Since my roommate is spending his evening occupied with unselfconscious creativity, I figure I can do a little better than dredging up interesting photos from flickr. As alluded to in my 4th of July musings, I just finished Interpreter of Maladies, the Pulitzer-winning collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, which I bought on a whim to console myself after my latest bicycle-buying misadventure. The stories are excellent (as you might imagine, given, you know, the Pulitzer and everything) in their own right, but I think I enjoyed them, in large part, because they nearly all revolve around things, my relationships with which I’ve recently been reconsidering: India, New England, and academia. Similar themes dominate Lahiri’s The Namesake (on a superficial level, at least), which I grabbed on a whim as I was walking out the door on my way to Indiana, secretly a little distraught to be leaving home again so soon after arriving. Even though my own experience is obviously, radically different from those of the characters in the stories, most recently arrived from India, outsiders trying to make lives for themselves in the place I was born and raised in, I can’t help but think that the difference is, in someways, not of kind but of degree.

Coming back from my time abroad, a rather unexpected digression from my planned academic trajectory, has somewhat predictably led (warning! cliches ahead!) to changes in perspective, and in a way I might even say that because of these as-of-yet-unexamined shifts the place (or places: Williams, New England, America) I’ve come back to is not the one that I left. I suppose this is the “reverse culture shock” that we were warned about, warnings I mostly ignored, since I didn’t think that I suffered from terribly bad non-reverse culture shock to begin with. Maybe I’m just being melodramatic, what with all the reading and coffee drinking and cooking and introspecting I’ve had time to do lately, or maybe I’m just indulging a burgeoning nostalgia for my time spent in India with a close group of friends, and mistaking that for nostalgia for India itself, but right now I’m inclined to think that my interest in and attachment to those places and people and culture and history is meaningful and lasting. And that, combined with missing New England and lots and lots of confusion about what my likely career in academia really means, makes Lahiri’s stories absolutely captivating.

It also can’t hurt that I’ve been absolutely starved for good fiction recently. Recently as in the last few months. At this point I will eagerly solicit suggestions for summer reading, be it fiction or non-fiction, edifying or merely entertaining.

That is the actual title of this photo. I’m pretty excited that this exists.

(Link to photo, ganked from agrodolce2012 on flickr)

Oftentimes, when I’m forced to spend holidays away from home, I find them to be somewhat off-putting or upsetting, being a interruption of the rhythm of daily life that I’ve worked so hard to establish. But, against all the odds, I really enjoyed today, our nation’s birthday. A couple of reasons include: sleeping in for the first time in a few weeks, having a nice leisurely breakfast of oatmeal and tea, a lunch of leftover lentil soup (oddly appropriate for the unseasonably record-setting-ly cool, cloudy weather we had today), and reading short stories all morning and afternoon. Also significant was having somewhere to go to celebrate, thanks to a blanket invitation from Al to the Bloomington ultimate crowd, the organizer of the summer leagues. Despite initial reluctance, of the “what if it’s awkward that I don’t really know anyone” flavor, I finally convinced myself to go and had a wonderful time, hanging out with assorted ultimate people and English grad students, playing Euchre (cleaning up at Euchre, I might add) and having beer and hamburgers and brats and watching National Treasure and generally enjoying having people to laugh and have fun with. So, happy birthday, USA!

So today I had yet another used bicycle slip through my fingers.  A never-ridden, $600 bicycle, that was offered to me for $100.  Because, after taking the bus all the way across town, waiting for the owner to show up at his storage unit, and convincing him to sell the bike to me (rather than any of the other four people who he also told to come look at it), I didn’t have cash on hand to pay for it.  I also didn’t think fast enough to offer him more money to drive me to an atm so I could get cash.  Moral of the story: bring cash when you’re buying things listed on craigslist.

Cooking, baking, and watching the lightning. Bloomington got its first real thunderstorm since I’ve been here, as all the other storm systems that have come through the midwest missed us. The combination of good food (pasta with homemade marinara sauce and italian sausage; fresh oatmeal bread), good beer (Stone IPA), and good lightning teamed up with an article blogged and del.icio.us-ed my way by Jue about the decline of intellectualism in the Ivy League (among other things), and got me thinking about introspection. One might even say I was..er…introspecting about introspection.

