I am in the Rachmaninov groove.

Well, after a very dysfunctional Christmas in which my visa came three days late, causing me to nearly give myself an ulcer, and then I caught my third case of the flu this season, things seem to be getting back to normal. I have one last thing to do with this frigging thesis chapter, and then I can print it and send my computer off to be rehabilitated. Oy.

And if that can happen by the end of tomorrow, then I won't have to worry about it when Maggie and her boyfriend and I all go up to Edinburgh for the ridiculous New Year's street fair. It's going to be fun times! I'm going to wear fifty sweaters.

In other news...guys, my Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux are going to be so badass! The first one's nearly up to tempo, the second one's finished completely, and I've started learning the third one, which is turning out not as hard as I was expecting it to be. I mean, it's still hard, and he still expects me to have hands the size of small dinosaurs, but I'm totally going to finish these pieces by spring. They are fun. Fun and dark and very, very Russian. I approve!

I've noticed that good things are happening to my form too. I'm having a much easier time relaxing my hands and being fast without being tense. I'm playing a bit more the way Tom Sauer wanted me to, I think. In any case, it's definitely paying off in terms of retaining stamina through fast passages full of large intervals and such which is, you know, useful with Rachmaninov.

And after that, I will actually finish bringing Ravel's Sonatine back. I started to a while ago and then stopped halfway through. And then I shall have a nice working repertoire. Ooo, and also that Schubert sonata from forever ago! I found the sheet music to that on my hard drive for some reason and now I want to relearn that. So many good pieces! They are putting me in a good mood.

Okay, H.G. Wells. You and I have a date with Marx.

Surprise Snow-pocalypse!

Holy crap, it snowed all weekend and then some. We've got about a foot here, which isn't all that much on the New England scale of snowfall, but considering how England doesn't believe in shoveling sidewalks or ploughing any roads except the really major ones, it was definitely considerable.

And considering how I was struck down by the flu again (damn you, Maggie!) this was not great weather to have to go out in. Nonetheless, it is really exceptionally pretty, and I got a fair amount of exercise tromping to and from the train station and such. Most of the sidewalks that aren't completely cleared due to warmth and sheer use are either super compacted, which is fine, or filled with about three inches of slushy, soft snow, so it's like walking on a beach except, you know, cold and wet and not beach-y. Which is less fine. More exhausting, especially uphill.

But anyway, my biometrics are in the system, and now here's hoping that everything processes properly and I get my visa back in time to fly around Christmas. Sheffield, where I had to get the stuff done, is not a particularly nice town, but they do have an H&M, so I took the opportunity to pick up cheap sweaters because I'm cold all the time now. MORE SWEATERS ALL THE TIME OMNOMNOM.

Also the Border Agency has you go through a metal detector and take the battery out of your phone, but doesn't need you to take off your watch and/or shoes. The struggle against terrorism continues to appear arbitrary and confusing to this layperson's eyes.

And that's basically it. Thanksgiving was a blast, though--we had twelve people in the house, we ate and drank lots, I improvised how to carve a turkey (which worked eventually but I definitely mangled it quite a bit in the process), and we all had a lot of fun! It was a nice mix of people; several English girls from Maggie's archaeology classes, and some international students whom Doris knows, and everyone got along well. So it was definitely a good time. I managed to hold off illness through strategic drugs until the end of the evening, at which point I passed out and then was in a fever coma for the next twenty-four hours, but it was totally worth it. Have a silly picture:

P.S.: I should probably add at this point that, due to hills and awareness of weather like the stuff we're having right now (thunder AND snow! Just for funsies!) I have not bought impractical shoes in at least five months. I'm starting to go through withdrawal.

Life Update woooo

Hey, so it's been a while. I had a fabulous time with the fam while back in the States--a very welcome vacation, even though technically I wasn't (supposed to be) on one. Obviously, it was lovely to see everyone. And now that me (and my luggage, har har--stupid Boston only checking my bags through to Amsterdam...) are back in their place, I am mostly resettled into business as usual. I had a lovely dinner out with the flat at an Indian restaurant nearby in joint celebration of mine and Doris's birthdays. We also saw fireworks on Saturday and went to the pub for a bit. It was on Saturday, because I was so jetlagged on Friday that I basically slept for eighteen hours straight. It was actually the fastest I've adapted to a new time zone traveling east. So, wa-hey.

Unfortunately, however, major electronic things in my life have also decided to go on the fritz.

This means using my computer while its propped on the windowsill in my room, because there's a draft there and my poor Tybalt's fan is broken (yes, my computer's name is Tybalt...don't judge me). I'm going to take him to the Apple people in Newcastle at the end of this week and hopefully they will fix him up. And also give him a new battery, because I have been terrible at taking good care of this one, and now it can't hold a charge to save its life. Ugh.

Also my piano won't turn on. I suspect voltage issues, and since I asked a person in the music department who concurs, I'm getting a UK power supply and seeing if that works.

So with all of that in mind, here's my to-do list of things:

-Apply for the extension of my visa
-Finish up my essay outline, which will consist of reading more Marx and Morris and all those other silly people.
-Get Tybalt fixed.
-Get power supply, hopefully revive piano.
-Find an optometrist, renew contacts prescription and get new glasses (I was special and managed to squish mine in my mattress)
-Wait sadly for my laundry to dry outside, while the weather continues to schizophrenically switch between sunny and torrential rain. Yeah, that'll be a while.

Also, I heard it snowed in New York the other day? Well, it hailed here last night. Harrumph. This is not one-upsmanship that I appreciate.

To conclude, things are a bit annoying but under control, so long as from this point onwards, everything just obeys my will and submits to the various troubleshooting actions I've taken on its behalf. This is me, shaking my fist at the sky very dramatically!

...Aaaaand the immigration office has come through! I am now unconditionally accepted. Which will be super awkward if I fail my MA, but I remain 99.9% sure that won't happen. But anyway, I now have materials to apply for my new visa. No deportation for me! Hooray!

Win.

Okay, so everything's worked out, so far as I know. I have my ID card, I'm officially in the system, now it's just a matter of timing my visa application when the time comes around so I'm not without my passport while I have to travel or something. But as far as the university is concerned, I'm registered.

Whew.

This means that I took out lots of books from the library today with my newly activated card! From all sorts of different subjects too--I'm reading up on the English working class and the evolution of the Gothic and Victorian urbanism to start looking for some avenues of approach for research. From there I'll do my literature survey this weekend. It is going to be busy times, but will totally happen.

Anyway, I'm glad my run-in with bureaucracy has ended for the time being. Now I can do actual work instead of paperwork.

ARGH.

So that whole thing about being registered by today? FAIL.

Apparently (and I'm not the only one with this problem, so...) departments are giving people matriculation concessions like the one I have when that actually doesn't help with getting me registered on time, because my visa isn't under the right institution. I have to be able to get a proper visa from Durham to actually get my ID and such. So the immigration advisors have to call the English department and be all, "WTF?" and then the English department, I guess, has to take a leap of faith and give me an unconditional offer if I'm going to enroll for this term. In conclusion, ARGH.

Like the dude at immigration said, I'm glad I'm not the only one in this situation, but seriously, dammit.

This is what happens when academic departments don't communicate with administration.

So with any luck the English department likes me enough to trust in my ability to not fail my MA and properly deserve my admission to their PhD program. Because if they don't...well, I'm sort of screwed. And/or I'm back to starting in January, or having to leave, or begging Leeds to just get my effing paperwork done faster before I'm, I don't know, rejected from life.

I'm not actually freaking out as much as this post portrays, though perhaps I should be. But dammit, I'm proud of my dissertation even as I begin to find more and more flaws in it, so Leeds should give me my degree, and Durham should man up and give me a proper offer. Or something.

