In which the protagonist enjoys Thanksgiving (again)

Today, one of my friends returned from New York and, like last time, brought me bagels. So while I'm incredibly jealous that he's been back to the city twice since I left it, I did get a good bagel for late breakfast after picking him up from the airport and another for late lunch when I got hungry again mid-afternoon.

Then, one of my roomies made another turkey and more stuffing (or technically, dressing) and another pie because we were beginning to run out of leftovers from Thursday's festivities. Now I'm completely stuffed again, but I will have to get up to go to class tomorrow instead of hanging around all day recovering (at least this time there won't be a mildly irresponsible combination of wine and cider and hot-buttered rum with brandy to recover from in addition). And, while I'm on the subject of Thanksgiving food, certain readers may be interested to know that bourbon sweet potatoes were a hit with my roommates.

WI not too bad: In which the protagonist contemplates Thanksgiving

In spite of the facts that I have classes five days per week instead of four (or three last semester), was not given the Monday before Election Day or Election Day itself off, have to sit in several hours of meetings every week, and have been occasionally (i.e. twice) confronted with the horrifying thought that I could spend *one* weekend day not doing work but have nothing else to occupy myself... there's snow sticking to the ground before Thanksgiving. So I'm forced to conclude that Wisconsin cannot be Hell; it's too cold.

Anyway, I get tomorrow and Friday off for Thanksgiving and some grad students are coming over for food/drinks/board games tomorrow. So things really *aren't* that bad. But about the weather - if you're in the NY area and are thankful for nothing else (bagels, pizza, hangover brunch, a reasonable population density, etc.) the forecast high temperatures there are currently 30 degrees higher than here so you can go outside without gloves and not get frostbite. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh man...

Why do I have to miss everything exciting? While I've been stuck under a rock in the Midwest, there have been a multitude of exciting Columbia mini-scandals. First the president of Iran was invited to speak, which led to most students skipping class to watch/protest. And more recently several students have gone on a hunger strike. Why are they on a hunger strike, you ask? I haven't the foggiest notion - but apparently they've convinced the administration to change the major cultures requirement and to add more layers (or to expand existing layers?) of the ever-amusing Columbia bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, I've been busy with classes and work and more classes and more work. In fact, the funniest campus semi-protest I've seen was in response to a bunch of rabid evangelical Christians of some fundamentalist variety who spent several days standing out on Library Mall yelling (literally) about how we're all (everyone except these people, apparently) going to hell for tolerating homosexuals, among myriad offenses. So the following week, some kid stood around yelling: "Everyone sucks except me! I'm always right! I could be raising money for charity, or going to class, but I want everyone to know how awesome I am!"