voncookie | October 31, 2007
Oh, it’s such a good thing that I came to Spain! I just had a possible breakthrough on Chapter 2 of the Diss, one that will require a few more hours at the BNE, and a few days of waiting for books to arrive from Alcalá de Henares. Funny that, since I lived in Alcalá [...]
voncookie | October 31, 2007
As usual, I can rely on Tara for some I-Hate-Halloween Goodness. Read this if you hate Halloween as much as I do. And even if you don’t hate Halloween, read it anyway, it’s great.
voncookie | October 31, 2007
For those of you who don’t know, “11-M” is the Spanish equivalent of 9/11: the name that the bombings of the cercanías trains in Madrid has taken on. Today they are sentencing the participants/accomplices of these atrocious attacks, and the coverage on TV is both sober and fierce. El país has a good article, but [...]
voncookie | October 30, 2007
(Two miracles for the price of one…) Wow, today was a surprise! I thought I was going to spend the day indoors, nursing my feet and writing my proposal, which I did work on, to the tune of about 700 words, which is not bad since the whole process was like pulling teeth. I worked [...]
voncookie | October 30, 2007
It is an essential skill that as a graduate student one must develop: the ability to condense the key points of one’s area of interest into a statement of 10 pages or less. Wait, who am I kidding? 10 pages is a luxury. Try 2 pages. Or maybe even one. True mastery comes when you [...]
voncookie | October 29, 2007
What happens when you do a load of wash and it gets stuck on rinse and keeps trying to spin but can’t??? You get a ton of really wet laundry that has to air dry, including the pajamas you were supposed to wear to bed, but can’t because they’re soaking wet, as if you had [...]
voncookie | October 29, 2007
For those of you who read/speak Spanish, here’s the link to explain what’s going on. For you monoglots out there (not that there’s anything wrong with that), there’s a strike today being put on by the workers of RENFE (the railroad system here). It has something to do with the AVE (the high speed train [...]
voncookie | October 28, 2007
Not able to walk the kilometer or so to Metro Delicias, or uphill to Metro Acacias, I’ve discovered a handy alternative—the freakin’ bus, which stops right across the street. One word: DUH. I was so enamored of the metro, and after years of living in a bad part of town in Berkeley and taking the [...]
voncookie | October 26, 2007
This comes up for me every once in a while: the specter of evil curmudgeons sitting in High Academic Places that will smite me, you, and every other Ph.D. candidate who dares to blog. Bloggers I sometimes read occasionally quake at the thought of this, and offer pictures of themselves hiding behind books, or profiles [...]
voncookie | October 26, 2007
Maybe a year or two ago, Al Gore made an appearance on SNL. Sitting in the fake Oval Office, he addressed the audience as if he were president, talking about how since he took office in 2000, world peace had been brokered, the price of oil was scraping rock bottom because we had discovered alternate [...]
voncookie | October 26, 2007
Here are the culprits in all their glory: Cute little deadly bastards aren’t they? Zapatos de sangre, the new play by Federico García Lorca…
voncookie | October 25, 2007
I just finished the first one. I was up early because my feet were hurting and I’m getting a cold. Nothing goes better with Frenadol than crochet. Click here to see my mitts on CraftyBits. (Yes I’m aware that rhymes.)
voncookie | October 25, 2007
I have officially ruined my feet. Just devastated them. They are not to be used for at least 12 hours. I’m having a shoe emergency. A horrid shoe problem that has my feet actually bleeding. Here’s what’s happening: In my attempt to blend in with the stylish madrileñas (women from Madrid), I decided to bring [...]
voncookie | October 24, 2007
I was not expecting what I saw: a lovely villa set apart from the street, behind iron gates, with a fountain in the courtyard, in a state of slight, pleasant decay. I entered and the women behind the front desk greeted me with some suspicion. I should have said immediately that I had corresponded with [...]
voncookie | October 24, 2007
Today’s menu: trudge up the hill to Acacias Metro, take the #5 towards what used to be Canillejas, but since they’ve extended the line… I can’t remember where it ends up. Chances are I’ll know by the end of the day. Here’s a link to the map for the Madrid Metro for those who are [...]
