surfacing

So, now I know not to promise to post about something in a given week, because if I do, life will come kick my ass to a sufficient extent to prevent any actual posting. I have had a very tiring--though somewhat productive--week, and a vexing day. I have soothed my anxious weary soul by cooking a large pot of chana masala [innovation: while cooking, it occurred to me to pour some beer into the wok, on the grounds that the chana is conceptually very similar to my black bean chili (i.e., the legumes and spices are different, but the method & the accoutrements--namely lime, fresh coriander, yogurt, and lots of toasted cumin--are the same) and I always use beer, usually a light lager, in the chili, and I happened to be drinking one whilst cooking. Results: very tasty.]

Anyway, the next week looks likely to continue with the ass-kicking (extra teaching hours, editing projects piling up, conference paper due, syllabus-writing, imperative need to sort out %^&!%#$ plane tickets for the summer, and housing thereafter, etc) so no promises. But I am itching to tell stories about some of the things I've seen and heard and watched and read, so here's hoping I can steal the time. Also, I may try to think-through some of the conference paper stuff on here--essentially, I am trying to distill a lot of thesis material into 7,000 words, so much of the task is to shape it into a coherent narrative that has enough detail to be solid, enough theory to be interesting, and still says something worthwhile to a slightly broader audience. So beware of potential heavy academic geeking-around posts in the near future.