In any case, this leaves me without an ID card, which leaves me unable to access the library. So I'll be mooching off of my flatmates until further notice. Because I really do need to read, like, twenty books this weekend. Yes.

No Longer in Stasis

Fairly self-explanatory. Things have mostly started up. I had various induction-type things on Monday and Tuesday, which were frankly exhausting and not particularly illuminating--the usual jargon of "This is a great school!", "You're the cream of the crop!", then followed, of course, by "But get ready to work your ass off!"

It was a little better than that, and there was some useful information sprinkled in, but that was the general feeling. I had a bet going with an archaeology student as to how many times the international community was going to be referred to as "vibrant". Ah, corporate-speak.

Anyway.

I am almost registered. I should hopefully be completely there by tomorrow. Durham is rather old school with its insistence on lots of real paperwork in addition to online paperwork, so it's a bit more annoying than Leeds' process, but the end is in sight, which means that soon I will actually be able to take books out of the library.

It's a good thing too, because I am plunging straight into research. I had my first meeting with my supervisor, which went really well. He seems both reasonable and personable, and we were able to hash out some of the beginnings of what I'm doing with little fuss. He's apparently quite interested in intellectual history and cultural context, which suits me just fine, considering my topic.

My topic, as it happens, is morphing in new and interesting ways. I think I'm going to start by making a case for studying nonfiction within the framework of the Gothic, which I started doing a bit with my MA dissertation, but didn't really get to address fully. It's an unusual approach, perhaps a new one, but I think it could be really useful, not just for me but for other people looking at political readings of Gothic literature--what are the consequences of reversing the feed, as it were? Is it even possible? I suspect that it is, and I hope I can prove it. The topic can perhaps become the one which I'll address in my first official writing sample, which is due in May. From there I can start examining nonfiction on the Industrial Revolution from a Gothic perspective, and see where it takes me.

So yeah, that's about it. I'm meeting some cool people from all over the place, and getting to know the area a bit more. And writing 3000 words or so in the next week. Hey!

In which my emailing skills are employed with haste.

I have been proactive, and as a result have basically hounded the entire admissions and English departments of Durham to make sure that I can actually enroll properly.

To put this in context, apparently Leeds is going to take until December to finish processing my MA degree, which means that I can't provide proper documentation to Durham until then to get an unconditional placement with them, which means that I can't enroll. So I've spent most of the last couple of days emailing everyone from the administrator at Leeds' English department to the Durham admissions secretary to the senior tutor at my college to work it out.

To their credit, everyone's been really helpful, so it was mostly just me mildly freaking out while everyone else was competently answering my questions around me. Anyway, the last word is that I'm getting conditional enrollment status until I pass my MA, at which point I'll be bumped up to permanent status, unless I fail, and then I have to leave. So yes, now I'm good. It all seems rather obvious in retrospect, but I suppose I just had inflated expectations of grade-processing time.

To conclude, I am slowly getting better at this whole communication thing. Having email helps a lot, considering I will never get over how much I hate talking to strangers on the phone.

In other news, I have a new flatmate! And clearly the world is very small, because she's from Goshen, NY and went to Fordham for undergrad. So yeah, we bonded over the city. So now Tom's going to move out and Doris, from Germany, is going to move in, and then the house will be settled for the year. I think it'll work out well.

Life Adventures, plus conference

So, I've been settling in, I suppose!

Durham's a really, really lovely town. I will at some point actually remember to bring my camera out with me so you can see how pretty it is. My excitement at being able to just hang out in a cathedral for funsies is sort of bordering on the ridiculous. I may have to audition for the choir there next year, because how cool would that be, honestly?

Anyway, so I've basically been getting used to finding where things are, and being somewhat social. I went out to a concert in Newcastle with my flatmate and his friend, as well as a few pubs on various nights, so it's been nice to meet people and try to dredge up my social skills. I've gotten less awkward over the years, which is frankly a relief. Yay for being able to make friends!

I also went to a lecture being held by Durham's English department on the Faustian cultural myth, which was really fascinating, and gave me an interesting perspective on my own work that I'm interested in exploring further. I had posited that industrial novels were moving away from the Faustian myth, whereas the PhD student giving the lecture offered the idea that the myth was still there, just translated onto a wider social scale by way of the economy. It was interesting stuff, and definitely enjoyable.

Additionally, this weekend I went back down to Leeds for the 'Reimagining the Victorians' conference. It was really interesting, despite it not actually centering on my field; instead, it was focused on the emerging field of Neo-Victorianism, which concentrates on modern and postmodern literature that appropriates the Victorian era and its literature. Despite not being familiar with a lot of the literature involved, it was still quite interesting, and I only wish I had gotten more sleep the night before, because I was exhausted by the end of it due to having gotten up at 5am just to get down there.

I also inadvertently ended up participating in discussion (at the end of the day, so my coherence was probably questionable) by defending/explaining steampunk culture, which I totally had not counted on. It did get me thinking, however, that there may be a paper in it for me somewhere. I have been saying for ages now that steampunk is a huge body of evidence ready for analysis for why Neo-Victorianism has emerged, and how.

It's also apparently a really good thing that I have paper ideas as well, because simultaneously the most helpful and most terrifying part of the conference was a training session, wherein one professor outlined, without frills, the necessary number of and quality of papers one needed to get published per assessment cycle (roughly four years, I believe) in order to get a permanent job in the UK. It basically scared the bejesus out of me, since the two most acceptable quality grades of papers that received funding were 'internationally regarded' and 'internationally exceptional'.

So there's that. No pressure. Also, I should start writing papers and submitting them now so that by the time my PhD is finished I have things under my belt.

...I'm going to go research things now.

This of course led me to have a stunningly realistic anxiety dream a couple nights later in which I received a truly abysmal score on my dissertation and was thereby rejected from life. Ugh. My brain sucks sometimes. So I'm going to go email my department about giving me my actual grade and certificate of completion so that I can give it to Durham now.

Oh right, and I also introduced myself to one of my advisors, since he was one of the keynote speakers at the conference. He seems very nice, so I'm looking forward to working with him, assuming my anxiety dreams don't actually become reality. Yes.

Exploration!

So, after sleeping a lot this weekend, I ventured into the city proper today to start getting my bearings. Durham is indeed quite small, and therefore difficult to get lost in, but also very hilly and winding, so it takes a little while to get to places. I'm about a twenty-five minute walk to the university and to the city center, which is bustling and full of shops but also rather cute and cobblestoned. I stumbled into a cinema and a tourist information center as well, so even if I somehow get lost, I have a map of the area to guide me now.

The weather has been gorgeous lately, and I hope it lingers. Low teens (in Celsius) and sunny. And no rain! Jeez, England, way to be deceptive about your weather. Wandering around today was a pleasure.


Anyway, this is me on top of Durham Cathedral, which is massive, and clearly I need to go back to the gym to be able to climb this tower without feeling like I'm dying. I did make it, though, so I'm not totally useless yet. Unfortunately, the view of the city itself is a bit obscured by the parapet here, but it's very pretty, to be sure.

It's also extremely windy. This is the one picture where my hair isn't all up in my face.

In other news, Durham University has accepted my deferral request, so I'm now officially starting in October! I'm going to have to make a nuisance of myself at Leeds to make sure that they grade my dissertation and send word that my degree is finished before then, but now I don't have to worry about paying council tax and other annoyances that come from not being a student. Also, I shall be delving into the university's employment databases. Bwaha. So I now have just one month of a breather, and then I'll officially be a PhD student. I'm looking forward to it!

Now, what was my research proposal again?

Whew.

