Sunday, March 18, 2012
New layout!
Got bored on my enforced vacation. Solution? Photoshop and messing about with templates!
Friday, March 16, 2012
Goethe chapter is conquered!
That is, it is finished insofar as I can't look at it anymore without my brain hurting, and it has both an introduction and a conclusion in addition to all of the major things that I wanted to say smooshed in between. So I am well pleased, all told, and celebrating mostly by doing all of my laundry, sleeping a lot, and staring at my suddenly very empty calendar.
Choir has ended for the term, and I have picked up all but two of my students' essays (I will check my mailbox again for the last two, and if they are not there then I'm going to have to start haranguing by email), and thus my only responsibility for the next few weeks is some grading. I'm thinking I should maybe take a day trip somewhere interesting so that I can claim to have had a proper vacation over Easter. I haven't done any research into the possibility, but I'm willing to take a train somewhere and wander about at some point. In the interim, I have a new Temeraire book, The Hunger Games, and about the fifth copy of one of my favorite Dick Francis novels all downloaded onto my kindle, so I'm going to do some fun reading for once, and hopefully I won't backslide into analyzing thematic content and political implications as I do so. If all else fails, I have one more issue of Transmetropolitan and the graphic novel version of The Vesuvius Club to completely divorce me from my research brain, at least for a short time.
I'll have a couple of things to work on once I'm done playing at vacation time. My proposal for the 'Transforming Objects' conference got accepted, so I'll be working on that this spring as well as starting reading on Frankenstein, and it sounds like there's going to be a really good line-up of speakers for the whole event. I am full of admiration for Nicole who seems to be doing a fantastic job coordinating everything and dealing with the headache that is answering the barrage of emails from all of the participants. I have certainly not reached a point at which I feel responsible enough to undertake something like that, so more power to her.
In the meantime, we are just on the cusp of spring, which means that I am torn between stalwartly wearing dresses and leaving my window open, and accepting the fact that it is just a little too chilly still for anything but hot tea and sweaters. It is also slightly frustrating that it is genuinely warm and fantastic for about three hours each day, but if you go out dressed for that and then stay out past that sweet spot you will find yourself with chattering teeth and goosebumps as the sun disappears from view. I have still not mastered the art of layering that will remedy this, but I'm working on it. I now have an impressive collection of scarves, so I need to learn how to tie them in lots of fun and debonair ways.
Lastly, I am slowly transforming my life with an ipod app, which is just about the most ridiculous statement I've ever made, but whatever. I've started using 'Clear', which is a friendly and intuitive list-making app that organizes and categorizes everything from my research tasks to my grocery list to my daily list of things to do, and considering how much I adore lists, it's basically everything I could ever want in life. The mere fact that I now walk into Tesco's and actually leave with everything I need (and nothing more!) is the best. Project: Not Failing At Life progresses!
Choir has ended for the term, and I have picked up all but two of my students' essays (I will check my mailbox again for the last two, and if they are not there then I'm going to have to start haranguing by email), and thus my only responsibility for the next few weeks is some grading. I'm thinking I should maybe take a day trip somewhere interesting so that I can claim to have had a proper vacation over Easter. I haven't done any research into the possibility, but I'm willing to take a train somewhere and wander about at some point. In the interim, I have a new Temeraire book, The Hunger Games, and about the fifth copy of one of my favorite Dick Francis novels all downloaded onto my kindle, so I'm going to do some fun reading for once, and hopefully I won't backslide into analyzing thematic content and political implications as I do so. If all else fails, I have one more issue of Transmetropolitan and the graphic novel version of The Vesuvius Club to completely divorce me from my research brain, at least for a short time.
I'll have a couple of things to work on once I'm done playing at vacation time. My proposal for the 'Transforming Objects' conference got accepted, so I'll be working on that this spring as well as starting reading on Frankenstein, and it sounds like there's going to be a really good line-up of speakers for the whole event. I am full of admiration for Nicole who seems to be doing a fantastic job coordinating everything and dealing with the headache that is answering the barrage of emails from all of the participants. I have certainly not reached a point at which I feel responsible enough to undertake something like that, so more power to her.
In the meantime, we are just on the cusp of spring, which means that I am torn between stalwartly wearing dresses and leaving my window open, and accepting the fact that it is just a little too chilly still for anything but hot tea and sweaters. It is also slightly frustrating that it is genuinely warm and fantastic for about three hours each day, but if you go out dressed for that and then stay out past that sweet spot you will find yourself with chattering teeth and goosebumps as the sun disappears from view. I have still not mastered the art of layering that will remedy this, but I'm working on it. I now have an impressive collection of scarves, so I need to learn how to tie them in lots of fun and debonair ways.
