well I remember halloween

my spirit animal.  (not power animal.  maybe.)

This week I defended my thesis and flew to San Francisco for a job interview and went to two haunted houses and dressed up as Marla Singer and saw my awesome awesome cousins and became addicted to Mac makeup and had a story published and made a playlist of Nightmare Before Christmas, Space Oddity and its covers, and 4 jillion hours of childrens choirs covering rock songs and rock bands covering opera songs and then listened to it for 4 jillion hours.

I want to write about these things but I'm a little frazzled, and there's also that Halloween marathon on.

Here are some other things instead.  Some of them happened.  Some of them I wrote down on a piece of scrap paper that I use when I'm working to kind of siphon stray thoughts or phrases, pensieve-style.

--What do you even do if this happens:

During my thesis defense, my advisor was telling me I needed to organize my graphs in a more clear manner, so it would be immediately clear what information I was trying to convey.

"These sort of [clear, punchy, aha-moment] graphs," he said, "is what we call in academia: the money shot."

And inside I was all like HAHAHAHA THAT'S NOT AN ACADEMIA TERM.

And then he just, like, kept saying it.

Should I have said something?  Pulled him aside later?  Just did what I did and have him keep cracking up undergrads?  WHO KNOWS.

--I cannot handle grown women wearing fuzzy hats with ears especially when they go on and on about how tiny they are among other unforgivable things.  I'm sorry I tried and I just can't.

--I effing love Halloween and haunted houses.  I like old horror slasher movies where the rules are so archaic and the acting so bad it's pretty much religious pageantry.

--San Francisco is beautiful; I think the interview went okay; I love the ocean and non-traditional gender presentation.

--Good luck to all delicate sardines in the Mediterranean sea.