I have successfully relocated to Durham!

It took two trips and a lot of getting on and off of trains with very heavy luggage. Not really an experience I'd particularly like to repeat, but it can be done successfully. So I guess that's good to know.

The flat is as pleasant as I remember it, and indeed quite convenient. Sainsbury's is only a five minute walk away, and though I haven't ventured into town yet, I hear it's only about a 10-15 minute jaunt. My room is a glorified closet, but the bed is far more comfortable than what you find in student housing, so I'm sold on it. Plus, it's just nice to be living in a normal house, and not a dorm. I think I'm officially done with dorms now.

Anyway, I only have two flatmates so far but a couple more will be joining us in October. They're both very nice and fun to talk to--one is studying the philosophical history of quantum physics, and the other is studying Arabic, so there are definitely diverse interests in the house. We watched a movie last night that I had to excuse myself from halfway through because I was exhausted, but all in all it seems like we'll get along fine.

So that's that for now. I have a couple weeks to recover, and then I'm going back down to Leeds for a conference on 'Reimagining the Victorians', which should be quite interesting. Some familiar faces will be there for sure, including my Brontës seminar professor, and a friend from that same class. Also, one of my PhD advisors from Durham is to be a keynote speaker, so I'll be introducing myself to him. Fun times! I'm quite looking forward to it.

Random Bi-Polar Day!

So...

...my dissertation is done. WOO!

Fifty-six pages, including titles and bibliography. I'm pretty stoked about it. It's at the point where the things that I see wrong with it are things that I'm not really sure how to fix yet, so I think it's done to the best of my present abilities, and everything else will be a matter of what I have to learn next to be a better scholar.

So that's the good news.

On the flip side, everything else today was completely dysfunctional.

Firstly, the entire university apparently decided that one bank holiday wasn't enough, and that they should have another one. So in addition to being closed down with the rest of England on Monday, they were also completely closed down today. Without telling anyone.

No announcements or warnings, just signs on the doors and posted up online if you actually take the time to look not on the main website, but the library websites. Grar.

I've been kind of irritated with them lately anyway, just because it seems like every convenient computer lab has been closed or under construction this summer, which meant that even if I could find one open with a printer, scanning was out. So today was sort of the icing on the cake, and there may have been some very thorough cursing on my part.

And I was one of the lucky ones, because some of the postgrad deadlines are tomorrow, and not a week from now like mine.

So, after lugging all the books I have to return to the library there and then back to my flat, I managed to track down an independent printing and binding company down the road that does great work and doesn't run on the university's schedule. I ended up queuing with all of the business and communications postgrads who have everything due on the 1st. It took about an hour, but in the end my dissertation was printed and bound and looking very tidy and professional. But, since the university is completely shut up, I can't hand it in until tomorrow.

After that I ran errands like changing my address at the bank, but then I return home to find that my inkwell has, after months of hanging out in my bag with my fountain pen and behaving itself, mysteriously exploded in my bag. Luckily it didn't do much to my dissertation beyond a small smudge on one cover, but I definitely can't use the pocket it was in until the ink dries, and my hand looks like it belongs to a medieval scribe, considering how stained it is.

So yeah, it's been a special day. I had planned on getting everything out of the way today in terms of wrapping things up here, but clearly that was just far too tidy. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more together, because along with tonight it is going to be crazy packing madness. And then I am off to Durham! Hurrah!

The Weekend at Bath

So from Friday to Sunday, I was in Bath! And it was fantastic.

There were four of us traveling together--Erin and Lorna, and Erin's friend visiting from Canada, whose name is also Kate. We were then referred to as 'Kate Squared' for ease of getting yelled at when we wandered off. We all took the train down, which took about four hours, and which Erin and I used to work on our dissertations, so that we didn't feel like total slackers on our mini-vacation.

We arrived in the afternoon on Friday, but managed to see quite a lot despite the train being delayed. We started at the Assembly Rooms, which I got really excited about because my favorite adaptation of Persuasion was filmed there, and I recognized all the rooms they used. Also it was utterly gorgeous. Why don't we live like this anymore? Georgian architecture is amazing. It's a nice balance of decorative flourishes and more austere color schemes. Plus, you know, massive crystal chandeliers.

Also located in the basement of the Assembly Rooms is a fashion museum, which was completely random, but how could we resist? Lorna and I spent a lot of time freaking out at awesome Edwardian and Victorian dresses on display, as well as some of the more modern designer clothing. There was also a section were you could try on corsets and hoopskirts, so we abruptly regressed to our five-year-old selves and tried them on. Older English ladies laughed at us, and it was awesome. We had lunch/afternoon tea in the adjacent cafe that still displayed all of the glorious Georgian fanciness, so we felt quite civilized as we had scones and cucumber sandwiches.

After that we took a walk along the Circle, taking random pictures of painted lions that are all over the place, and which are apparently a public art project being done for charity, and then wandered over to the Royal Crescent, where a lovely older man and his wife took our pictures. We also oohed and aahed at the selection of rather expensive cars that were parked along the road, because the Crescent remains all private residences, and therefore belong to extremely wealthy people. There may have been a lot of fantasizing about being absurdly rich on our parts.

On Saturday, we took a bus trip out to Stonehenge. It was pouring rain, so it was kind of cold and miserable, but to be fair we only were there for an hour, so although I couldn't feel my feet by the end, it was still worth going. The stones are indeed massive, and pretty cool to see in the flesh/stone. They don't let you get up close any more, obviously, but the view was still good and you can walk all the way around it.

We got back to Bath in time for lunch, and then we ventured into the Roman Baths, and since I was traveling with three Classics scholars, they all geeked out. It was a really fascinating thing to see, though. I came in knowing absolutely nothing about them, so it was fascinating to learn how they were first built and how they came to be covered over time and then rediscovered in the 19th century. In a way, actually, they managed to appeal to my own scholarly interests, as the way it's seen now shows both the original baths and the architecture the Victorians built over it to display them. It was fun times!

We then had dinner in the Pump Room, which was our one big indulgence for a meal, but definitely worth it. Again, beautiful Georgian design, lit with chandeliers, and live piano as background music. (Incidentally, the pianist seemed to be working through my entire high school repertoire, so if I'm ever desperate for a job, I totally want to do that.) Anyway, we all shared a bottle of Prosecco, I had the most delicious sea bass ever, and we generally had a very classy and very fun time pretending to be a little less bourgeois than we are.

Then finally on Sunday, we took a walk down to where Jane Austen used to live, and then wandered around her neighborhood. The weather was far nicer than the day before, so we were able to be leisurely. We also stumbled upon an old abandoned church that was tiny and beautiful with an old graveyard full of various people who we'd never heard of, but apparently were important enough to merit little signs explaining who they were. The only people I recognized were two women who had been friends with Hannah More. I'm not really a fan of More, but I've at least read her. In any case, it was very picturesque and a fun unexpected place to walk around in.

Then we dropped other-Kate off at the train station, because she had to go to London for her flight back to Canada, and Lorna and Erin and I did some shopping around before heading back. All in all, it was an extremely successful trip! Definitely a well-deserved break from work, and a lovely way of spending a weekend.

Adult responsibility win!

I have a flat in Durham!

It's on one of the many hills in the city, about twenty minutes from the university, and it's quite lovely. The neighborhood, Gilesgate, is very quiet, at least insofar as I'm living away from the more student-populated section, and apparently I have cute retired neighbors who give us vegetables from their garden. The whole process couldn't have been easier, to be honest. The owners of the house are a really lovely couple who picked me up from the train station to see the house, were very reasonable and realistic about the costs, and generally seemed very easy to get along with. I think I'll be very happy as their tenant.