Lastly, I am slowly transforming my life with an ipod app, which is just about the most ridiculous statement I've ever made, but whatever. I've started using 'Clear', which is a friendly and intuitive list-making app that organizes and categorizes everything from my research tasks to my grocery list to my daily list of things to do, and considering how much I adore lists, it's basically everything I could ever want in life. The mere fact that I now walk into Tesco's and actually leave with everything I need (and nothing more!) is the best. Project: Not Failing At Life progresses!
Sunday, March 4, 2012
I have run out of clever post titles.
Clearly since I have a truly ridiculous amount of notes to sift through and carve a chapter from, the best thing to do is write a blog post instead. Logic!
The past month has been quite busy with a lot of choir performances and travel and such. The trips to Ripon and Great Ayton both went well, Great Ayton particularly, where we were also provided with a fantastic dinner and managed to make some money from tickets and CD sales that will go towards the tour in Rome. More recently we've been doing all of the Lent services and such, and then St. Chad's Day happened on Saturday. Obviously, its original purpose was to celebrate the life of the saint, which did in fact happen, and there was a festival service at the cathedral for it. On the other hand, however, it's also basically St. Chad's College's excuse to have a day of clowning around and boozing while wearing a lot of green. When I went to sing in the festival service, a lot of the choir had been awake since around 5 AM having champagne and running around the bailey. Good times!
On the academic front, I had some very good news from my last teaching session--I was observed for the final tutorial by one of the professors in the department, and his feedback was very positive. There were definitely a few moments where discussion faltered a bit, which I identified, and so he gave me some suggestions for how to remedy that, but overall it seems that I'm doing a good job, and he's assured me that he'll be recommending me for further teaching next year. So with any luck, I'll have a few more classes next year, possibly even an advanced course, which would be fun.
Additionally, I did a workshop on lecturing that will put me in the running to give a lecture next year during the students' study period, which could be fun/nerve-wracking, and definitely a nice addition to my CV. It will no doubt be infinitely more stressful than leading tutorials, but I might as well get used to it now. Ah, public speaking, I am bad at you.
In other news, I just sent off an abstract for a conference that Northumbria University is hosting, which I'll definitely be attending whether my paper gets in or not since it's so close by, and my friend from Leeds who helps run the NENC is organizing it. Its theme is 'Transforming Objects', so I thought I'd compile some of my earlier work on impressions of industry by various authors and industrialists into some observations about machines and how they're perceived. It'll be a nice change from the close biographical work I've been doing lately. There's also a giant Carlyle conference that's happening in Edinburgh this summer, but I'm not sure whether I want to go--it's a bit pricey, and I'm not sure whether I want to deal with finding accommodation and everything for a conference I'm not presenting at. I might just go for a day or something. We'll see.
And now I really must get back to finishing the Goethe chapter!
The past month has been quite busy with a lot of choir performances and travel and such. The trips to Ripon and Great Ayton both went well, Great Ayton particularly, where we were also provided with a fantastic dinner and managed to make some money from tickets and CD sales that will go towards the tour in Rome. More recently we've been doing all of the Lent services and such, and then St. Chad's Day happened on Saturday. Obviously, its original purpose was to celebrate the life of the saint, which did in fact happen, and there was a festival service at the cathedral for it. On the other hand, however, it's also basically St. Chad's College's excuse to have a day of clowning around and boozing while wearing a lot of green. When I went to sing in the festival service, a lot of the choir had been awake since around 5 AM having champagne and running around the bailey. Good times!
On the academic front, I had some very good news from my last teaching session--I was observed for the final tutorial by one of the professors in the department, and his feedback was very positive. There were definitely a few moments where discussion faltered a bit, which I identified, and so he gave me some suggestions for how to remedy that, but overall it seems that I'm doing a good job, and he's assured me that he'll be recommending me for further teaching next year. So with any luck, I'll have a few more classes next year, possibly even an advanced course, which would be fun.
Additionally, I did a workshop on lecturing that will put me in the running to give a lecture next year during the students' study period, which could be fun/nerve-wracking, and definitely a nice addition to my CV. It will no doubt be infinitely more stressful than leading tutorials, but I might as well get used to it now. Ah, public speaking, I am bad at you.
In other news, I just sent off an abstract for a conference that Northumbria University is hosting, which I'll definitely be attending whether my paper gets in or not since it's so close by, and my friend from Leeds who helps run the NENC is organizing it. Its theme is 'Transforming Objects', so I thought I'd compile some of my earlier work on impressions of industry by various authors and industrialists into some observations about machines and how they're perceived. It'll be a nice change from the close biographical work I've been doing lately. There's also a giant Carlyle conference that's happening in Edinburgh this summer, but I'm not sure whether I want to go--it's a bit pricey, and I'm not sure whether I want to deal with finding accommodation and everything for a conference I'm not presenting at. I might just go for a day or something. We'll see.
And now I really must get back to finishing the Goethe chapter!
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