Varia

Today's spam-of-choice was entitled "mysteries of the oriental hive." But then it was just about seeing Nicole Kidman naked.

Good food last night: butternut squash, leeks, bay scallops, basmati rice, and a shocking amount of butter, arranged according to a recipe in Saveur. Best of all, it was made entirely of things we already had sitting in our refrigerator or freezer that needed to be used up.

Today I'm going to read about Livia Drusilla, a.k.a. Julia Augusta, wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius, or, placed along the edge of accuracy and in-, Rome's first "empress"; I have not yet read fully the biography of her that came out a few months ago. Tomorrow I'm going to re-read my prospectus and distill a ten-minute presentation from it.

In between, I'll watch "Angel."

Ugh

It seems that the professor in my department who didn't realize until yesterday that she was meant to be on my committee (thanks to miscommunication between my advisor and me, if sentences like "I think it would be better if I talked to potential committee members" and "It's something you should have done for yourself" spoken by my advisor a few months ago and yesterday, respectively, counts as miscommunication) needs me to move the prospectus defense so that she can attend.

Which is fine, I guess; I should have indeed been more aggressive about this, but the Advisor seemed to think (at one time, anyway) that it was somehow more appropriate given nebulous departmental politics for him to do the talking. Can't do anything about that now, and as he is my chief champion in the department I don't want to say I was just following bad advice that happened to augment my laziness. But I worry that the department will respond by (a) moving the defense considerably earlier, like tomorrow or something, or (b) postponing it until I am elderly.