This has been a weird and wondrous week. Somehow I have become a nocturnal creature, reading until dawn and then waking when morning turns to afternoon. Half the apartments in my neighborhood are empty now, as the undergrads migrated away in the past couple of weeks, so when I look out my bedroom window, the formerly-aggravating party apartment block is an empty parking lot. Out my living room window, most days I can see a door flung open as a vacated apartment undergoes some mysterious maintenance procedure.
Every day is eerily devoid of human noises. When it's not raining, the sun is occluded by a bank of thick, gray clouds, and birds alien to my California ears harmonize constantly.
Our department is hosting a biggish conference right now, but as I'm not presenting, and reluctant to crash panels because I refused to pay the exorbitant fee ($175, seriously), I've been loafing about the apartment, reading and pawing through the pantry and curling up on the sofa and watching TV shows that were canceled a decade ago.
I'm deep in book-thrall right now, switching between Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series and Ilona Andrews's Kate Daniels series. Instead of striking out to the farmers' market, I took a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for bagel sandwiches to the local Einstein Bros. When I walked by the trolley stop, I wavered with choices, but I'd left my laptop on, and the humidity of the morning made my still-damp hair plaster against my neck unpleasantly.
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