Afraid to get my hair cut....

As my friend PS (yes, ladies, he’s single, smart, and sexy; a real catch) said to me in an e-mail a while back, you soon get a little “non-plussed” with living in Europe. It simply becomes home. Beyond that, though, you start to remember that you need to find new places to do your usual routine. For instance, getting your haircut. Simply, put, I’m a little afraid of going to a place to have it cut. As far as I can tell there aren’t many corner semi-racists, misogynistic barbers near where I live. Most are salons and that’s fine, but I realized how could I convey what I wanted without looking like a total fool to a guy or gal with scissors. So, I’ve made a semi-executive decision to let it grown long and see what happens. (Of course, long for me is still short for most everyone else.) If and when I get the courage I’ll try to go for a really cool euro-style haircut…or not.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I updated, but I’ll make this short. Not much new or interesting has happened. I’ve been biding my time and saving money for when Carly comes to visit on Saturday. We’ll tour Brussels and go to Paris for a day. We may hit Antwerp and/or Bruges. Maybe Ypres. I can’t wait to have Carly here. I keep busy with work and such, am doing fun reading, and my internet has been behaving so I can still kill countless hours there and I did get my care package of DVDs so I can turn the brain off now and again, but it still gets a little lonely so it’ll be nice to have Carly’s company!

I’ve finished with one collection in the archive and have moved on to the big one I’m here to look at: the papers of the Comité National. It’s a newly processed collection and not yet in the online call database so my first attempt to order some documents was a little complicated, but I think it’s been figured out. I’ll see what happens this afternoon.

I did have a great moment on Saturday when I figured out what I can do with some of the stuff I’ve found. See, I came across this great 18 page copy of the minutes from a July 1915 meeting of the American relief delegates. It was full of good stuff, good quotes, and the like, but I didn’t know what larger purpose it had. So I did some – dare I say – research and found that this meeting took place after my man Hoover laid the smack down on the Belgians about his Commission’s role. This delegate’s meeting was to discuss the results of the Hoover Francqui (the Belgian chairman of the Comité National) and demonstrates some interesting things about how the CRB worked, the role of the delegates, their ideas of the Belgians, the CN and the like. It was a good moment and place to start doing some writing.

So, progress is being made, albeit slowly, but that’s the nature of the game. That said, next week – when Carly is here – will be a welcome diversion from my usual day-to-day living and existential crises over haircuts.