Catching up: snapshots from mid-October to mid-November

Denver in late October...



Then it was Fall on the CSU campus.




Halloween at my colleague Eric's, with colleagues Andy and Scott and Eric's friend Mikiko.



Dia de los Muertos at Maricela's...



...and with my friend Erika at The Rio



Maria (whom I had met in Syracuse) and her girlfriend Julie were my first (and only so far) visitors from out of town. They came all the way from San Francisco to campaign for Obama.



Vote! mural at the Bean Cycle coffee shop




Then we won the elections! Here with Erika, Maricela and Maite...




And not too much later we rallied against proposition 8. Here with my some of my colleagues and graduate students in Fort Collins' Old Town Square.



Finally, after much anticipation, it snowed.

My first Colorado snow

I haven't posted in a long time...it's been a crazy busy month and I promise I will post a selection of pics from the past 30 or 40 days during the week.

Meanwhile, I am glad to announce that I survived my first Colorado snow. A few days ago, on Tuesday precisely, I woke up to this scene from my apartment's window:





After briefly considering the option of never getting out of my apartment again, I decided that I would walk to campus (I had my dance class at 9 a.m.) as usual. It kept snowing the whole way, so it was not that cold (relatively speaking). Here's and example of what I saw on my way to campus (plus all the people that were outside shoveling snow from front porches, sidewalks and cars):





And here is the crazy winter holiday display that is right across from my building, right by the museum...



...notice the menorah on the left, followed by a snowman, a Christmas tree, Santa and a nativity scene!

And here is snow-covered prohibitive signage downtown:

The (very) bright spots of a rough week

Last week was a pretty rough one for me personally, for reasons that are not at all worthy of being mentioned here...

Luckily, however, some very good things happened to people I love very much.

For example, these cuties here finally got legally adopted by their wonderful parents, C and J:






And this other cutie here (on the right) finally got her PhD, after a successful Friday afternoon defense:



Congratulations to all of yous!!

Snapshots from the past 30 days

My fellow Italian (and chair of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department) Paola and her husband Rick at the Tour de Fat parade in September.


Rick with "Miss Alaska" at the Tour de Fat parade.


My Basque friend Maite (also a new assistant professor at CSU) at the Highlands Festival in Estes Park.


My colleague Eric at an art gallery during Fort Collins' First Fridays art walk.



Fellow Italian (also an assistant professor) Domenico near cowboy restaurant Charco Broiler.


Me at home.


Maricela, Maite and I at the Celestial Seasonings guided tour in Boulder (with hair nets).


Maite and I in Boulder.



Irooshka and I in Syracuse.


Conference lady friends in Syracuse.


Irooshka, Craig and I by "Quickway".



Craig, Irooshka and I by the NiMo building in Syracuse.



Dan in Denver.

Dissertation award!

I've been a very bad blogger lately. Life's been too busy with teaching and other commitments, including trips to Boulder, Denver and, most recently, Syracuse for the Visible Memories conference.

Anyways, I promise to start posting some of the pics I have been taking in the past few weeks.

Meanwhile, I have great news that make me really happy. I have just received a national award for my dissertation!

Here is part of the email I received I got announcing this victory:

"Dear Dr. Gi.,

I am delighted to inform you that your dissertation (“Visions of Europe: The Semiotic Production of Transnational Identity in Contemporary European Visual Discourse”) has been chosen as co-winner of the Critical and Cultural Studies Division’s Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2008.

The Awards’ Committee was very impressed with the theoretical sophistication of your dissertation. As one reviewer put it, “It brilliantly combines cultural studies, semiotics, political economy and international relations theory in its approach to visual communication.” In the words of another reviewer, “Rigorous and engaging to the point where you wonder how she could have accomplished this, but she did.”

Yay! I especially liked the reviewers' comments...I am very very happy to see the fruits of my hard labor recognized in such a gracious manner.

You are the girl I've been dreaming of...

I heard this song on the radio tonight (I am not quite sure how to feed a youtube video into the blog, yet). I think the song is cute and it also kind of made me cry...aaah, nostalgia.

Happy Birthday Iri!

Happy, Happy Iri...



I wish I could be there with you.

Busy weekends

The last two weekends have been fairly busy.

On Sunday last weekend (not labor day weekend), Jim took me up to the Rocky Mountains National Park for some sight-seeing. My favorite sights were these mushroom-like formations:



Here I am against this unbelievable backdrop:



And here is Jim, taking photographs of me as a souvenir for his relatives in Italy:



This is the tundra...



The elevation was over 12,000 feet and it was very windy...



...it also gave me a mighty headache, as we 'climbed' up to 12,000 feet from a 'mere' 5,000 in two hours.
What I didn't know is that the tundra is very fragile and simply stepping on it may entail a century's worth of work to rebuild the flora...



Yesterday, I had less of a natural and more of a thoroughly cultural experience. One of my senior colleagues, Carl, bought tickets for the football game, both for me and the two new faculty that joined last year. We drove down to Denver for the game between CSU and CU Boulder, which are acrimonious rivals. Carl brought all sorts of picnic furniture and food items so we could partake in the tailgate party before the game. Here is a glimpse of our picnic:



Here are Carl and David, a former faculty in our department:



And this is Jane, Carl's daughter and a voice major, who sings an operatic Star-spangled Banner:



And these are my new colleagues Andy (left) and Scott (right):



CSU is the 'Rams':



By the way, 'we' lost, but I really loved the CSU band...



Hopefully, the last two weekends are good omens for many more interesting Sundays to come...