today is thursday

i must admit to being a bit confused about such things as "days of the week" - there were a brief couple of days when i felt like i suddenly had time to breath, and then i began with antibiotics and exam fretting so it's all a bit...

---tuesday night:
the route was great, although pg was quite impatient with me and we sat in silence over the post-blade frozen yoghurt. the sense of drama on heightened when she discovered that the shower door's damaged - neither of us know how but i'm considered the prime suspect. it's the kind of damage that requires a professional :(

---we went to be early, around 2 - 2.30pm, and i got up early to go to the bank and sort out a money transfer. the woman presented me with one of the unfriendliest forms to fill in, one that contained far too many unnecessarily legal terms and even post-translation was unclear. i became progressively more tense, and then the poor clerk got upset because she thought i was angry with her.

well, i should have been. she didn't offer me much assistance with the damned thing, and to make matters worse i got a phone call a few hours later explaining that there were a couple of details i hadn't filled in so i'd have to come in and do it again. very professional, lady. very professional.

---pg was super-weird yesterday morning. we walked to the bus in uncomfortable silence, and then we stood on the traffic island and she accused me of putting ideas of awkwardness into her head. i can't say i'm completely innocent, but i've been sensing strange cues the whole week...

the day began with a headache. the first class was a two hour preparation for mark strand's later appearance, and it was fairly interesting. after lunch with wr (who proposed some interesting ideas for the september event) and a few minutes sitting with one of my study groups (some of whom were engrossed in linguistics homework, which looked really familiar... it resembles discrete mathematics, actually) i went out to wait for a friend of mine to pick me up.

after two hours discussing politics, the arts and how to approach the problems in israeli society - two hours during which i learned about all sorts of surprisingly awesome projects that don't get promoted at all - he dropped me back on campus for mark strand. on the way i spoke to nystire, who made a pretty good case for why i shouldn't return to training until i'm over the antibiotics. no, i don't really want to risk kidney troubles :S

---a certain professor gave the introduction, and some members of the faculty were as shocked as the rest of us to hear her obscure analysis of mark strand's poetry. quite presumptuous. one of the poets who introduced him (there were a number of hebrew translations read, and they were very good) told us how he used to publish strand's poems on the back of the magazine he was working for, without informing readers that it was poetry - shock poetry? apparently it was surprisingly engaging.

mark strand was absolutely inspirational. everything he read was magic - few poems, but it was all poetry: he's very funny on the topic of prose form. riveting stuff, presented with such easy humanity that i was touched. and all of this appreciation in spite of the splitting headache; i only managed the reading on the wings of the chocolate and coke that i'd arranged at the last minute :P

---from art to politics: i walked to the building next door for a talk by noam shalit. while waiting for him to arrive, a man with a really cool t-shirt walked in.

i'm really glad i went to hear him speak. noam shalit just gave me a whole new perspective on an issue that i had taken a rather solid stance on. i'll discuss it more in detail at a later stage, but the bottom line really is that gilad shalit has been in captivity for almost five years and it's past time that we should bring him home.

trading terrorists is not a perfect solution, but it is the right one. it's time.

---i spent the way back home stuck into my phone, learning about twitter. i have begun providing a service that i'm hoping will take off, and there's a certain amount of journalistic responsibility involved...

i took pg out for sushi - for the first time this week things are back to normal ^_^
we ate way too much and it was really good.

the scar on my lower back (i had a mole removed a couple of months ago) is itching, and driving me crazy. i wonder if that has to do with the antibiotics?

...

i went straight to bed afterwards, and woke up early thinking to post this and get some reading done... so much for the reading. and what's here only made up about 50% of my notes; i have a daunting to-do list...

---gay parent bashing. in texas. this is quite touching.

another riddick? i can handle that.