On the plus side, the next week-and-a-half means
- Madison World Music Festival (!!!!)
- Willy Street Fair (!!!)
- Obama on the UW-Madison campus (!!!!)
- Wicked (!!!!)

and

- moving into our apartment tomorrow, finally!

and

- my old boss is willing to send me out to work for the State of Wisconsin as soon as a position opens up!




On the downside, Bernd and I are both super sick, and our apartment still looks more like a battlefield than a habitable space...

Fund for the Public Interest.

I had a phone interview with Fund for the Public Interest a few months ago. I never made it to my in-person interview in Chicago (the nearest location) - though I desperately wanted a shot at working with them - because my interview was scheduled for the day after I landed a new job - I didn't feel that I could ask for time off.

And today, FPI called out of the blue and said, basically, that they had been very excited to meet with me and very disappointed that our attempts to reschedule never worked out, and hey, do I want to interview in Madison at 4:00 on May 17? YES, do I ever!

So I have an interview with something pretty damn close to my dream job on my 23rd birthday!

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.

I spent all day yesterday in painful heels and a very sharp suit. The career fair would have been much more promising if I had majored in something sensible like, oh, economics, engineering, accounting, computer science, math, science-science… the few advertising and marketing positions available were flooded with applications.

Most of the day, I caught up with Saad and Marquis.

Last night, I rejoined my history seminar classmates for a debate on the use of unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan. It’s such a tricky subject. The way I see it
- Lack of oversight of the Predator drone program in the US makes me nervous.
- Lack of public debate over the Predator drone program in the US makes me nervous, since it represents a “radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force” (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker).
- Potential to destabilize the unpopular Zardari regime inside a politically fragmented, nuclear-armed country on the border with another nuclear-armed enemy country (India).
- Potential
- Drones destroy human intelligence on the ground.
- Some drone strike targets dictated by Pakistani government, whose interests (political and otherwise) are not always in line with our own.
- Predator drone strikes are a FRIGHTENINGLY sustainable way for the US to continue conflicts (low cost in terms of American blood, low oversight/accountability, low visibility to US population) around the world. I read somewhere that “drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on endless war” and—yes. That scares me. When war has a sufficiently high, sufficiently visible cost, we pick our battles more carefully.

It doesn't feel like the first of December (sun and blue skies, 50F), so it simply can't be. It must be November first. I'd even believe you if you said, "It's the first of October, but don't forget to bring a sweater!" My memory has collapsed the last three months into an untidy heap. I have no idea where the time went, only that I spent that time happy and happily worn out from late-night walks in the city and every kind of amusement (good people, good coffee, good music, good dancing, good travels, good risks, all worth it). My last semester of university has been wilder and sweeter than I could have imagined. There are a few too many (read: many too many) things competing for my attention right now--all of them pressing--and when I think about it, I realize I'm neglecting virtually every area of my life in some way. After graduation, I need to make some reparations: to my family, who I have visited too infrequently; to my old friends, who I miss too much; to my body, which craves a good long sleep and has tolerated too many meals on the run and not enough lovingly prepared and leisurely paced dinners... and that's just to name three!




A short list of jobs I am not qualified for, as posted on the UW Student Job Center:
- Shotput and discus coach
- Russian-speaking customer service representative
- Canine groomer
- Piano instructor
- Cross-country ski instructor (it looks like fun, but my attempts at skiing have been marked by a wicked magnetic attraction to tree trunks)