I’ve been doing a lot of it lately, what with processing the end of my semester abroad (after first having to process its start), thinking about senior year and beyond, and striking off on my own this summer. I like to think of this summer as a sort of introspection retreat, where I can nurture my love of science and language and learning and simultaneously learning how not to go completely insane with loneliness. Which is what happened, more or less, two years ago, although I’m realizing that may have had a lot to do with a post-freshman year freakout, and me not really knowing what I was getting myself into. But, so far, this summer I’m going pretty good, what with having a somewhat aloof but quite personable roommate and playing ultimate and going to robot club (yes).  Still, I miss being around 18 of the best people ever, all the time, and I miss Ruth and my family and friends from Williams and Bangor people like crazy, too.

On the docket for tomorrow: some write-ups about stuff I’ve learned so far, debugging my ARTWORD implementation, and checking out what I need to do to get into grad school (eek!).

Another highlight from ultimate on tuesday was getting to play under lights, which I’ve only ever done in the middle of winter, practicing on the turf after dark. There’s something magical about inhabiting a little island of light, something that lends a little extra epic-ness to whatever is happening there.

This, I think, is a general pattern; it applies equally to sports as it does to riding down a deserted, orange-lit road in the middle of the night, or to the way a particular house on the road home in Glenburn, set back from the road by a long driveway and huge lawn, is dramatically set against the woods behind by a single security light. I suppose I might even say that the drama and magic of night depends on the contrast between darkness and light which is enhanced then.

(Link to photo, ganked from Lucee. on flickr)

Bloomington continues to be great. I’ve more or less settled into a more or less regular routine of getting up more or less early, getting a bagel and coffee and reading all morning, although I’ve also migrated from Starbucks to a local place called Soma, trading smarmy jazz and other Starbucks-y musical stylings for indie pop and punk rock, and middle-schoolers and middle-aged people for tattooed hipsters and charmingly nerdy college town people, to say nothing of the decor. I could go on and on about the various quirks of each of the coffee shops in Bloomington (and probably will, at some point), mostly because these are public places that encourage sitting around and people watching while hopped up on caffeine.

Other than drinking coffee and reading about models of various levels of speech comprehension I haven’t been doing much. The two notable exceptions are cooking and playing ultimate. The cooking is getting harder, as I’ve cooked just about everything that I know how to and many things that I don’t (or didn’t, I should say). I also really wanted fish the other night, which as I’m sure you can imagine is in rather short supply here.

But ultimate—I finally got off my ass and signed up for the Bloomington rec league and went to a game (even managing to find a ride) last night, which was a lot of fun. Since I’ve been all but completely sedentary the last few weeks I expected to run for a point and then collapse on the sidelines, possibly due to massive cardiac arrest, but that didn’t happen. I even had a point and an assist, helping team Legion of Doom to their first ever double-digits performance, despite getting stomped by the Super Friends.

The general atmosphere—friendly, fun, and competitive—reminded me a lot of playing with the Blackfly crowd during various summer breaks. Except we had enough for all four teams to play with four-plus subs. The level of play was pretty high, especially the last few points of the game after our captain got frustrated by how badly our asses were getting kicked and we played a little harder and a little smarter. More than anything else, it was just fun to be out running around and chasing plastic and interacting with people.

It’s funny how easy it is to forget how important it is to have an in in a strange place, and how less alienated you feel after meeting just a few people that you have something in common with.

I love saturday mornings spent sitting around the kitchen table in my pajama pants, having oatmeal and tea and listening to snippets of NPR and aimlessly surfing the internet. Special bonus if I happen to stumble upon something that is not only mildly interesting but to which I can relate. In those instances it doesn’t really matter what is said, or even how well, but rather the familiarity, however oblique, of the sentiment and experience expressed.

Boy-o, that was pretentious! Another (ironic) gem from this morning’s web-grazing: “I’m most productive in the morning”, a sentence composed entirely from matchsticks and dramatically lit, one of the slogans/works/whatevers submitted to the Things I have learned in my life so far project.

