there she ain't!

Four (true) scenarios:

1: I run into a friend in the hall. He says "there she is!" in response to my greeting.

2: A professor, upon entering a room in which I am the only person present says, "there she is!" in response to my greeting.

3: Another friend enters the grad student lounge. Despite the fact that there are four other women present, he says "there she is!" in response to my greeting.

4: Sitting at a table in the library, I see yet another friend approaching. I wave. And guess--just guess--what he says in response: "there she is!"

Very good, dudes. Here I goddamn am. What is with you all these days, anyway?

the people we used to be.

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget." > Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook

the gender gap.

Yesterday, my new glasses arrived in the mail. I picked them out a couple weeks ago, when I was in New York visiting my family. After opening the package, my first thought was that there had been a mistake, because these glasses were way more hipster than I remembered. My second thought, on realizing that I had not in fact been sent the wrong pair of glasses, was that I couldn't imagine my mother actually allowed me to purchase them. After spending the whole morning wearing them, however, I think I remember why I picked them. The moral of this story: change is hard, especially when it messes with your face.

Also, I had coffee this morning with three of my closest male grad school friends. I was wearing my new glasses, feeling all self-consciously hipster, waiting for what I thought would be the inevitable snide/disingenuous comments. The result: not one of them said anything about my new glasses, despite the fact that two out of the three of them walked right past me without recognizing me.

Men are so strange.