Another tradition among my friends is a Thanksgiving weekend lunch buffet feast at Ajanta, easily Dayton's best Indian restaurant. No other Indian restaurant can ever get the texture of Saag Paneer just right. I think the copious amounts of grease, pooling orange on the plate, are key. You can't really catch up with friends while packing your greedy maw full of fried naan, but oh well. There's always the phone.

Leslie is my best freaking friend since 7th grade, but our lives are tragically divided by geography. Her family got an adorable new dog, who is decidedly...special needs? I have never encountered a dog like this. Blank stare, no licking, no barking, no whimpering. If you prop him up and let go, he will slump over like a sack of potatoes, eyes unblinking. Like her dad said, "the lights are on but nobody's home."

I am not proud to say that a retarded dog provided a solid hour of weeping-from-laughter entertainment. Cuddly little bastard.

Somehow I lucked out with really funny, smart, interesting friends in high school. I'm still in touch, both closely and distantly, with most of them. But a Thanksgiving tradition of pie in the evening at Matt and John's house is a chance to talk existential crises and make poop jokes with the people I used to break curfew in order to talk existential crises and make poop jokes with. I love to drink beers and laugh until my face hurts with these guys, and I really only get to see them all in one place this one night each year.

This year, we hit a neighborhood bar after the festivities died down at the Umlands. When I was in high school, my parents used to say "Nothing good happens after midnight". I took this picture of Joey beating me at pool shortly before the evening went disastrously downhill.

Heidi, my grandparents' dog, observes the drawn-out sink recovery project. Of course the garbage disposal breaks on Thanksgiving afternoon.

My fake turkey "roast", which looked like a whitish latex log, managed to brown a little in the oven. My mom made the stuffing with chicken broth but I ate it anyway. How many vegetarian Hail Marys is that? Let's call it five. Pass the Jell-O.

Beavercreek.

On a mission to replace the battery in my grandfather's stopped watch at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving eve, my dad and grandpa ended up at a diamond store by the mall. It's one of those places where they offer you a bottle of water and do everything short of a hand job to make you feel pampered as a valued customer. From the way they talked it up afterwards, my dad and grandpa really took the bait. While his watch was being fixed, the sales lady offered to have their rings cleaned as a complimentary service. The two of them came home with glittering wedding bands that flashed like new. When my parents compared bands, it really looked as though my dad was newly married.

My mom and grandmother starting maybe-joking-maybe-serious insisting that they too needed their rings cleaned. My dad, who excels at taking things too far, popped all of their rings, five total, onto his stubby hairy digits, many of them not fitting past the first knuckle, and wiggled his fingers meaningfully at us as he grabbed his car keys.

We heard the garage door go up and the door close, but before long he appeared in the kitchen again looking downtrodden. "Well, I don't wanna go by myself."

So, after a suggestion from my grandfather that certainly sounded more like a fiat, I found myself in the passenger seat next to my dad's bejeweled hands gripping the steering wheel. At this very early point of the Family Weekend, I had Good Sport dripping out of my ears and I was buckled in and forcing an amused grin as we wound around the dark, rural roads.

As we approached the jewelry store, I was stunned motionless by a surge of teenage embarrassment. Show up to the jewelry store he was just at, to demand a free service for his absent wife and mother's jewelry, not dropping a dime, and waltzing out the door? It seemed tacky, bizarre, but mostly, embarrassing.

I stopped in front of the glass doors, regarding the many illuminated cases held within.

"Dad, this is really weird. This is a really weird thing."

My dad paused and examined my face. Stroking his chin with a gold-spangled hand, he said, "I'm a weird guy, Evie. I do weird things."

And when we got home, he presented the sparkling new/old rings in velvet boxes, and my mom and grandma ooh-ed and aah-ed. My parents' wedding bands had equivalent lusters and I disappeared upstairs to read my book in my childhood bed that seems to shrink with every visit home.

It didn't take me long to fall back into old habits. Drinking, going to bed in the morning, waking up in the afternoon, drinking. These routines are indulgences, but they don't really make me feel very good.

Last night at the bar, the interchangeable conversations with acquaintances, the catty gossip for gossip's sake, girls dressed to the fucking teeth - I felt like I could turn to vapor and everything would go on and on and on this way forever. I felt like I hadn't left town but wished that I had.

