineering people love me! EE in particular thinks I hung the moon! The College of Business people also think I'm nifty! I'm giving a class for free to their femmes-only cohort in two weeks! AND YET.)

I think about that a lot, and then I think about how at $RivalUniversity, everyone down there thinks I'm great, and I wonder how much better my mental health would be if I had listened to one of the professors that wrote my letters of recommendation re: where I should have applied.

OH, WELL.


Out of state wedding next week. Will be out Thursday through Saturday, then Sunday is the booth thing I'm supposed to run at the farmer's market, and...yeah. Jesus. I don't think things slow down until the week of the 13th, and even that's — we're going to see Lord Huron. So.

How, &etc.


Final thing, suppose: it's October, so we've been watching horror movies.

Last night: Oculus. Not bad, just — goddammit, Mike Flanagan, why are you so insistent on monologing??

Tonight: Talk To Me. Uh.

You know, when I said I wanted a ghost story, I was thinking more "haha teens play with Ouija board, Bad Stuff Happens", not "TRAUMA SPLITS FAMILIES APART AND LEADS TO MORE TRAGEDY".

Seeing Miranda Otto in it (Eowyn, if you, like my husband, are going "??? who?") was a pleasant surprise, but — Jesus. The movie felt less like horror (though it absolutely was), and more like — well. I love The Ritual, where the established Problem is that People Are Grieving, Grief Is Complex, and this feels like it was informed by that in some ways, but — without going into spoilers, a lot of it hinges on, "my mom died and I'm fucked up about it" in a way that made me deeply sad. Not, "ooh, horror!" so much as "SOMEONE GET THIS CHILD INTO THERAPY", ha.

Anyway, I said something ages ago about wanting to watch Bring Her Back, and Maximo is now like, "WE SHOULD WATCH THAT SUNDAY NIGHT", but after Talk to Me I'm not sure I'm up for another "the real horror was the fact that we aren't good at dealing with grief!" movie :x

Fingers crossed that we decide to watch something that's less, uh, informed by trauma? ha.

(Bring Her Back in particular, the villain is driven by the unexpected loss of her daughter — as if that wasn't enough, the filmmaker made it after losing a close friend, so...it's like, "oh my God, is this going to brutalize me emotionally, probably".)

(I SUPPOSE WE SHALL SEE.)