I Love It When You Say Titian

So it seems as though none of the books at Avery are good enough for the students nowadays. There were three carts of Offsite books that I mercilessly shelved today, so that by the time I was done I was covered in flecks of Italian manuscript covers (I'm so gentle) and, of course, dust. So much for my ever looking "put together" in public; mainly I look like I've just crawled out of a mouse hole. Speaking of places to live, if you have one, and are moving out in May, let me know or else I really be sleeping in the basement with the double folios.

As previously mentioned, NE is back in his spot on the 200s level (just to the left of the Reserves desk). I thought briefly, since he had been such a regular last semester, that perhaps he went on sabbatical, but then I remembered that a) he only just got his PhD, why would he be taking off again? and b) he's tag-team teaching Dada and Surrealism with Auntie Roz this semester! A friend and I are going to attend said graduate lecture one of these days, before graduating, in a surreal and altered state, and I bet him a dollar that I will be crying by the end of the class out of both euphoria and blinding terror. It would be the apex of my very slippery ascent up the phallic, phallic Art History mountain at Columbia. In any case, I was supposed to pick up and sort the 200 level but had to leave yet another mountain of books next to NE because I am too intimidated by his boyish grin and streak of gray in the front of his hairline: "Yes I got my PhD and Associate Professor status before I turned 30," it seems to scream. So I left him surrounded by random Ware books about sensuality and architecture and Tschumi.

My senior thesis seminar met tonight for the first round of thesis presentations, for which I could not mentally be present at for fear of suffering a panic-turned-heart attack. I was just seating myself behind a giant pillar at the corner of the table (thanks, Diana, for such architectural innovations as giant columns in seminar rooms) when all of a sudden Adrien Brody walks in! No, not the Adrien Brody (or at least not yet, you never know who will be the next commencement speaker!), but the Avery regular who kind of resembles him (it's the slicked-back but not Euro-trash hair) and who always, ALWAYS wears a black suit, or at least the blazer. And loafers. It's a throwback to that time when professors actually dressed like men. I'm even more surprised when RD introduces him as Prof K - not by his first name, but as Professor K. Evidently he's a Mellon Fellow and specializes in High Renaissance art. Then he starts talking at the end of one of the presentations and I burst out laughing because his accent is so French/German and I am a five-year-old and can't help but find it incredibly sexy, especially the way he says "Titian." Teeeeesh-anne. I think I might invite him to my presentation; I think his High Renaissance expertise will be most useful in my 20th-century, photography-centric, suddenly feminist thesis. There's got to be something there.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so please be careful not to slip and fall on your ass in the lobby - yes, the marble is hard to maneuver, but falling is not sexy, and people will just walk their Frye boots right over you.

Have your IDs ready,
GA