Because I get annoyed by the self-paparazzi at bars, because I just don't want to bother, because it doesn't usually seem worth capturing, I haven't been taking many pictures this week. My days have been defined by my evenings. My evenings have been fuzzy, dark, disappointing and they leave a ringing in my ears. Mostly, I just forget to pull the camera out. So this picture is from my birthday two years ago. Because, I don't know.

The unhappiness you carry inside you isn't tricked by zip codes.

My mom was the nurse at my high school, and I used to occasionally grab lunch with her at school when I was home on breaks. Walking those familiar cinderblock halls, smelling that unchanging cafeteria smell, I felt I was treading on verboten soil. Surely, narcissistically, I thought, everyone there could sense that I didn't belong. As I got older and the recognizable faces in that building dwindled, it became less uncomfortable, but I still avoided eye contact with the more forgettable teachers.

I usually find comfort in clear divisions to guide me through transitional periods. You don't sleep with your exes, you don't move back in with your parents, you work one job at a time, lest your delicate liminality get all muddled and confounded.

Today, I drove through the drizzly, suffocating gray to the restaurant where I worked for two years to get my shitty job back. It didn't feel like I was throwing everything in reverse.

It's nice to have guidelines for things, but I'm being a little too linear about my life. Like when you give a child specific rules to follow because you can't just say, "do the right thing". Sometimes it's not about evolving personally. Sometimes you are just in Columbus and broke.

I filled up for less than $20 today. That hasn't happened since I was smelling those cafeteria smells as a legitimate high school student.

Winter Science Reading Club!

Beer, bread, cheese, implications of HIV denialism in the Internet age.

But mostly, Guinness bread with honey butter, OM NOM NOM.

The good news: Columbus buys me shots.
The bad news: Columbus buys me shots.

These dudes are letting me squat at their place for six weeks. Let the slacking off begin.

Being alone
It can be quite romantic
Like Jacques Cousteau
Underneath the atlantic
A fantastic voyage
To parts unknown
Going to depths where the suns never shone
And I fascinate myself
When I'm alone
....
I'm rambling on rather self consciously
While I'm stirring these condiments into my tea
And I'm so lame
I bet I think this song is about me
Don't I, don't I, don't I.

Done.

Sjanneke and I celebrated my triumph over fall quarter by going to Casa and getting appetizers AND drinks AND food AND this ridiculous dessert.

Sitting across from her at the restaurant felt like I had woken up out of a long strange dream. It was like when we used to go to Casa together when I would visit her from Columbus when we were in college. Does that mean I felt like myself again? Or that I still hadn't slept since pulling an all-nighter the night before and was sort of delirious?

All-nighter.

Like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, I'm gettin' too old for this shit. Papers: they do not write themselves.

So this is going on outside.

You know sometimes when they hit the lights at last call and suddenly the warm wash of incandescence that's bathed the place becomes unkind doctor's-office-lighting and everyone is back to their ugly selves, teeth and guts and skin and too much makeup, and suddenly nothing is more important than being home, washing your face, being in your own bed, anything to get out of this godforsaken bar.

Yeah, last call in Athens was about two weeks ago for me. But getting "home" is always problematic for someone my age. I feel welcome in Columbus but I pay rent in Athens but my parents live in Dayton, but not in the house I grew up in.

I'm tired. Grad school feels like life suspended, and yeah, "journey not a destination", but I've always been terrible at carpe-ing the diem. It's never been a cinch for me to just be where I am.

But mostly, I'm sick of all this navel-gazing. I hope the six week vacation that starts Wednesday at 10:00 am will remind me that life is doing things and loving people, not talking about doing things and loving people.

This is a 20 page paper, completed two days before it's due.

I know, I keep looking over my shoulder for the four horsemen.

Voluptuous breakfast spread, made possible by Ana and Lauren.

They headed back to Columbus and I'm supposed to be writing the crap outta some papers, but the dreary, cold Novemberness outside has me slouching in my PJs listening to Andrew Bird and Beirut and bumming myself out on purpose.

I gotta cut this out. No more wistful or melancholy tunes. In fact, nothing with violin or accordion.

I'm gonna change into some pants with hardware and get my sadsack self to the library. I mean it.

(I don't mean it.)

Today I made Sjannie breakfast, researched my little heart out, wrote eight pages of my paper, cleaned my room and then Lauren and Ana drove from Columbus to put some color in my cheeks in the midst of my finals week doldrums. My late-night indulgence, the kind that comes in both red and white, was, for once, not tainted by the guilt or anxiety of academic unaccomplishment.

