Saturday, Mar. 04, 2023 - 5:31 pm.
It's been great going back to work this week. It's hard to get any work done, though. I'm now fully immersed in uni life as an academic, and thus I spend my days attending meetings and responding to assorted requests from colleagues. I'd say all that doesn't let me get any work done but, as Andrew says: "all that is work, too!"
BTW, our trip last weekend to attend a wedding was very nice. I drove for almost four hours, but we had two stops at highway gas stations, so I got to rest. The accomodation was cute, with ducklings running outside the cabin. The wedding ceremony at a chapel and the reception at an events place were ok. Everything was quite bearable and even enjoyable sometimes.
The best part, though, was driving back home at dawn with Andrew the next day. Highways were empty for a good part of our journey. We stopped for coffee, we chatted, we listened to music and podcasts. The best road trip we've had so far, I'd say.
Now, onto the present: I've wasted a few hours today responding to a person in that stupid LGBTplus plus plus group chat I reluctantly belong to. The three pluses are because you wouldn't believe the amount of letters they wanted to have in the acronym, which I get for inclusion purposes but it rendered our work completely untraceable for academic purposes; and this was an academic group.
I think I made a mistake by replying because it took a lot of my time and energy, and these people are very touchy on everything one says regarding sexuality and gender; they're all sexuality and gender scholars and/or activists. Everything is wrong somehow because there's always something that doesn't align with what they think.
So right now I'm waiting for a response. A "thank you" would be nice, or she might ignore me completely, considering that, in the one online meeting we had last year, she was the one pushing for using a certain word for our academic group, and I was against it (she won the argument, but our application to get the funding as a group was denied, haha). I'm too academic and thus I'm probably the enemy of queer activism.
She might get mad over something in my reply. Someone else might. See, they can get dense. DENSE, I tell you. But hey, she asked, and I had an answer. I'll probably regret answering, so I should start getting in the mindset of letting it go if anybody responds.
Good news: a paper of mine was accepted for a conference in July in... Brighton! UK! I'm still not thrilled, though, because I have to get a visa and try to score invitation letters from Sheffield so I can go there too. Because I'm traveling for work, I have to justify to my uni and my funding agency my staying for longer than the duration of the conference and in another city. Also, Andrew did not submit a paper on time, and even if he had, he has no funding, so his trip (as well as part of mine) is self-funded. But we must go!
I want to go see my family soon, but this trip might keep me from doing it. That breaks my heart. I might make an effort and play around with numbers, but we'll see.
I was hoping today I'd have news on the house we want to buy, but the real estate agent didn't call yesterday. Things have happened that have led Andrew and I to start dreaming hard about what we'll do with the house (e.g., making a spreadsheet with improvements and budget), but we're still waiting on what the owner has to say about price and conditions.
Anyway! I'm still pissed I wasted nearly my whole afternoon on my answer to that person on the group chat (I got to get informed about fMRI), so now I'll go do something more productive with my time.
Oh, oh: March 1st was my 12th anniversary of coming to Chile. March 3rd was the same anniversary of meeting Andrew. On this latter day, yesterday, I attended a breakfast for the Master's program that brought me here, except now I'm a fucking academic teaching in that program! And later that same day, I sat in a meeting in the room where I used to have my master's courses and where I first met Andrew. It already feels like a past life.