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!