I have gotten into a bad writing habit where if the work I have to do is below a certain size (say 3000 words, or more of revision/rewriting) I’ll slack off until the last day I can possibly submit it. Then I write the whole thing in one 12 hour sitting. Which is how I have come to be wide awake at 6am. But the paper is finished, and apart from presenting it on Friday, I won’t have to think about it for a while. I also had quite a lovely weekend. Yesterday, big Footscray mission with S., including pho, op-shopping, and Asian grocery shopping. I came away with: a full belly; a cream silk ascot; a lemon-coloured shirt with French cuffs; a tan-and-brown scarf which will do as a neckerchief; a verrrrry cute red-and-blue neckerchief, which I can’t seem to take off from around my neck; and last but not least a black, red pin-striped blazer which will do as a spruced-up conference outfit with the shirt and one of the scarves. Oh and a really skinny, shimmery, deep blue tie. And that was just the clothes. Then there were the two shopping-bags full of frozen Chinese buns, and special home-made Shanghai dumplings from the bakery. I ate them this morning as a hangover breakfast. Because that’s right, even with three months to go until I submit my draft, I’m still going to parties. And dancing.

This week is shaping up pretty steep in terms of time management. Lauren Berlant’s in town… There’s a conference on Embodied Globalisations on Thursday and Friday…. And tomorrow I am seeing a dentist for the first time in three years. Ouch. (This post has been brought to you by the vague feeling of guilt I get every time I think about my blog, and not updating it.)

I wish I could muster the brain energy for a post involving serious cultural analysis, or political commentary. For various reasons to do with stomach-y pain and chronic insomina/fatigue, I’m trying to cut coffee out of my diet at the moment. It’s difficult to think about anything but the raging headache I’ve got, or what I could ingest that would make it better. (A nice strong latte, probably.) Also, today my uni office is playing host to A’s friend’s puppy. One tiny ball of black fluffy hyperactivity and cuteness. It’s enough to make me reconsider (not) getting a dog.

However. I am writing lots of thesis right now, and there is a post being drafted about the difficulty of defining the Australian healthcare system’s ‘approach’ to transsexuality as anything national, or singular, bringing to mind some of the arguments around dispositifs and their contradictory nature as social apparatuses (thus having some systemic qualities) and being wildly fragmentary, contingent, produced on-the-fly at the same time.

It’s winter; it’s christ-on-a-bike cold; it’s been raining a lot. all I wanna do is curl up with some Freud essays or Angel episodes and some lemon delicious pudding. (more…)