2 December 2002

Okay, now this isn't quite fair. I didn't agree to go back to school. I didn't want to go back to school, and in fact, I'm not sure anybody could make me go back to school. (It would involve less writing. Less writing = bad. Not universally, I know, but in exchange for a piece of paper? No, not any more, done that already.) And yet somehow I've ended up with finals.

That's seriously what it feels like: I have a really big project due in the middle of the month (on the 15th), and I'm trying to do a few Christmas-y things between now and then, but mostly I'm stressing out about whether I have all the right material and what I'm going to need to reread and whether my outline will do all the way through...and Timprov's leaving a bit before me, and Mark a bit after, so it's got that kind of finals-ish vibe, too. And so I keep waking up expecting that it will have snowed. Because that's what happens when you have finals in the winter. It snows before them. (It snows before now, generally, but my subconscious is evidently willing to let that slide.)

Ah well. I'll deal with my own personal finals without the snow, and without the celebratory run to the Chestnut Tree when they're over with, and without a long drive back to Nebraska with either Sass brother. And soon, pre-Christmas finals may have a totally different spin to them.

I'll be sleeping with a professor. Is that even ethical? I think I'm just barely old enough for that to be all right.

Yesterday we went to church, and the sermon was no good at all, and they had sort of a parade for the offering, where everybody trooped up to the front to put their money and pledge cards and all that in the baskets. So we just trooped right out the back, early. Trying to rewrite the lyrics to "Deck the Halls" so that they're Advent lyrics: not a good idea. In case you were wondering.

So we got Krispy Kremes and had them and other bits of food around here, and then we headed out for downtown San Francisco. We let Dan experience the joys of the Bay Bridge! Because we're just that kind of fun hosts. SF-MoMA was mostly okay, although I was pretty snarky about a couple of the paintings, and I don't like Gerhard Richter, not at all at all. But there was an ongoing photography exhibit and a new photography exhibit, so that was neat. Not as good as the last two photography exhibits we've seen, but still interesting. It was this German guy, I've got the name somewhere, who wanted to have these pictures of people of the 20th century. A lot of them were taken around 1930, which was unintentionally chilling -- we'd look at the pictures and pick out typically Jewish names and wonder how many years the subjects lived beyond that. There were pictures of Gypsies, pictures of Communist organizers, just mixed in, not yet separated out. There was a small grouping that was simply labeled "victims of persecution," people who had come to the photographer to get passport photos or identification photos so that they could do the paperwork to get out. We wondered about them, too. You pretty much had to.

And I got a ton of titles and freewrite topics, which is its very own benefit. Art museums are great for that. It's been a good weekend for titles in general, though.

After SF-MoMA, we drove up the Embarcadero and went to the little park by the Golden Gate Bridge, and then we walked around by the Palace of Fine Arts, and by that point, it was time to make our way to House of Nanking. We got hot and sour soup this time. We'd never had soup before, and it was good.

I think that's about it for yesterday's activities. Today my back is feeling horrific, so I think I'm staying home. Maybe I will venture as far out as Cold Stone Creamery. We shall see. I'm going to do some laundry around here, I think, and some dishes (wooo!), and have dinner ready upon Mark and Dan's return. And I'm going to work on the Chinese immigration book some more. I think I just need to hammer out a couple thousand words, and then I'll feel better about it. Right now it's making me nervous, but it really doesn't need to; I'm in a pretty good spot with it. I think. I hope.

I guess we'll find out.