Thank goodness they’re both of them over

Ok, I need to write this stuff, or else it’ll keep just piling up, and I’ll eventually give up. The past week has been eventful, though, and warrants recording.

I slept about three hours after writing my last entry, Thursday night of last week. Friday morning I woke up at 3:45, had a bit of breakfast, finished packing my last few things into my car, and hit the road. My drive to Toronto was pretty uneventful. I was physically and emotionally exhausted, though, and a couple of times I surprised myself by being brought to quiet tears by my silly sappy music. Avenue Q and Once More With Feeling both got me, as well as, for some weird reason, The Hot Mikado. Anyway, I made pretty good time, and got into Toronto at about 2:00. I met up with Doug, my host, and we went to the conference to register. I parked on Doug’s unmarked street, with his assurance that that would be ok. (I have three parking tickets that suggest otherwise, but I think I’ve decided not to pay them.)

The conference went well. The papers were, for the most part, very interesting to me. The conference theme was “Value & Inquiry”, which basically translated to metaethics and epistemology, my two biggest mainstream philosophical interests. I found myself engaging with almost every paper, which is a good feeling. And my paper (Nietzsche and value fictionalism) was well-received. The keynote speaker, Simon Blackburn, had some very interesting things to say, and pointed me to some of his work that bears on my view.

Saturday night, I met Crystal! Crystal is tiny and cute and funny and beautiful, and we had good conversations and nice times. For some reason that I really don’t understand, she says that I’m mean. I’m not sure whether she’s sincere or not. She also says that I have bad fashion sense, with similar ambiguity. Crystal is deep and introspective and intelligent and thoughtful and gentle, just like I knew she would be from reading her diary for several years. She told me stories about herself that helped me put lots of pieces together; I understand her entries much better now than I did then.

Saturday night, Crystal and I went to meet Emily! Emily was having a birthday party, and I wasn’t able to bring the gift that I’d meant to bring, but I sang for her, and promised to mail her the gift that I’d meant to bring, which I will totally do soon. Emily is energetic and fun and very, very friendly. She reminds me of a girl that my cousin used to date, years and years ago, whom I’d completely forgotten about until I saw Emily and was reminded of her. Emily is also gorgeous. So is A.G.

A couple of Emily and Crystal’s friends planned to come to my talk the next morning, but they slept in. Oh, well. After the conference ended Sunday afternoon, I drove to Crystal’s place. We spent the next day and a half talking, sitting around, napping, and walking through Toronto looking at bookstores and stopping for food when we got hungry. I got to know Crystal better, which was a goal, and got to actually relax, which was amazing. Tuesday morning, I drove to Ann Arbor.

I spent another relaxing afternoon with Steph in Ann Arbor, and we walked through the woods with Ronnie, and then I *totally* surprised Sunil by showing up to watch the season finale of Gilmore Girls. I’d never seen that show before; it was ok. And Wednesday morning Steph and I got up early and had breakfast, then I hit the road for Houston.

The following two stupid things happened during that drive: (1) I took a wrong turn shortly after Chicago and didn’t realize it, and it was about 40 miles before I was able to discern that it was the wrong road. Very badly labelled! And bad traffic, construction, etc. I was going entirely the wrong direction. I ended up taking about a hundred mile detour that set me back some two hours. Suck. (2) Nomy, the professor I’m TAing for, called. I’d asked last week when she needed final papers to be graded, and she told me the 21st, which is this Saturday. So I figured I could just let them go until I got back into Houston, and grade them Thursday and Friday night. Nomy calls and says that she’s nervous about it, and could I please have them done sooner. When I said that I was in the middle of driving across the country, she replied that “no one forced me to make that schedule”. But obviously, I made plans based on what she’d told me! So I had to stay up late in my hotel in Memphis grading, instead of sleeping more, or driving further that first day, or reading for myself. Gah. Anyway, I got it done.

Thursday morning I got up at 5:45 and drove to Houston. I’m all signed up with Tim, Nathan, and Andyr in the apartment for the summer, and today I worked. And now it’s late afternoon and I’m tired and have a bad headache. Time to stop writing and get a little more work done, then go home.