I want to hug both them forever. And I want to help with their exciting, charitable, empowering, badass new enterprise.

Today is my sister's birthday. I wish I could have been in Dayton to celebrate, but grad school is a double-edged sword like that. For every five times you use it as an excuse to get out of something, there's that one time where you really wish you could jet out of town but you're hopelessly shackled to this alien, college town that sometimes feels about as lonely as a Martian desertscape. How many days until winter break again?

So, Rita. Thanks for putting up with the fact that I ripped off every single one of your interests and hobbies from ages 4-15. Mom used to tell you that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, which did not magically transport your cool new clothes from my grubby mitts back into your closet.

Sorry. If you weren't flattered then, I hope you at least feel admired. Happy birthday!

Maybe it's just me, but every time I have to scour my wardrobe for something remotely biz-cazh, I have a small-scale identity crisis.

Today I gave a half hour presentation for my research methods class, but the writing the paper and the snazzy powerpoint and the research that went into it, let alone standing in front of the class, sweating like a televangelist; these were small matters compared to the way I feel clomping around in sensible flats and tailored trousers.

It's just that it seems like a joke. Like heels - why enslave myself in footwear that I can't wear riding my bike home drunk*? Part of me is still nine years old, playing Keep Away in six inches of backyard mud with my brother's friends. At heart, I'm still sixteen, cutting Suzy's hair in the garage with kitchen scissors. And, yes, I'm still nineteen, smoking pot out of a hollowed-out mango on a school nightmorning.

This is the girl who's never been on time to anything in her entire life. This is the girl who ducks behind a bush instead of waiting in line for the port-a-john. This is the girl who smuggles home beer from the wedding she bartended (but not without an accomplice). This is not a girl to saddle with responsibility. This is not a girl who gets things done.

This is a girl who "didn't hear her alarm".

And while I'm sure I'll get used to the way I look in business-casual, I certainly hope I'll never take myself seriously.

*I have tried this, it is not recommended.

Let's crunch some numbers.

Number of days until my winter break begins: 7
Number of days I've been in grad school: 69
Number of all-nighters required thus far: 0
Number of miles run this week: 0
Number of hint o' mint Newman-O's I had after dinner: 6
Number of days until Obama's inauguration: 70
Number of pages I have to write before next Wednesday: One 15 page paper + one 20 page paper=35 pages
Number of days until ritual Black Friday Ajanta meal: 15
Number of courses to be completed in Fall 2008: 5
Number of courses to be completed in Winter 2009: 3
Number of days until I begin observing the Karaoke Sabbath again: 11
Number of hint o' mint Newman-O's I will eat after posting this and before going to bed: indeterminate
Amount that I miss Columbus faces and places: a shit ton

An unequivocally shitty dinner.

In general, polar fleece sort of offends me. I don't really think one should leave the house wearing it, unless one is going skiiing. Sorry.

As someone who is easily uncomfortably warm, I am wearing the following things to bed at night: cotton shorts, long johns, sweatpants, t-shirt, sweatshirt, fleece pullover, two pairs of socks. Not once do I wake up feeling too hot. Also, the space heater is cranked.

I found this fleece pullover from my high school swim team days among the unpacked garbage bags of clothes in my closet. I feel silly mulling around the house in it, like I'm keeping my muscles warm behind the starting block for a 200m relay that happened seven years ago.

So, function over form, I guess.

This is parents' weekend at Ohio University. I don't know if something like that ever happened at OSU, but it would have passed unnoticed. Since Athens is so contained and densely populated, there was an infestation of middle-aged white people up and down Court Street.

It was like that park scene in 101 Dalmatians, matching up parents with their kids. Orange-cheeked sorority girls with their acrylic-nailed moms. Dweeby dads in too-white sneakers with their gawky sons in rumpled clothes. Moms with long gray braids and colorful glasses frames with daughters with nose rings and beaded necklaces.

I sat in the student union doing work and overhearing parental conversations. "So, kiddo, what do you want for Christmas?" "She's very sweet! Is she your girlfriend? Well, why not?" "Are you getting enough to eat?"

Made me miss my folks. I found a CD of pictures from 2003-2004. My dad grew a beard for a couple months after he retired from the Air Force. Here's one of the images from the time capsule.

(Richie Tenenbaum grows tired of his girlfriend being perpetually behind the camera lens.)

Yeah, grad school is tough, but it's doable. Most of the mental anguish is borne out of me feeling sorry for myself for all the work I have to do. I map out in my notebook a homework itinerary for each night, for each weekend day, and call it a success if I accomplish one-tenth of those things before nodding off in front of West Wing DVDs.

