Yeah, There's the Pants-Kicking

I just had a revelation that EV will probably like: I'm bringing Catch 22 with me on my trip. It's long overdue that I actually finish that book. I started it the summer before my senior year of high school but never made it past page thirty, foolish teenager that I was. I think it's just the type of book I would actually read on a trip like this. And it offers something more than mere entertainment. And I bet I could barter it for something equally good in one of the hostels along the way (another important factor to consider).

Hostel-book-bartering is one of the most enjoyable and, simultaneously, one of the most frustrating things about traveling. In my experience, the hostels that have the best books are also the stingiest about trading for them. I still remember a hostel in Grenada, Nicaragua that rejected a copy of Jude the Obscure that I had wanted to trade for The Corrections. I was a junior in college and, as an English major, well on my way to being a literary snob, so the idea that Franzen was somehow better than Hardy made me livid. To this day, I still refuse to read The Corrections, partly because it's tinged with that sense of rejection. A funny thing to say, because I'm fairly sure JR is bringing it on this trip.

On a completely unrelated note, I've realized that I have a series of catchphrases I like to use when I'm completely screwed by the dangerous combination of my workload and my tendency to procrastinate. Most common is "boner city." Ex. "Oh, crap, I didn't finish grading these portfolios yet. I'm in Boner City" or "Well, I'm just in a whole goddamn city of boners now, aren't I?" Usage and inflection varies according to fucked-itude. The new favorite is an evolution of me saying "Aw, nuts." (That's referential - my more diligent readers probably know the provenance.) Lately, I've been saying, in a Butters-like voice, "Nutter Butters." JR's usual reply to this is, "Oh, man, I could totally go for some Nutter Butters now." Girlfriends are great for empathy. These have both managed to supplant the tried-and-true favorite, "I can't have any more days like this." I don't think I've said that once this semester in any earnestness (and, no, this doesn't count).

I have some non-verbal catchphrases, too, the most frequent of which used to be balling up my fists and vigorously flailing them up and down. (According to JR, I once did that in my sleep, accompanied with the phrase "I can't have any more days like this.") And, more often than not, I just resort to bothering JR. Just ask her.

Alright, time to change locations (coffee shop --> apartment), in the hopes of jump-starting my work for the remainder of the day. Seacrest out!

The Day After Thanksgiving

For graduate students everywhere, the day after Thanksgiving, more than any other day in the entire year, represents the greatest possible kick in the pants - especially this year, with the holiday falling so close to the end of term. That's because Thanksgiving is sweet oblivion, the one day in the whole semester in which I turn off the part of my brain that reminds me that I have to grade 40 papers and write two twenty-page papers and start researching things for my...I'm going to stop before I hyperventilate. But that switch is flipped nearly every other day of the academic year, even whilst we sleep, so being to turn it off for just a little while is a blessing.

Thanksgiving is my new Christmas. I get excited for it in the way I used to get excited for Christmas (but no longer do, Grinch that I am). We might chalk up part of that to the aforementioned brain switch, but it mostly comes from the fact that I love a) cooking food; b) eating food; c) drinking wine with aforementioned food; and, d) eating and drinking with friends. Don't get me wrong: family is great. Lovely people. But I can't drink a whole bottle of red wine in front of them (my family, at least). And I can't tell ribald stories or watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall or play a drawing game in which I present a rendition of a drunk guy taking his dick out at a company luau (great game, by the way). I can at Thanksgiving. And that's why I love it.

But now I get kicked below the belt, in the front and the back, by several different entities. English 100 is a grading hell at this point, I need to crank out a term paper in a little over a week, and J. and I need to tend to the hundred and three little things that need to happen before we ship off to South America. And that all happens within the next three weeks.

I'm less afraid than usual, largely because there is a very nice reward at the end of all this ($2 bottles of red wine at street cafés in Valparaíso), but the fear lurks. It lurks.

Books, and Doomsday(s)

Well, thanks everybody for the book recommendations. I'm going to check out a bunch of those books, I think. (Sarah: Bolano's been haunting me for the past week. There was an article on him in Paste, a piece in the Onion's A/V Club, and just yesterday morning I saw a woman reading an article about him in The New York Times. It must be fate.) I've also been milling over a set of short stories by Hawthorne, the first book in George R.R. Martin's fantasy series, and maybe Foucault's Pendulum by Eco (which I've begun but never finished). I'm trying to balance the intellectual (since I'm skipping school for several months) with the entertaining (since this is more or less a vacation), so we'll see how this all shakes out.

But keep the book recommendations coming. Even though I'm quickly running out of packing space--actually, I'm probably already over-full--my list keeps get updated.

That being said, I have no idea how I'm going to fit everything in my 1.5 backpacks. My travel pack is only 40 liters (not that huge) and my day pack is about half that size. Packing for four seasons (since winter will be kicking in while we're in Patagonia) is turning out to be quite a challenge. My pack was perfect for summery travel in Central America and Bolivia/Peru, but I'm worried about fitting in enough clothing to cover everything from trekking in Patagonia in March to hanging on a beach in Honduras in June. Not a terrible problem to have, but my packing list probably exceeds my luggage by about 40% right now. Nuts.

That's a minor problem. The major problem is the grading and term-paper-writing bind I find myself in these days. I need to finish my students' portfolios by Wednesday morning, then immediately begin writing my term paper for my Renaissance tragedy class. And Thursday is completely shot to hell (the good kind of shot to hell) because of all the planned gluttony. And Wednesday is drinking and playing video games with Ben. But things need to happen, and fast.

I won't even go into the fact that the subletters for our place bailed last week. Bastards. So there's that, too.

Every day, I have to fight the urge to go to the medicine cabinet, swallow Jessie's entire supply of Xanax, and hope that it puts me a coma for precisely one month.

Solicitations

Jessie and I are gearing up for our massive six-month trip to the far reaches of South America. And I'm figuring out what I'm going to cram into my 1.5 backpacks that will keep me warm, well-dressed, and entertained for that time.

So, I'm soliciting book suggestions from all y'all. Here are the stipulations:

(1) It needs to be on the longer side (a couple hundred pages is ideal)
(2) It needs to be printed in paperback (hardcover takes up too much space)
(3) It should be at least mildly entertaining
(4) I prefer fiction but will read just about anything

So far, I'm already bringing Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and probably a translation of Don Quixote, but that's as far as I made it. I think Jessie might be packing The Brothers Karamazov and some Gogol, but I can't say for sure.

Tell me what to read. Do it.