So far I know I'm living with an older PhD student from Northern Ireland, and a Saudi masters student. There's one more bedroom that's available as far as I know, but it may or may not be occupied by another American student who's been in contact. In any case, it seems like it should be a very harmonious house, so I'm pleased and relieved to know where I'm going.

In the meantime, I'm getting bribed with chocolate by my flatmate to proofread her dissertation. Delicious!

In which I am a corporate entity. But not really.

So I got bored and took a break from dissertation work to make an official website for myself. Very simple, but it's a nice central hub for everything. Apparently my gearhead graphic is now my personal logo. I think it suits me.

In other news, I'm going up to Durham next week to see an apartment that I have high hopes for! The landlady has been very nice in correspondence, and so far there's one other female postgrad living in the flat, so I'll be in good company, hopefully. Anyway, this is all of course hinging on whether I actually like the place when I get there, but it seems ideal from what I can see so far. I've also nailed down a letter of reference from one of my professors, so that's all set. It would be nice to know where I'm living in a month!

Holy god, I'm moving in a month. Well, five weeks.

Still. Yikes.

Also: Everyone go see Inception right now. I mean it. It is operatic and beautiful and my new favorite thing. It has its flaws, but it's also totally not as confusing as everyone makes out. The score is absolutely amazing. And there are multiple Escher references. I'm going to need to see it a second time. Possibly a third. But not before I finish my Marx section. Yes.

Brontës, ahoy!

This weekend, we indeed managed to make it out to Haworth, which was extremely fun. We took the train into Keighley (pronounced keefley, which...we have no idea why, but that's a fact), and then the bus into Haworth, at which point we went up some hilly passages to the Brontë parsonage.

Firstly, the moors are gorgeous. The roads are cobbled and precariously hilly, and I'm amazed buses get up there in general. The houses are all very old stone things that look perpetually rain-soaked, so I can see it becoming very atmospheric in the dark. Gaskell, in her way, wasn't wrong when she painted the village as a sort of melancholy place. But it's also very picturesque and pretty as well.

The parsonage itself was lovely and kept in pristine condition as a museum for the Brontës, and Lorna and Erin and I had a very nice time wandering around and reading about the sisters, as well as Branwell's scandalous life of debauchery and alcoholism. Being Byronic is really only a good idea in concept rather than application, Branwell! Silly man.

I also nearly made a very financially unwise decision to purchase a painting by one Victoria Brookland, who did a number of ink paintings inspired by Charlotte Brontë's clothing. They were beautiful works filled with Victoriana and Gothic sensibility that reminded me a bit of Harry Clarke, but a bit out of my price range. If she ever starts making prints, though, I'm going to be all over it. Instead, we all bought wax seals with our initials on them and postcards so that when Erin's in Canada and I'm in Durham we shall all very formally write to each other the old fashioned way. It's going to be epic, I'm telling you!

After that, we wandered into the Apothecary (and yes, there is a proper apothecary, right across from the church) which was like going back in time by a good sixty years. Erin and Lorna bought fancy candy, and I nearly bought very ridiculous perfume, but didn't. Then we had afternoon tea/lunch in a tea room run by extremely lovely and friendly people, and headed back to Keighley...by steam train! I feel fully immersed in the Industrial Revolution, now. It was awesome.

And thus, a lovely weekend trip! Perhaps next weekend we'll go to Scarborough.

Black Holes and Revelations

The internet is down at my flat, so I'm chilling in the library today! Which is a good thing anyway, because I need to get work done.

I saw Spamalot at the Leeds Grand Theatre yesterday, which was quite fun. I rather wish I'd seen it on Broadway, just because part of the hilarity stems from just how big the production was, and how that makes a joke of Broadway culture in general. They had to change the lines of 'You can't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews' too, which just defeats the whole purpose of the song. It was a little disappointing. But everything else was quite good. The theatre itself was gorgeous, so I'll have to go again for a concert or something. Afterward Erin and I had drinks and dinner with her friend Lorna, who's also a classics student and really lovely. We all may try to go to Haworth this weekend, weather and travel arrangements permitting. At last, I shall commune with the Brontës!

My last adviser meeting went well--we talked about my latest section, and it seems that I used my critical sources better this time around, but need to inject some more direction into my argument earlier on. But that is easily solved! I also asked him about whether Ruskin would be useful as a direct discussion of the Gothic, despite him discussing it in architecture rather than literature, and it seems that I can. So now there are many more avenues of analysis I can open up from there, so long as I justify it. All in all, it was very productive, and my professor assured me that he was now confident that I'll be able to finish the work well and in good time. I'm glad at least one of us feels that way. So now I'm onto Marx, and then shall face the task of editing and stringing all these thing together. Argh! But I'm excited anyway.

Also exciting? The idea that the universe is actually the singularity of a black hole from another universe. Isn't that awesome? Something similar is discussed in Brian Greene's book, but I have to go back and read it to make sure. But oh man, that means that all the black holes in our universe could actually be other universes. SO COOL. And that it explains the forward motion of time itself? You can't see me over here, but I'm freaking out and flailing my hands around, and I'm glad I'm not in a very visible place in the library.

...Also apparently I've given myself permission to use caps in this blog now. The World Cup brought my outdoor voice into the blogosphere. You're welcome, internet. And by the way, congrats, Spain--Holland was mean and kicked your dude in the chest, so I'm glad you won. I'm sort of sad I have to wait another four years for the madness to return.

Oh yes, and finally: My hair is bright red now! I finally found dye that works! It's very exciting. I shouldn't say bright, it's more of a vibrant maroon or something. Anyway, it's awesome. I haven't done something this different to my hair in ages.

Okay, Marx now.

OMG WORLD CUP

The World Cup should happen all the time, because then I stay at the cross trainer way longer and run way faster than usual. I did 8km during the first half. COME ON SPAIN!

I mean, what? I know this is totally unlike me, but the obsession is terribly infectious, and watching is really exciting and communal. Yelling in pubs is great fun. And it's one of those transparent games where even if you're a layman, you can tell when a team is working well together and such. So, yeah, I'm enjoying getting into the spirit.

Anyway, my goal is to write 2000 words tonight, and it's going to happen no matter what. But not until football is over.

...Okay, it's over. SO EXCITED FOR SATURDAY AND SUNDAY NOW. YAY SPAIN. And yay for completely new champions in World Cup history! I actually don't care who wins at this point because I like Holland too. It's nice to be invested, but not completely invested.

In other news, Erin has moved in to the apartment above me! I helped her pack and move her suitcases up and down the stairs yesterday. It made me realize that I'm in desperate need of some spring cleaning, as soon as this next dissertation section is done, because I have accumulated random things that I really don't need. But in any case, now we can having cooking parties and other things, which will be lovely.

I also have a new housemate named Betty, who apparently just finished up her program but is waiting to move somewhere else. She's also Chinese, so now we have an all-Chinese household except for me. What precisely is residential administration trying to tell me? But anyway, she seems perfectly nice, so hopefully the flat will continue to be harmonious.

And to just keep with the completely fragmentary nature of this post, I just made some extremely delicious risotto. Okay, off to dinner and writing for me!

Conferences, Dinners and Dissertations

The week of madness is over! And it was quite a success.

Tuesday's conference was definitely the more formal of the two, and a lot of fun because of the interdisciplinary angle it was going for. Everyone was a bit limited in terms of material since we had to impart more basic information than usual to get everyone on the same page, but nonetheless I learned a lot of random and interesting things about topics ranging from WWII salvage to Roman coin propaganda. My own paper went over quite well, I think, and I didn't make a complete fool of myself trying to answer questions, so altogether everything went smoothly. It was a really fun group of people as well, so conversation was excellent and we all went out to dinner afterward. Good times!

