I'd like to volunteer for being totally unnecessary

Not much goin' on around here. This is the first full weekend I'm spending in Princeton, and it's already been a bit weird. The weather was crazy yesterday and today. Can it actually rain this much? Is this what Seattle is like? I feel like I need those weird thigh-high fisherman boots. Everything's a bit damp and moldy. My shoes squelched by the time I got home. Yuck.

I went to a symposium hosted by the art history department here. The topic at hand was "Dark Rooms: Photography and Invisibility," and they had a great line-up. Too bad I missed most of it, but I heard about 3 papers delivered and a floor discussion. Oh, to see the pomposity congregated in one room -- lots of people laughing uproariously at weak sallies, and one prize-winning moment when about six members of the audience rushed to help translate a french word into its English counterpart. My favorite point was when one of the professors kept saying "interpretate" in a very earnest manner. Don't you just love the French?

I've been watching a lot of movies of late: Chinatown, The Women (again), and tonight The Life Aquatic. Good stuff. I don't know what's on the agenda for tomorrow. There's a new exhibition opening at the Princeton Art Museum on Homeric legends, so maybe I'll potter over to that. I've recently been poking my head into all the stuff going on in the area, and it suddenly struck me that there really is so much in which I could be interested. Hooray for living near a well-endowed university with money to fling into art programs!

I've decided to retire from people for a little while. I spent most of today wandering the streets in the rain, and it felt great to be out there in the fresh air on my own. The good thing about rain is that people suddenly become extremely self-contained and anonymous on the roads; they're coccooned by umbrellas or hoods and they walk fast with their eyes trained on the ground. It makes it so much easier for amblers like me to potter about without having to worry about smiling at strangers. Not that I was sullen or anything. I just liked that I could do whatever I wanted and not have to consider other people's presences.

Christoph and I had a long long conversation last night about everything ranging from Indian ragas to babysitting in Spain and traveling in mainland China. He's a cool kid, but a little strange. I still don't know how I feel about living right next to him. He runs his own non-profit and is surprisingly idealistic. I also don't know how I feel about this. Isn't a good dose of cynicism healthy? He's into house music as well, though, so much is forgiven. Christoph thinks I should try to get my blog published. That's flattering, but who the hell would pay to read this?