Tanned and now ready to do work

I had a wonderful, wonderful time in Rome again with my dear grandma talking books and academia and family and friends while jaunting around trying (and sometimes failing) to find basilicas and museums and soaking up the sun. As it turns out, really good maps of Rome are in short supply, because we had a truly farcical time finding some of these things! Still, it was nice to wander about, despite the fierce summer weather.

Also, architecture:

Behold, my future home.

It was extremely busy, being the height of tourist season, so we didn't get into all of the things we wanted to, but it was still a very fun time, and we got to check out some beautiful buildings, excellent art, and even some Vatican archival documents that were on display at the Capitoline Museum. All in all, a very lovely trip.

And now, it is back to work for me--I have to apply for funding for my intellectual history workshop in London, and also prepare my paper for the NENC speaker series, which I'll be presenting at in August. Also, I have to peer review some papers for a Durham workshop, and of course overhaul my Marx chapter. So I am busy!

But on the other hand, I just got informed that I've been shortlisted for teaching in Combined Honours, so fingers crossed that they take me. Also, on the suggestion of my friend Bea, I have learned how to make chai tea from scratch, and now I can't stop, I'm going to start living off of iced chai lattes, oh man are they delicious.

That's all the news for now, toodles!

Haircut!

I think she lopped off about four or five inches. My head feels lighter!

It rained hard enough to set off a car alarm. And, you know, flood Newcastle.

It has rained torrentially and dramatically this past week, which was only made acceptable by the fact that I was basically married to my laptop the entire time, hashing out a draft of my Frankenstein chapter. The good news is, though, that both the chapter, and the rainstorms, appear to be done now! I say 'appear' only because the sky continues to look somewhat ominous, but it's been doing that all day, and it's been most pleasant anyway. Crossed fingers that it clears completely, at least for a few days. The chapter on the other hand is definitely done, at least until I need to edit it. But that won't be for a while.

In other good news, Durham's confirmed that they're giving NENC the whole £500 for our 'Moving Towards Science' Symposium, so we are now firmly in the green for funding that, and can offer free registration and travel bursaries besides. Very exciting! We've released a call for papers, so hopefully we'll hear from a good number of people with interesting paper proposals.

Now my only priorities before I head back to Rome are a job application for the combined honours course, and a short article on Marx which I'm going to workshop through one of Durham's training courses, which will serve as the beginning of a paper I'm going to present at NENC's speaker series in August. It'll be a good way of getting back into the rhythm of Marx, because I think that's the chapter that I'm going to begin really overhauling this summer so that it fits properly with my Faust and Frankenstein chapters.

Also, I'm getting a haircut tomorrow. I think I'm going to go fairly short, because I seem to only get haircuts about twice a year nowadays, and at the moment it's overly heavy and needing to be braided and stuff, and that's annoying. I'll post pictures after the fact! Unless it's hideous, but hopefully it won't be.