Music:I'll Be Your Shelter (Just Like A Shelter)––The Housemartins
Personal: Celebrating Susan Ramsey's DQEs; Newspaper Interview
A good night last night, celebrating Susan Ramsey's passing her Doctoral Qualifying Exams. We were out at the Yen Ching, which was pretty good Chinese food, but still left me missing the Mandarin House back in the Bend. Ooo... I'd love one of their egg rolls right now. Actually, I'd love three! So, I just finished the second half of that dinner a bit ago. Going out for Chinese is always cheaper than it looks in the restaurant because I always get two meals from it. On the other hand, I'm already kinda hungry.... Good talk with my classmate Bogdan Bucur and his philosopher wife Christina, who gave me a ride out to the restaurant. But the highlight of the evening was having a beautiful European artist decide halfway through dinner that she was in love with me. The downside was that she was 4 years old. I think I scored big points with Irene when I identified her latest work--drawn right there at the table--not as abstract art but as a basketball game. She insisted on holding my hand out to the car and that I sit by her on the way home, where she proceeded to tell me random stories from her summer in Romania. So I got free uncle practice for Grace out of that. I dryly told Bogdan that I hoped he'd think of me as a son. Irene was trying to figure out why her dad was laughing so hard.
Random news: surgery is scheduled for May 21st. Good-bye bastard colon! Too bad it wasn't in time to prevent you (and my doctors) from messing with my bones.
Thursday is my first newspaper interview (outside of being asked random questions by kids trying to flush-out their articles for the newspaper back at the high school). An entertainment reporter at the Tribune is doing a feature article on Life and Other Impossibilities. I had been hoping just get a review for a bit of publicity, but he seemed intrigued by the story of this being produced in the midst of doctoral studies, so we'll see what comes of it.