As it happens, I noticed (and have been talking to Erin about) how interdisciplinarity seems like a relatively new thing over here, at least from a teaching angle, which I find really interesting. It's making me glad that I did my undergrad in the States, because I get the sense that had I done it over here I would have a much narrower range of knowledge to draw from. So perhaps I did my academic Pond-hopping in the right order after all. It's nice to be able to whip out my random postmodernism and religious studies knowledge when I need it.

Thursday's conference was less formal, but definitely a bit more technical at times given that we were all coming from a literature background. There was definitely some stuff that was totally out of my comfort zone, but nonetheless really fascinating. I was glad to be able to talk to everyone about their work afterward to get some further insight. And again--really awesome group of people, and the day went very smoothly which means really good things for the future of the conference. This is the first time the MA students have put together an event like this, so I think we really impressed the faculty with our organization and enthusiasm.

The next day of course I had my meeting with my advisor, where I got some really helpful feedback on my first section. Basically the main issues I'm having is with style rather than content--I tend to go a bit artsy rather than accurate with my organizational and linguistic choices, so I need to break that habit and really just focus on being straightforward and exact. On the plus side, though, my professor said that my ideas and content are sound, which I suppose is the more important thing in the end. I'm going to try to get my next section done before our last meeting, which can't happen past 12 July, so after taking this weekend off and being a slug I'm going to try to put myself on a fairly rigorous research schedule. We'll see how that (read: my self-discipline), works out.

So all in all, the craziness of the past month or so have paid off quite spectacularly, and I look forward to just concentrating on my one topic now. Oh right, and looking for apartments and jobs in Durham. Yes.

I have been productive, and I don't like PowerPoint.

It's official! My Dickens and Carlyle section is done! I'm pretty pleased with it. I'm sure it will change once my advisor gets a hold of it, but I think it's a solid start, and I definitely worked hard on it. As it turns out, my thesis seems to be transforming into a study of rhetoric, and how machines were used not only for their relevance to society, but because the language and metaphor that they engendered enabled authors to express themselves and their political views. They can symbolize coldness, inhumanity, consumption, industry, and all the Marxist horrors we first think of, but since they also can be, or at least seem alive, they can symbolize animation and galvanism. They are, in a word, malleable, which is what makes them such an appealing rhetorical tool.

Anyway, that's at least what this 4000 words was about. Who knows where the Frankenstein/Bleak House section will take me, but hopefully it will be somewhere useful. My goal is to read the entirety of Bleak House this weekend, and then I can reread Frankenstein before starting in on the nitty-gritty analytical stuff. I'm cutting it a little bit close, but the MA conference that I'm using this latter section for is more geared towards works in progress, so I'm less concerned about all my ideas being totally polished there than I am for the Arts conference.

Speaking of which, I am reacquainting myself with PowerPoint in an effort to make some headway into said Arts presentation. It's been...interesting. I've read in BoingBoing.net and a number of other places different attitudes towards PowerPoint, and I tend to come down on the Edward Tufte end of the spectrum--namely, I dislike it. However, Tufte's stance is that PowerPoint is Evil for reasons deriving from cognitive science and how PowerPoint basically turns your learning process into a shallow, depraved shadow of its former self. I've somewhat circumvented his concerns because I don't want my presentation to be entirely derived from the slide show--mostly it will hold the occasional photograph or direct quote from Dickens or Carlyle, and the real meat of the presentation will be what I have to say. But I tend to agree with Tufte nonetheless not from the cognitive science point of view, but simply because PowerPoint is cramping my style big time.

Trying to format and stylize in PowerPoint has so far been an exercise in frustration. Text doesn't format the way I want it to, because the program believes that the only text I would ever want would be in bullet form. It appears to struggle with the idea that I don't want my text in Arial font, ever, or use its suggested color scheme for a given background image. Or that I'd like to start with a blank slide, and add elements as I see fit, rather than having to decide off the bat that I want a photo on the left, text on the right, and a title. And what if I don't want a title? Well, that's just too bad, you'll have to delete that manually and then push everything else up so you don't have a glaring blank space at the top of the slide.

I get this same problem with all of the free website building things out there. This is partially due to my lack of know-how--I strongly suspect that there are functions on Wordpress and other places that would let me build what I want, or at least get closer to what I want. But ever since learning Dreamweaver, I really just want to upload my handcrafted html files rather than deal with all of the construction through templates within my browser. If I can find a way to do that without buying a domain name and storage space, then I could have a personal website up and running in two days, because it's not like I have a ton of stuff to put up there. I just want it to look and function the way I originally conceived it, and the services that are free tend to be the ones directed at people who want everything done for them with little regard for how and in what style.

This has actually caused me to rethink my position on my top-down, bottom-up discussion with my Dad. We've basically agreed that I'm a Mac user because I'm a top-down type of person--I don't really care what's going on under the hood, so long as the car runs to my specifications and doesn't misbehave. Dad is far more of a bottom-up type; he wants to know everything about what he's using and be able to configure from the nuts and bolts onwards. I still think I'm very much a top-down person for a lot of things, computers in particular. I have no interest in programming, and very little interest in configuration beyond what I can do by poking around in my Preferences window. However, when it comes to stylistic and artistic work, I am clearly a control freak.

Anyway, the point of this whole long rant is that PowerPoint is stifling my creativity, and I am frustrated with it. But I also want to have shiny things to keep people's attention while I talk at them for 20 minutes. I may just end up making lots of picture files and then running a manual slide show instead of using PowerPoint to show them. At least then things will look exactly how I want them to all the time. Bah!

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge...

I'm rewatching the new Sherlock Holmes movie and enjoying it possibly more thoroughly than I did the first time around. Mainly because I hadn't realized just how many references and direct quotations they took from Conan Doyle. The whole pocket watch analysis delivered by Watson was originally attributed to Holmes in The Sign of Four. A very nice reference while also establishing Watson as a seasoned collaborator. The boxing scene was also established in the same novel. The whole asskicking remix idea has far more basis in original canon than one would initially imagine. Ooh, ooh, and the whole knowing every street in London and being able to find exactly where he is despite being blindfolded in a carriage due to landmarks like potholes and bakery smells was also in the same novel! Maybe they just read the one. Well, either way, lovely!

It really is a shame so much scholarship has already been dedicated to Holmes. I would totally be on that. I may still be, if only in passing, for the Gothic tropes Doyle throws in there once in a while. The movie is rife with them, to be sure. Actually, the movie basically is a mashup of all of my favorite things about Victoriana. Industrialism! Science and the supernatural! 'Victoria Regina' engraved in a brocaded wall...with bullets! Top hats and monocles!

So you see, the title of this blog is not nearly so random as would otherwise be assumed.

And no, I'm not entirely procrastinating. Along with practicing for three hours (which felt a bit like slamming my head into a wall--Stravinsky refuses to stick) I did some cobbling together of notes and editing today that will ensure that tomorrow, I will be finishing the Hard Times/Past and Present portion of my dissertation, come hell or high water. Get excited! I kind of am myself. Mainly because things may actually be making sense to me now. There may be original contributions afoot!

Righto. Off to finish the movie. Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

...I am such an Anglophile.

Essay Madness and Picture Time!

Woo my essays are done!

I think they were fairly good as well. I hope. I always get a little delirious at the end of editing so that I can't always tell anymore, but I'm pretty sure they're good. Weirdly enough, the one on DeQuincey actually went more smoothly than the Sherlock Holmes one did, possibly because I knew that I had a lot more work to do on it. The Holmes one proved difficult just because it had been so nicely self-contained, that adding another book into the analysis was at times problematic. I may have stretched the reasoning in that one by the end a bit. Hopefully it was okay though. Anyway, handed them in yesterday, and then proceeded to sleep for forever. It was nice.

