Another sigh, get ready.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

After Sam left for the airport, I went to the NYPL to pick up some materials I reserved oh so efficiently online. I picked up my short story collection, cd, and cd score. I then decided to go to Barnes & Noble and do what I occasionally do there. Not get books - no way, that's what the library is for. I go to read magazines for free. Not just any magazines, either. I typically read the celebrity worshipping/bashing magazines with sections like "Stars: They're Just Like Us!" I never doubt they are (okay, well sometimes) and I promise I'm not that shallow, but I do it because Domino Perez, my professor for Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in American Literature and Film said it was okay and even academic. Pop culture fascinates and disgusts me simultaneously.

That exposition was entirely too long. Anyhow, I passed a Columbia-owned building and learned that many great modern female writers who are Barnard alumnae will be speaking and reading tomorrow. Edwidge Danticat, Anna Quindlen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Erica Jong, just to name a few. I wish I could go! I've learned about this awfully late, though. If I were a Columbia or Barnard student, I could have gone to the welcome for free. Many panels are now closed, too and I'd have to pay to get in. I cannot learn about another opportunity like this too late. I have to read the Columbia Spectator from now on. It's a vow.

On the right: The poetic Ms. Danticat. I spent hours writing a paper comparing her story "Children of the Sea" to Shakespeare's "The Tempest." We belong together!