Liveblogging CLT

My plane landed an hour ago and now I'm waiting for the fam to arrive here in Charlotte. CLT is a pretty great airport - free WiFi, rocking chairs, live culture frozen yogurt. I'm not actually doing anything worthy of a liveblog, but I like to take advantage of free internet when it's available, out of principle. So let's catch up.

I went to the Game with Sam and Dan last weekend. We lost. Again. And the air was as cold as a Cantab's Puritan heart. I thought I was going to lose some toes.

I met up with two long-time neglected old friends in Chinatown. After 4 years of zero contact and a few recent facebook exchanges the reconnection still managed to feel impulsive. It was good, though. Things change and don't change, you know?

Coming up after Thanksgiving is an "official" reunion of my mother's mother's family, the Alexandres.

Oh, and they're here. I have to go.

My iPod is trying to tell me something

Soon after wiping out spectacularly on the pavement outside the NYU Near East Studies Center this morning, after a late night of cover letters and personal statement procrastination, the following songs came up on my shuffle function:

Don't Let it Bring You Down
You Can Have it All
What Else is There?
Requiem
Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth
Sleep
Demon Days
The Boss
I Don't Blame You

A warning? Not subtle, iPod.

Love

I burst into tears watching this video today.



That is all.

It's cool, we can still be friends

Alright, yes I am being silly. We have a black president-elect! Suck it, cynics! The long national nightmare that was the Sarah Palin news cycle is over. America - fuck yeah! I will not be unemployed forever, and in the meantime I have time to do things like walk across the Brooklyn Bridge with out of town guests. And search Little Italy for pig candy. And drink wine with my grandmother at her ladies' club. And take in an Abstract Expressionist show at a gallery called Haunch of Venison. All free!

Also, come on, this is Brooklyn! Molly runs into Timothy Busfield all the time. The friend's birthday party I attended on Monday featured a concert with members of Beirut and The Arcade Fire and Zach Condon was there! We love our neighbors and Fall is lasting forever and I run into Darnell on the subway. What I was saying in July about anticipatory household joy, and Xin and Molly being good for mental stability and whatnot - all true! So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

No need to call, folks, I'm cool.

Election hangover

I have this post-partum thing going on. I was so ready for cathartic joy on Election Night. Instead I was too physically exhausted to even cry, much less celebrate. I really wanted to cry. And celebrate the whole victory of hope and the future and history. It's great we won and all, and I suppose in the future I will feel pride for having spent four days in Philly getting out the vote, doing my part for a renewed America, but the overall experience was a little underwhelming.

All of it is underwhelming somehow. You'd think I was a McCain supporter with the ennui I'm working right now. Part of it is the continued joblessness, mild loneliness, boredom, therapy-withdrawal, but there is a greater disconnect. Like the instant we won my blind optimism was replaced with circa 2007 baseline cynicism. What to do with that? What about Hope?

Feh, it's there. No worries.