So now...massive dissertation work time. I've decided to do different sections for each conference, so basically I'm hoping to get 2/3 of the thing done in about three weeks, which is, you know, terrifying, but I think it's possible. They don't have to be absolutely polished by then, just there, so...yeah.

On the flip side, I just took about eight books back to the library, so the Book Stack of Doom is now just a pile again. Phew.

Also, my trip to Conwy and Chester was absolutely lovely! Erin and I weren't expecting to know anyone else on the trip, but as it happened an acquaintance of ours (who incidentally went to UMass Amherst for a year before transferring to McGill) was also there, so we hung out with her for a bit as well. I definitely want to go back to Wales--Conwy had a fabulous castle to wander about in, not too large, but ruinous in a picturesque way, and Chester had a gorgeous cathedral that I wandered about in for quite a while. The castle at Conwy was particularly cool because they managed to incorporate it rather seamlessly into a modern landscape--check it out:

Suspension bridge and castle all at once! It appeals to the anachronist in me.

We had a proper English afternoon tea in Conwy as well, complete with tiered presentation of sandwiches, scones, and Welsh sweetbread type things, which was delicious.

Chester was a bit more metropolitan, but still quite lovely, with lots of medieval-looking buildings and Roman ruins scattered about, including an amphitheater and garden, both of which we wandered into. I should add at this point that the weather was also glorious, which was definitely appreciated.

The cathedral was gorgeous, and quite atmospheric seeing as there was a choir rehearsal going on while we walked around. A lot of the stained glass had apparently been blown out, possibly during the war, which meant that there are a lot of unusual modern replacements, like this one:

And the cathedral proper is below.

Lovely, yes? Incidentally, I have to share one more picture that I just found totally awesome, because you'll never ever find it something like it in the US. There are various plaques for the dead of course all over the walls, but this one caught my eye.

It may be a bit too small to read, but the gist of it is that this guy was an American, but during the Revolution he supported Britain, and when the British withdrew from New York he dropped everything and went with them, and then probably became a known figure in the church, or something like that. Anyway, it entertained me, because we completely forget how one nation's turncoat is another's hero. Cool to see little random pieces of history around like that.

So anyway, great trip, I'll have to make another to maybe Cornwall or someplace else after conference madness is over. Ciao for now!

Bookstack of DOOM!

So, I am back in the swing of things! And by that, I mean I have an outrageous amount of work to do.

Observe:

This is my Stack of Doom (actually larger than shown, because of all the bought books on my other shelf) which should keep me occupied for the next week or so. To be fair, I think I've read six of them already. So it will probably be fine. I just need them for quotes and such. In any case, my two final essays are due a week from now, and the topics pretty cool, I think--one on the imagined Orient in DeQuincey and Coleridge, the other on strategies of detection and mapping, using H.G. Wells to critique Conan Doyle. Fun times!

I am, by the way, a huge fan of the black book in the middle: Out of Place by Ian Baucom. I'm finding I have very consistent taste in scholars--I like them eloquent, and all over the place in terms of source material. In this one, Baucom looks at cricket fields, Gothic architecture, linguistics, and a ton more in his effort of find places that define the diversity and hybridity of what Englishness has become because of its, and the world's, imperial history. I'm not very good at postcolonial theory, but it was an excellent read, made particularly fascinating by its multidisciplinarity.

In other news, I have submitted abstracts now for both my conferences, so that each is going to focus on a different section of my dissertation. So hopefully this will motivate me to get lots and lots done in the next few weeks (the conferences are on the 8th and 10th of June), so that I'll then be well set up to finish the rest by August and then rework and edit and nitpick to death until September. At least, that's the plan. We'll see how it goes. If I can actually make it work, then my god, I may have beaten my procrastination habit! If only temporarily.

Okay, having read the entirety of Carlyle's Past and Present this morning, I think I need a nap.

Edit: Also, I feel that I should note that it is now a quarter to nine o'clock at night, and the sun is only just beginning to set. Long summer days indeed! I could get used to this.

The Odyssey, except without Greeks, and slightly shorter. Okay, a lot shorter.

Right, I am now safely home in Leeds, which means that I must chronicle the complete ridiculousness that has been the past week of unplanned travel, beyond the fact of being simply stranded in Barcelona. So let us begin! The full account is very long, so it shall be under a cut.

Adventures in Improvisation: The Vacation Edition

So after having a lovely time with the family in Venice, I have found myself on an unplanned vacation in Barcelona. Damn you, volcanic ash!

But really, there are far worse places to be marooned. Thanks to Erin´s connections with Erasmus students who she went to Denmark with, I was able to crash with her friend for the past couple of days, and then arrange to get hostel lodging until whenever flights resume. The weather is not so sunny, but perfectly warm, Barcelona itself is beautiful, and the hostel has internet, laundry, and a kitchen. So after two straight days of ridiculous frustration, I´ve begun to feel zen about my current drifter status. Plus, I just talked to an English couple who´ve spent over a thousand pounds trying to get back, so I´ve apparently dealt with the chaos quite frugally.

So there´s that. In the meantime though, good news! Durham has accepted me for their PhD program! I don´t know whether I´ll get funding from them yet, but I´m crossing my fingers. I´ve yet to get a decision from Leeds, but either way, it´s nice to know that at least I´m going somewhere, albeit somewhere rather cold.

As for current academical stuff, despite being a couple countries removed from seminar I´ve managed to find electronic copies of some of my reading, so I won´t fall too terribly behind. Also, I´m really glad that I´ve been emailing my essays to myself to print them at school, because I´m definitely retrieving them now to work on new drafts of them. Hell, I may even be more productive here than I would be sitting in my flat.

Right, I think that´s it for now. I should totally be able to put this on my CV as experience in crisis management. Or something.

I need a haircut.

Apparently my hair loves England. I swear, it's grown about two inches in the past three weeks. It's ridiculous.

I had a meeting with my advisor on Friday, which was quite successful, I think. The 2000 words of dissertation I had written were basically a lot of beginnings, so most of the criticism he had for the work was along the lines of, 'This needs greater specificity, but obviously you're going to do that later because you haven't finished this section yet,' so as it stands I think I'm in fairly good shape. I indicated that hopefully I'll finish the first main section in a month or so, which he seemed more than happy with. It'll also give me something to present at the MA conference, so hooray. This does mean, however, that I really need to finish reading Carlyle, and he is very hard to pull apart. One of the things I like about the Victorian era was how blended political thought was with poetry and science and everything else, but it also makes for very difficult reading at times, especially with authors like him. But anyway, at least on the other hand I've already read through Hard Times, which is hardly a slog, so I'm halfway done in that sense.

I also got left to my own devices this week at the language program, which was a little dicey as the guy running the program basically dumped a huge pile of worksheets in front of me and said, 'Look through these and do some of them! It'll be great!' and I had to teach myself what was going on with them at the same time as I was foisting them on the students, which was really awkward. Worksheets, while useful for the basics, are better as homework it seems, but even then it can be hard to explain (and me to actually figure out!) what precisely the directions are to them. Eventually one of the Polish guys, whose English was a bit better than the others', suggested we just read articles and discuss them while going over vocabulary and such, which worked a lot better for all involved once I was actually able to track down some articles to work with. So for next time, which will be in a couple of weeks, I'll be finding some readings to do instead of worksheets.

Lastly, Erin and I might try to do a quick day trip on Tuesday out to East Riddlesdale Hall, which is an estate in Keighley. It looks pretty and easy to go through, and there's a ruined abbey nearby that looks absolutely gorgeous, so if I can figure out travel to it, we can put our National Trust subscriptions to good use. We shall see!

