scattered thoughts

This weekend went pretty well overall, except that it was horrifically cold and windy and that I got clocked in the face by a guy trying to huck as deep as he could. Totally a foul on my part, but there wasn't any doubt who got the worse of the exchange and I don't think I played the rest of that game, deciding instead to focus on the bleeding and the ring of pain that had exploded in a horizontal circle around my head, right around the base of the bridge of my nose. The good news is, I didn't break it and I'm not concussed. The better news is, we finished in third place, of 22 teams, and played okay as a team. It's a rare, and nice, feeling, for us to feel like we outclass most of the competition at a tournament. But we did, going 6-1 and losing only to a Marquette team that had the wind on its side and a really great handler who killed us with upwind swings and some great looks down field. And, it was a good team bonding experience, sleeping 8 to a room and freezing to death outside and playing well together.

Hugo Chavez, it seems to me from my vantage point up here in the great white north, is a pretty small man. Not physically, of course, but just in the sense that he's become nothing more than a clownish oil despot who aspires to be the grand opponent of the US in South America. Not that we don't need a grand opponent down there, someone to really lead the "Pink Tide" movement against the Washington Consensus. I just don't think he's that guy. He's too busy preening in his red shirt and bloviating about how he's building up a badass army to fight against Colombia and the US. What a peacock.

I have a paper due tomorrow on the rise of pentecostalism in Brazil and how it's connected to Andrew Chesnut's idea of "pathogens of poverty." It should be a fairly easy paper, only 1500 words, but I'm kind of adrift still about how to focus it. Well, it'll come to me. This class, by the way, is still kind of unfocused in general as far as I can tell.

Klein gave me a book, The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. He wrote LA Confidential, which got turned into one of my favorite movies, so I'm excited to read it. Not sure when I'll have time, but that's okay. Other book notes: Development as Freedom is disappointing only in the sense that the writing is sometimes convoluted and unclear. Nothing like The Argumentative Indian, which is beautifully written. Come on, Amartya! Still, it's extremely interesting.

Vale and I talked last night, on Skype, which was nice except it's always a little weird when she has a camera and I don't, so I feel a little like I'm spying on her. But she seemed good, if a little sunburned and a little lonely. She works all day by herself in the office because Katty is doing other things and Isa left, then goes home to her single apartment. Some days she goes up to Cecilia and Rodrigo's house, which she likes, but still. Also, I miss her and, last night, found a job at OAS in DC that would be perfect for her, except that she doesn't have "excellent mastery" of English (the job requires Spanish, too, but she's obviously not lacking there). It's an HR job, requires a bachelor's in business administration, which she has, and at least a year of experience with human resources, which she definitely has. Oh well.

It's time for breakfast. Today, we must go to the grocery store.