Week-in-my-Life: Jan 2010 (Pt. 1)

When blogs first started, many were journals or diaries that recounted people's quotidian activities. I've kept a personal, handwritten diary for years now, but it was never really my intention for bklynbiblio to be that kind of blog. Still, I thought it might be interesting (fun? insane? hilarious?) to track a random week in my life and see what comes out of it. I won't do this all the time, but I figured it might give people a sense of what actually happens in the life of a NYC-based queer doctoral student-slash-writer-slash-art historian-slash-librarian. Obviously this won't be a play-by-play account, but a summary of various things. Comments, of course, are always welcome.

SUNDAY 01/10/10

5am = awake on my own accord, panicking that I need to keep working on my independent study report, which I have been working on non-stop for the past week

11am = shocked because finished with sources at home for report; reward myself with a nap

1pm = food shopping; bake chocolate chip cookies; catch up with friends on telephone, including DH, my long-lost friend from high school who friended me on Facebook few days earlier; clean kitchen

4pm = reading Ewa Lajer-Burcharth's essay "David's Sabine Women: Body, Gender and Republican Culture Under the Directory" (1991) for my oral exam study group; all good until she starts on psychoanalytical gibberish about Lacan and babies

7pm = dinner & Netflix movie: portabella mushroom burger on wheat toast with leftover roasted vegetables, and Dancing at Lughnasa (3 stars)

MONDAY 01/11/10

8:10am = standing on the platform with half the population of Brooklyn waiting for the 4 train to take us to work, reading Lajer-Burcharth by holding article over someone's head, wondering why I put up with all this

8:45am = walking into museum to start work, stroll through the Egyptian wing chatting with co-worker, realize I love where I work and that's why I put up with all this

9:30am = meeting

10am = meeting

11am = another meeting!

12:30pm = reading Lajer-Burcharth during lunch, decide that art historians should be slapped for writing sentences like: "Yet the positional constraint of the female body in the Sabines could not be attributed solely to the universally Oedipal structure of the male unconscious but also to the historically specific circumstances that made the concerns about women's 'mobility' (in the broadest sense), men's authority and paternity more urgent than at other times."

3pm = clock out early to do homework for 2 hours

6:30pm = yoga class

8:30pm = dinner: minestrone soup and grilled turkey, swiss & apple sandwich

9pm = finish reading Lajer-Burcharth

TUESDAY 01/12/10

8am = wake up shocked that I slept so well and never woke up once during the night; do morning stretches, including 30 push-ups for the first time (yay!)

8:30am = on the computer typing up notes on Lajer-Burcharth's essay and Edgar Wind's essay "The Revolution of History Painting" (1938)

12pm = lunch: egg & swiss sandwich with side of almonds and clementine

1:15pm = riding the F train to school, reading Patricia Condon's In Pursuit of Beauty: The Art of J.-A.-D. Ingres (1983)

2pm = study group with KZ for over 3 hours; we do good!

5:30pm = email update about Padre's doctor visit, mostly good news, but doctor wants to try Aricept, not so good news; discover he's upset with me about doctor, so now I'm upset; call him, no answer, leave voicemail; call Fratello instead, no answer

6:30pm = dinner: salad at school while perusing books on landscape painting and French Prix de Rome winners; Fratello returns calls, I have small meltdown and he graciously lets me freak out about things, including momentary realization that I have no memory of the last time I was on a date

7:30pm = at gym; in locker room, cute Asian-Latino guy in a towel meets my gaze, I think; start cardio exercises

9:15pm = leave gym 557 calories thinner (yay!); got lovely glimpse of naked black bubble butt on my way out of locker room

9:25pm = waiting for F train, see cute guy with beard on V train, but realize he's wearing white jeans, so he's obviously straight; assumption proven correct when he gets whiplash staring at 3 women who board train; V train pulls away and I smile sardonically when I hear '80s pop song "Brand New Lover" by Dead or Alive playing on my iPod

10:30pm = leftover minestrone soup, cup of tea, last of the chocolate chip cookies, and blogging about my week so far

(To be continued...)