On teaching English

So apparently, I sound authoritative enough to be a teacher!

At least, this is according a random man who was a colleague of the guy who runs the English classes, which I'm now helping to teach. Indeed, I made it over there this past weekend--it's a bit of a trek; I have to walk to the center of town to take the bus that will then take me off in another direction for 15 minutes to actually get there, so all in all it's about a 45 minute commute. Still, it wasn't hard to find from there, and it ended up being rather fun. It's a pretty disorganized set up, all told, since it's free and people can show or not show whenever, but we ended up sitting around small tables with reading assignments and worksheets.

Most of the people coming in have been living in the UK for a year or more, so they know enough English to communicate the basics, but there's a lot of vocabulary missing, and/or the nuances of the differences between similar words aren't there. I mostly followed the lead of the one teacher who's actually gotten qualified to teach English at first, and as she was not a native speaker herself, her approach was definitely one I'll want to imitate. So as we went through some reading she would lead with questions and I would supplement with definitions of words and troubleshoot.

Eventually, however, I ended up working one-on-one with one woman who was clearly several steps behind the rest of the group. It was difficult, but difficult in a fun way, as a lot of her questions were ones that I wasn't always prepared to answer--for example, how does one define 'shame' or 'embarrassment'? I couldn't use synonyms, since those wouldn't be understood either, so I had to go for examples, and sometimes without cultural context, examples became hard too. It was a creative challenge to come up with situational examples that were universal and clear, and I don't think I always succeeded. I definitely had to go back a couple times and say, 'Wait, that was a terrible explanation, let me try again.' Luckily we were both patient with each other!

Anyway, we managed to get through half a worksheet over an hour or so, and it seemed like the woman was retaining some of it by the end, so overall I'd call it a success. In any case, I'll be going back next week, and hopefully I'll be able to do better. It's really satisfying to be able to hone my own skills of articulation (and piece apart the English language myself) while helping other people--I think teaching is actually getting more and more appealing as a general career on the whole. It's kind of really exciting. And given the comment from Random Man at the end of the session, I fit the general profile pretty well!

I really like dramatic titling.

I have officially declared my dissertation title! It shall be called:

'Demons of Industry: Machines as Monster and Metaphor in the Victorian Gothic'

Exciting, yes? Hopefully the content will be as exciting as the title. We shall see. I'm going to try to get another 2000 words done before Venice happens, because then I'll be a little less than a third of the way through, and that would be extremely excellent.

The last of my unassessed work has been turned in, so I'm feeling a little burned out at the moment--writing an essay a week for three weeks in a row is tiring, so I'm glad it's over. On the flip side though, I'm reading War of the Worlds for Imperial Masculinities this week, and it is lots of fun! I think I'm going to write my final essay for that course on it and Sherlock Holmes, as a sort of compare/contrast piece about detection and imperialism. It will be fun times, hopefully. I also read Byron for Monday's seminar, and while I definitely enjoyed it he is very dense, and I am bad at reading Romantic poetry, so it was a bit of a struggle. He was at least significantly more accessible than Blake, for which I am thankful.

On the application front, I have one more scholarship form to fill out, and then I am done. It will be glorious. It will probably be another few weeks before I start getting any responses back, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

And now, I'm off to a piano lesson. The Ballade is getting better! I'm amazed. Yay for having technical skills actually start to catch up with my interpretive skills. Took me long enough.

Procrastiduction! The neologism of my life.

Argh, procrastiductiveness has struck again. In other words, I have done my laundry, cleaned my room, done the dishes, and organized my shelves. I have not, however, made much progress on the actual writing of dissertation stuff. Rar. It'll get done...just not right now. So clearly, I'm going to write a blog post now, instead of doing anything about it.

On the other hand, I am taking initiative in other aspects of academia--I'm going to try to submit an abstract for an arts conference the Classics department is holding in a few months, because it will be small scale and the theme is "Transitions", which is totally what my dissertation is about. It looks like an appealing way of easing my way into the conference experience, and I know that Erin's attending, so I won't be alone. I've also volunteered to help organize and advertise an exclusively MA students' conference that a girl in my Imperial Masculinities seminar is coordinating, and I may present some material there as well. So that should be fun, and it will motivate me to work on really honing my research and presentation skills. Plus, I'll have some more things to put on my resume.

Other than that, things are still going well--the weather's being quite agreeable, actually, which is bizarre. Today was practically temperate. I can feel myself already becoming spoiled with less-than-frigid winters. I haven't had to wear my winter coat these past couple of days. It's sort of awesome.

Also, I bought a second pillow, and now I sleep a lot better. I had no idea this was an issue, but clearly I am bad at paying attention to what my body thinks of things. So hooray, I suppose.

Okay, I should really actually work now. For real. Yes.

ETA: I just heard back from the coordinator at the church that hosts English classes for immigrants and others in Leeds, and it looks like I'm on board for volunteer teaching on Saturdays! This shall be very interesting, considering I have no language teaching experience. But I have high hopes.

Applications, woo

Two PhD applications have now been sent off--three more to go! I'm sorting out a bibliography for one, and then hopefully the rest will be done and in the mail by the end of the week. So, fingers are now crossed.

It is now the season of essays. I just handed in my Sherlock Holmes essay yesterday, which was about the imperial impulse behind Doyle's portrayal of detection, and was pretty fun. I also have 2,000 words due for my dissertation next week, which is faintly terrifying, but will happen, come hell or high water. And then my other paper is due the week after that, which is on...I don't know yet, and should probably decide. Possibly Coleridge, even though I'm really bad at Coleridge. Maybe the slave trade? We'll see.

I had a lovely dinner with the flat the other day. Everyone's freaking out about work, but it was nice to take a break with food and silly picture-taking. I made curry.

And on a final and very random note, I had an awesome dream about Alice from Alice in Wonderland teaming up with Sherlock Holmes to investigate the haunted house of Dorian Gray. My mind is in a very literary place! Also, the visuals were amazing. Also, I'm pretty sure it was a musical. Huh.

Woo Further Music Shenanigans

Another lesson with Georgia today, and there is much music afoot! Rachmaninov went very well, and we're starting work on the Sonatine, which needs lots of articulation and technical rehashing. Georgia also suggested (without prompting or knowledge of my previous repertoire) that I try the first Chopin Ballade! This is the first time it's actually been suggested to me that I play it, rather than my requesting hopefully with little chance of actually getting it up to performance level. So I'm trying it again--I feel like at this point I have a score to settle with it (pun not intended). I read through it this afternoon, and it's actually uncanny how much muscle memory I have of it, so we'll see how that goes. I may also try the Op. 26 #1 Polonaise, which Georgia also suggested, and if I get the chance I may round out the Rachmaninov pieces with the extremely fun Etude-Tableaux Op. 33 #6, which is sort of insane but great and I may die because it is crazy fast. So between old stuff and new stuff, there's more than enough to keep my on my toes, that is for sure! I may be slightly insane to be trying so many things at once, but it keeps me engaged.

Georgia actually paid me a lovely compliment by noting that I was capable of earning a diploma in music performance if I put in the time. Which I sort of knew, but considering my extremely sporadic practicing habits, it would probably take a small miracle for something like that to actually happen. But hey, at least its something I could look into if this PhD thing falls down around my ears. I've been putting in more hours in the practice rooms recently, so maybe there really is still room for growth on this front. My hands feel fit! Also slightly sore. I blame Chopin, and upright pianos with overly enthusiastic sound dampeners. It was impossible to get a proper fortissimo out of the Yamaha I was working on today. Oh well.