With a week and a half left of this quarter, things are piling up like mad and I set aside all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday to kick ass. By about 3 pm on Friday, I was still in my pajamas, waiting for the pot of coffee I drank to start working, tentatively flipping through a textbook.

So I called Nick and talked him into driving down to see me. I'd already killed the better part of the day, productivity-wise, right? Right?

We have a shared Google calendar, which is convenient, and admittedly sort of "married" of us, but I think Nick may start to regret it soon. It means I can say "Hey, come see me, the Internet says you don't have anything better to do."

I can't even really have conversations with people about the election because I inevitably say something like "I want to have babies in Obama's America" or "I want to make out with this country". Which, as it turns out, makes casual acquaintances uncomfortable. Yep.

So, thanks Sjannie, for also being a giant weirdo.

Blue state!

I was high on the election results all day long. As I was washing my hands in a bathroom on campus, I saw a flash of myself in the mirror as I turned to the paper towel dispenser. I was grinning like mad and I didn't even know. Relaxing my face, my cheeks ached. It seemed likely that I'd been subconsciously smiling for hours.

And even the daunting task of getting 50 random strangers on campus to take a long, dry survey for my research methods class only slightly dampened my spirit.

Seriously, though, if ever you are feeling like a hot shot, approach someone while holding a clipboard. They will look at you like your face is covered in cockroaches. It doesn't matter how low cut your shirt is.

I'm just drunk enough to be weepy, and just moved enough to be, for once in my life, speechless.

I stood in line for an hour to vote today. Some guy was walking around giving out piping hot slices of pizza to all us pour souls stuck in line and I got some studying done. Doin' my civic duty, no biggie fries.

As I was inking in the bubble for president, I got the kind of goosebumps that spike your arm hairs and go all the way up the back of your neck. I'm a sap like that.

Fingers, toes, eyes, whatever. Consider all crossable body parts hereby crossed.

I haven't been able to register for winter classes because two different holds were placed on my account.

The first one is that I never had my final transcripts forwarded from Ohio State, something I should have done at some point this summer. All quarter I've been attending classes in a good faith standing that I managed to not fail out of college after applying to grad school. It's a reasonable thing to check up on, considering I did not even give one damn last spring about my grades. I was much too busy waking up on Ana's couch on Monday mornings, still drunk from karaoke the night before, to fret about whether I'd get to wear a cap and gown come June. And for all the shit I'm wont to talk about Ohio State, I put in a request for my transcripts to be sent last night at 11 pm and got a text message this morning at 9 am that said they'd been processed. So, congratulations, Ohio State, you did one thing efficiently one time.

The second is that somehow I am registered as a male. I tried to correct it when I scheduled classes for fall, but OU told me that I had to "provide medical documentation of my sex reassignment surgery". Really? Really. So I let it go, because how much could it matter?

Well, as an adult able-bodied American "male", I have to be registered with the selective service, our national conscription service so that we can whip up an army in a jiffy should Russia invade Alaska or whatever. Because I'm not, OU threatened to take away my funding and put a hold on my account until I signed up with Uncle Sam.

Today, I signed a couple forms at the registrar and from now on, I should be a lady in the eyes of the university. And I expect to be treated like one. I'm talkin' jackets over puddles, doors opened, maybe picking up the check for "graduate student fees" every once in a while.

Still nursing hangovers from a particularly beer-sodden Halloween night (pictured above), Ana and I grabbed dinner at the Dube after she got off work.

Ana, being a few years older than me, has beat me to a lot of the crises that plague the modern itinerant twentysomething. Like, how I feel like I'm losing myself in this town, with this graduate school lifestyle, fading slowly away like a snapshot in Back to the Future. And while my character is unchanging, it's hard not to feel defined by the company I keep, by the things that I do. And right now I feel defined by solitude and endless papers and textbook chapters. And the toxic guilt and anxiety from underaccomplished weekdays keeps seeping into my weekends, when I'm supposed to be reminding myself that I'm a real person. And I need Ana, not to tell me I've only got two weeks left and then I get a break, not to tell me it's only a year, but to nod her head fervently and say that she understands.

I'm taking Ana's advice to keep my brain in order: from now on, grad school is my 9-5 job. And I'm posting it here because maybe then, under the watchful eyes of the whole goddamn Internet, I'll finally start being accountable to myself.