Plans for the rest of the day mostly consist of drinking coffee, reading, and going to the Taste of Bloomington food-stravaganza this evening with my roommate. Deliciousness should ensue. I intend to spent the entirety of tomorrow as I did last Sunday, reading the Times all morning and cooking all evening. Huzzah!

Oh!  I’ve finally capitulated to suggestions by Jue that I get a del.icio.us, thereby putting the disorganized collection of links that used to be the primary source of content here where they belong.

Pretty crazy, judging by his post-game interview on Tuesday, in which he babbled, screamed, teared up, and celebrated utterly, delightfully incoherently. Via Slate is a touching, slightly tongue-in-cheek analysis of that particular spectacle in the context of his generally very emotional comportment. If you missed the interview, you can watch it here, or just read the following rough transcript of the first minute to get a taste of the insanity.

0:00: Greeted by Tafoya, Garnett first appears to be gripped by emotions familiar to any sports fan who’s watched a championship celebration: happiness and disbelief. He presses his brand-new championship hat to his head with both hands, seemingly afraid it might come loose.

0:07: “NBA Champion—how does that sound?” Tafoya asks. Garnett is at a loss for words. After a long pause and more futzing with his new hat, he says, in a strangely even tone, “Man, I’m so, I’m so hype right now.”

0:20: Garnett tells Tafoya that “anything’s possible.” He then leans back and howls at the moon: “ANYTHING’S POOOOOOSSIIIIIBLLLLLLE!” He holds the note for four seconds.

0:27: At this point the catharsis gets the better of Garnett, and he begins crying. These are not the poignant tears of joy shed by Michael Jordan upon winning his first Larry O’Brien Trophy. Garnett is in the throes of something closer to a child’s tantrum, mumbling indecipherable words. Approximate translation: “Oh my buh buh, fa fa fa fa fa.” He then buries his head in the shoulder of an unidentified Celtics staffer, who proceeds to say, “Yeah, baby!” repeatedly. ABC’s producers pull away for a moment, cutting to a long shot of the arena.

I know, I didn’t think I could cook, either, but I enjoyed this marinade (as did my roommate) and made it up on the spot, to boot, so allow me to revel in my culinary success. I was frankly terrified at the prospect of having to actually feed myself all summer, instead of just stuffing myself five times a week at the dining hall as has been the status quo of summers past. But I’ve found it to be quite liberating: if I have to eat something, then I have to cook something (thanks to my rather meager stipend…) and somehow that necessity emboldens me. I’m still a pretty crappy cook but I’ve done okay so far and I’m getting bolder by the day. The problem at this point is actually that I have made, in all, far more food than I can eat and have scads of leftovers.

Anyway, I only made enough for one or two chicken breasts, so I don’t know how it would scale up to a larger batch, but here’s what I used.

• Juice of (almost one) line
• A tablespoon or so of olive oil
• Something like 4-6 oz. of beer (I used Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, my all-time favorite beer, but I bet any pale ale would work)
• A clove of garlic, minced
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• Some generous pinches of dried basil, thyme and rosemary

I marinaded my chicken in the fridge for about an hour, then sautéed it and had it with pasta and some fresh tomato/onion/olive oil sauce (narrowly avoiding disaster a few times, trying to do far too many things at the same time). A fair bit of the lime/spice/beer flavor was imparted to the chicken but I could have done with a bit more, and so maybe a longer soak would be good, although Patrick (the roomie) actually cooked his chicken in the marinade after a shorter soak and said he got plenty of flavor.

Finally, I should say that I was inspired by the no-nonsense simplicity of marinade recipes like this one, from Cooking for Engineers, which, from what I can tell so far, has just about the perfectly analytical bent to it’s explanations.

Other highlights of the day were getting to wade through some exciting differential equations in a language-perception model, starting to get my head around some linguistics stuff, watching a great soccer game, and standing on the deck of our building with the roomie, looking out at the sunset and downtown Bloomington and talking about India and all sorts of other stuff.