Okay, reading Allan Quatermain now.

Baking update:

Anarchy has never been so delicious!

And We Are Back in the Swing of Things.

Busy-ness abounds! Classes are going well so far, in part because we take breaks halfway through each to have tea and biscuits. It's very English, and I like it, especially when I haven't gotten a chance to eat lunch. Anyway, my Nation and Empire course is turning out quite well, despite being centered on the Romantic period. There are only five of us in the class, but it's a good mix of people from different disciplines, so we're getting some good discussion in, and have a friendly rapport with each other. The professor's a fairly young guy who's good at leading discussion even when we're all scratching our heads over Coleridge, so all in all I think the course will go well.

My other course is Imperial Masculinities, which will be a challenge on the one hand, but quite fun on the other, because I get the sense that the professor is demanding, but the novels we're reading are basically the adventure books of my youth. I get to do a presentation on The Sign of Four! How cool is that? This week we're reading Allan Quartermaine, and we'll be covering Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, and yeah, basically all of my favorite books from when I was twelve and devouring books like woah.

I'm also realizing that the way I have my semester set up, I've covered the Victorians proper, and am now studying the era's bookends--Romantics from 1790-1830, approximately, and Victorian fin-de-siecle. Which is leading me very nicely into my tentative PhD proposal, bwahaha. I've done some preliminary digging, and it appears that there are no definitive works on the Gothic and the Industrial Revolution...yet. And thus, with any luck that's what I'd like to write on. I think (so far) that the topic is sound, and as a bonus I'll be able to incorporate my MA dissertation into it--given how my focus this year is on how the Gothic changed in response to industry from the Romantic period to the middle of the Victorian era, I can widen that scope to include the very beginnings of the first Industrial Revolution, all the way up to the fin-de-siecle and the transition into Modernism. It's a very broad time frame, I realize, but given that the thesis will amount to 100,000-150,000 words, and the genre and historical event are fairly specific, I think I'll be able to swing it, at least as a preliminary topic. We'll see how it goes.

Last week, I also had a meeting with my dissertation advisor, Dr. Salmon, which went very well. Dr. Salmon seemed very taken with my topic; we discussed how it was coming along, and I was able to further specify where I'm going with it, so I'll be writing a piece of my introduction and a close analysis of one of my main sources for Easter break. I've not decided which novel I'm going to start with, but hopefully writing will commence in the next couple of weeks.

On a more personal note, my flat's dinner was a resounding success, in part due to the presence of three of Federica's friends from Italy. We had Chinese soup, spring rolls, and rice, along with spaghetti with bacon, egg and cheese, and finally apple pie. It was extremely filling, but we spread it out over the course of the whole evening, and by the end, Alma broke out her guitar, and we had a regular soiree. The Chinese girls sang their national anthem and a couple of traditional songs, the Italians broke out dance and folk music, and I threw in some Fiona Apple and then tried to remember a song I'd written aeons ago, to moderate success, considering my woefully inadequate guitar skills. First time I've sung solo for an audience in years! But it was really fun. We're going to try and do something similar every fortnight or so. So hurrah for Federica, getting us to actually be social! And hurrah for music, the universal language of awesome.

I'm also under orders to teach everyone how to bake pie now. I'm okay with this plan.

Much Baking is Afoot

I have just discovered a recipe for "Anarchist Oatmeal Cookies". They sound easy to make and delicious...and also apparently punk rock. It shall be my next project.

In the meantime, I had a piano lesson with Georgia last week! It went quite well--we worked on the Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux, which is coming along nicely, and I think I'm going to try to learn another short piece to make a set of three with the etude and the prelude that I learned aeons ago. I'm also going to start more serious work on bringing back the Ravel Sonatine, which up until now I've only been sort of tinkering with. So, it looks like I'll have a more consistent and hopefully productive schedule on the music front this semester.

I also have a new flat mate! Yetande was only doing one term here, apparently, and Federica is here for a three month research project of some kind, so much rotating is going around. As her name somewhat implies, Federica is Italian, and may in fact galvanize us all into acting like an actual flat--at her suggestion, we're having a nice dinner night this Friday. The three Chinese girls are making various traditional dishes, Federica is making pasta, and I am, very predictably, making pie. I'm realizing that apple pie is the only quintessentially 'American' thing I know how to do well anyway--everything else is vaguely Italian or otherwise! So that should be fun. Lots of accents and language barriers to deal with, but we probably should have done this ages ago, so I'm glad for the prompting of a more extroverted personality.

Classes start tomorrow, which should be fun--I shall start with my Nation and Empire seminar, which will probably introduce me to lots of new people, given that the subject falls more in the Romantic period than the Victorian. So all in all, good times!

In which I clearly need to read information on websites more carefully.

Leeds was full of lies! My PhD applications are due way later than I thought! My world is full of sunshine and rainbows!

Ahem.

So yeah, I'm beginning my applications process. Mostly just registering accounts with the universities and entering in all the basic information. It's a start. I feel fairly organized, despite clearly being clueless about dates the first time around. Anyway, I've also sent off an email to one of the English professors who offered help on getting this stuff together, so hopefully he will write back and I can have a chat with him so I'm not making random stabs in the dark.

Classes don't start until February, so I'm mostly just trying to refill my refrigerator with healthy food and waiting for people to finish with their exams so that we can hang out. I also have a piano lesson next week, which should be fun! I've been able to get into the building a few times this week to practice, so it won't be a disaster. I'm slowly getting the hang of the Rachmaninov Etude-Tableaux.

In other news, I have great luck with weather around here. I know it was apparently crappy a few days before I arrived, and now it's comfortably in the upper 30s, low 40s, and not particularly dark or gloomy. So I'm pleased.

Adventures in International Travel!

I am returned!

The trip was split down the center awesome and then grueling. I had no security fails, for once (i.e. leaving forgotten corkscrews or Swiss army knives and other sketchy paraphernalia in my carry-on bags), and then there was free WiFi in Logan, so I was able to amuse myself without spending money on perfume or something. Then, to top it off, the flight was extremely under-booked, so I and a number of other passengers had two seats to ourselves. Consider it the one positive thing to come out of terrorism scares. I could actually nap in a semi-horizontal position, and I had twice the number of blankets and pillows to cocoon myself in. It was practically luxurious.

The fog over London was quite dramatic, by the by--pea soup all the way up to 1000 meters. It looked as though we were descending into an alien world; specifically, one made of glowing marshmallows. Quite fun to watch.

Then, second half of the trip was just really, really cold. Firstly though, I knew it was going to be a problem that they didn't properly check my visa at Leeds Bradford in September! I go up to the customs desk and the guy is like, "So wait, you're a first time student at Leeds?" And I have to clarify that technically yes, but I've already been studying there since September, and this is a return trip to finish, and then he gets extremely confused because apparently I was supposed to get my first entry stamped as well as all my returns. So now, every time I re-enter the country I have to bring my visa letter from Leeds with me, because otherwise customs will be all, "Rar! Where is your first stamp??" And I will be all, "It's not my fault don't kick me out of your country!" So yeah, fail, Leeds Bradford Airport. Big fail.

But anyway, after that it was really cold. Not in the New England sense of below freezing, but just that I had to stay in the bus station for a couple of hours because despite visa difficulties I severely overestimated the time it would take me to get through customs, and then the bus I took from London to Leeds did not have adequate heating at all. So I basically was sitting in freezing weather for five or six hours. It wasn't even like there were any hitches in travel plans or anything, it was just really cold for an extended period of time. Oh well.

So now I am off to grab supplies from the convenience store, and then I'm going to settle in with a giant pot of tea and not move until my body temperature has officially returned to its correct degree. Woo travel adventures.