Rear admiral mittens

This is so demented I can hardly look at it! (Via Cleo.)

Life re-entry has proved rather stressful this week, but I think I'm finding my feet. Have just tidied up the apartment and spent an irksome half-hour dealing with some old expense receipts from last year that I need to submit before I can use my Columbia card to pay this year's MLA dues and register for the ASECS conference in April! It is increasingly clear to me that really I am only fit for life in a monastic cell. Plain walls, no possessions, highly structured schedule, lots of silence....

Monasticism

Hmmmm, really I am an extreme recluse and have been allowing my stay-at-home tendencies to override any notion that I should get out and do things, but I was thinking that next week's Happy Endings reading at Joe's Pub (featuring Colson Whitehead, Kevin Wilson, Amy Cohen and musical guest Sam Amidon - possibly Thomas Bartlett as well?) would be worth getting myself downtown for - only by now it is sold out! Anyone got an extra they want to sell me?!?

"A film star on a biscuit box"

Maggie Ferguson has written an absolutely fascinating profile of a former abbess who took a year's sabbatical at art school in East London after more than fifty years in an enclosed order. (Via Bookforum.)