No spring chicken, me (but that's alright)

I turned the big 2-5 yesterday, which puts me solidly in my mid-twenties. Last year, when Dani hit this milestone, I taunted her mercilessly and informed her over and over again that she was old. There were many jokes about broken hips made. And so, this year she returned the favor.

This is only underscored by the fact that I have been introduced around the psych department as "one of our advanced doctoral students." When did that happen? I don't think I was advanced last year. There's a similar thing happening in my grad union, for which I am one of two Solidarity and Political Action co-chairs. And one of three of the officers who actually remembers the last contract negotiation. So it's always like, "well, you, X and Y were there. Let's ask the old-timers."

This whole old-timer thing isn't bad, understand, I'm having no crisis about the fleeting nature of youth or anything. It just...sort of...snuck up on me. Damn you, time, and your unstoppable forward progression!

OK, now that that's out of my system...birthday news! Since Friday, I have done exactly three things: play The Beatles: Rock Band, watch Planet of the Apes and its numerous sequels of varying quality, and get this tattoo.

old-timey quote for an old-timey gal

It's from (not so shockingly, considering) Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (no whales are involved), which I highly recommend if you've never read it. It's brilliant. And I like it, especially the end (which is where the quote is from) and the dead-letter office passage, because it brings up a lot of interesting questions about the insignificance of life and the paradoxcial myopic importance it holds for us anyway. Why does polite society matter? Because we think it does. So, does it really matter at all? Perhaps not, suggests Bartleby, but it is sort of the only thing holding us together. Maybe that makes it matter enough. As a psychologist, I find it to be a work of fiction that addresses the underlying motives for social constructions and why we tend to get so profoundly disturbed when someone doesn't buy in to said social constructions. I have to admit, one reason why it resonates with me so much is that there's as much Bartleby in me as there is the lawyer. It's a tension I face every time I go to (what I consider) another useless meeting and one of the underpinnings of my now-legendary avoidance of my phone. In any case, it seemed a fitting if highly nerdish tattoo to get.

A final note: I will update this blog! It will happen! I have posts planned, see?

• a discussion on Rock Band in general and how I'm terribly addicted to it
• Fat Girl Face Off '09
• the Decemberists in concert
• the planning of Jarthen: Book 2
• how writing an autobiographically-based character unnerves me
• many, many socks (a week of socks! huzzah!)