Lindisfarne

I'm procrastinating doing my corrections, so it's time for photos!

I went to Holy Island this past weekend on a day trip for postgrads. It's a semi-detached island off the coast of Northumbria, where St. Cuthbert hid from Vikings, and the English defended themselves from the Scots, and is presently home to extremely cute cottages, a surprisingly small castle on a very big hill, and also a meadery. Also, some great views.

Unfortunately, the afternoon did not begin auspiciously, weather-wise:

The shoreline...

...leading up to the castle

 I struggled mightily trying to relearn how to make the camera do things.

Raindrops on grass. ART WAS ATTEMPTED.

 I completely bollixed up the interior shots, but it was surprisingly unimpressive--the castle had been renovated into a summer home at the end of the nineteenth century, leading to it becoming a rather cosy place, all told. The only shot that came out at all was the kitchen:

Cosy!

The hill is largely responsible for the castle looking as imposing as it does.

I attempt nature photography.

A slightly nicer shot of the exterior? Bit too dark, had weird problems with colour. OVERCAST LIGHTING! *shakes fist*

But then, miraculously, while I had lunch in a pub, the skies cleared, and the rest of the afternoon became glorious, just in time to check out the priory and graveyard. Huzzah for picturesque ruins!

The island in the background is the castle. It looks far more impressive from that distance.

Graveyard shot.

More high contrast shenanigans. It was so bright all of a sudden!

Further attempted nature photography. Totally a high concept commentary on life and death, with that little bird and the headstone. I totally did that on purpose.Totally.

The path leading away from the priory, towards the beach.

The beach! I really like this shot, actually. That kid's red jacket was fortuitous.

Since the island is only cut off during high tide, when the tide is low you can walk out and everything is covered in seaweed and mussels. I felt bad about walking on them. Also, there's a tiny crab hiding in this photo, under a rock. It refused to be photogenic.

A view of the priory and church from the beach.

There are giant obelisks on the English coast to serve as guides for ships, presumably, but they mostly just look cool and alien from the island.

Someone attempting to fish.

More obelisks!

And again.

Clearly, I only sort of remembered how to do photography by the end. But all in all, it was a very enjoyable day out.

Terrible experiments in photography, aka trip to Gibside

So I will be spamming with photos of Bern in a very short while, but first! In August, a couple of friends and I went on a day trip to Gibside, which is a giant sprawling 18th century estate outside of Newcastle, and I have some terrible attempts at photography to show for it. It was a very grey day and began raining towards the end, so the lighting was terrible, but we did have a lot of fun looking at English bourgeois imitations of Palladian architecture, imagining what it would be like to ride horses around a giant rambling estate, and being sorely tempted to climb some fences to get a closer look at some of the more falling-apart buildings (we eventually refrained, because all of us are on visas and deportation would probably be inconvenient). So! Some highly manipulated and sketchy photos:

The chapel for the Bowes family, who owned the estate. SUPER PALLADIAN. There was someone playing terrible pop songs on the piano inside, which kind of ruined the effect. Nonetheless, very pretty.

There was a big walled-in garden. B decided that she needed one for her future home.

I attempt to be artistic! Flowers were actually shootable without the weather ruining everything.

More flowers. 

The entrance to the garden.

There were apple trees badly in need of picking.

FAVOURITE PART: The orangerie. 

I am utterly failing to capture how awesome the orangerie was. It is descending into ruin very prettily.

Was all glassed-in with state-of-the-art windows and roof during the 19th century.

Tried really hard to be artistic. Filters and gradients fail me.

Giant monument to liberty on the other side of the estate. Ridiculously ostentatious and great.

The banquet hall, which you can't actually get inside at the moment, which is very frustrating. Photo had to be taken from down the hill and across a manmade pond. 

So there you are, fun at National Trust sites, followed by fun with photoshop/lightroom! B and I are hopefully going to try and do more trips like this, because it was really easy to get to by bus, and a nice break from research.

Thankfully, the upcoming photos of Bern are far nicer, because there was real sunshine. Also, I'm slowly getting better at fixing white balance and stuff, so. Please stand by!

I have marked 64 exam scripts in the last six days, and it is a beautiful warm day.

I am going to the pub.

Onwards and upwards

So that whole overbooking myself like a boss thing is still going on, as should be readily apparent given that I haven't updated in an age. List format once again becomes my last resort. So!

THINGS THAT HAVE GOTTEN DONE:

1. My last chapter. It still needs a lot of work, but it exists.
2. Classes! I had a couple of really lovely last sessions with my Novel students this term, going through some exam questions, answering queries about what to expect, and it was very productive. I should probably start modelling all of my class plans after the one I devised for this last one, it worked really well.
3. Marking. I have done all the marking. And was very pleased on the whole! Everyone got better at writing and expressing themselves. I was very proud. Of course, I've also been recruited to do exam marking, so at the end of May I am going to be swamped with nearly fifty scribbly panicked exam scripts. Oy. At least I'm getting paid. 
4. My lecture! It was written in full, and delivered in full with accompanying powerpoint. Hopefully it was helpful to people. I thought it turned out all right in the end. Good to know that I am in fact capable of interpreting poetry, albeit not very creatively. My voice was very tired by the end--an hour is a long time to talk.
5. I presented the material for my reading group this month. We looked at Leavis and a Humphrey Jennings war propaganda film, and it was a lot of fun! I learned a lot from hearing other people's perspectives on Leavis especially--much food for thought for editing said last chapter.

THINGS THAT ARE IMMINENT:

1. My editing plan. I'm making a list of all the major things that need to happen to all of my chapters to make them not suck. I am currently halfway through, and intend to finish the rest tomorrow. It is already about four pages in long hand. Ughhhh. 
2. DULTA starts tomorrow. But guess what? The cold snap has ended! It has been lovely and warm, and I have been wearing dresses all week. My mood has been accordingly far lighter, it's pretty amazing. So I won't have to be grumpy about having to walk two and a half miles to the other side of town at nine in the morning every Friday. Or rather, I will be grumpy, but not as grumpy as I would have been in the winter.
3. I have a completion review coming up, wherein I apparently report upon how I'm getting on with my work, whether it will be done on time, and possibly decide on a title? I'm currently dithering on that front. But in any case, that's happening. Which is scary in and of itself. I'm trying not to think about it. 
4. The public engagement project, which is ongoing and taking up quite a bit of my time. Trying to get so many people in academia and heritage and archive sites together in the same place at the same time is exhausting. On the other hand, though, we have a website, where you can check out what we're doing. It should be really good, once it all comes together! But oh man, it's a lot of work. Work which involves talking to people, which I am the worst at. 

So yeah, this whole busy-ness thing isn't really letting up. And probably won't until, uh, July? At which point I will just be editing. Editing forever. 

At least it's sunny out. 

:D?

Stuff and Things

So I've decided to give myself a proper challenge in my quest to learn Chopin preludes and after fiddling about with a few short and sweet ones (nos. 3, 11, and 13) I have decided to learn #24, and it is going to be fun and also terrible, because oh god giant intervals and cascading chromatic thirds. I am finding that pieces that are 5 pages or less are really suiting me right now, because it means I can do really close work on a few measures quite a lot without getting impatient and wanting to just know the whole thing all at once. Just right for my practice habits, which basically happen whenever I have something on the stove, or the kettle is on, or I am frustrated with whatever else I am working on.

I definitely got a little obsessed today though, and spent a good few hours hashing out the first page or so of #24 in between yelling at the piano, and at my hands, and at various performers on YouTube who made it look easy (I'm looking at you, Pollini. Grr.). But like I said, it's fun! I haven't gone for something properly melodramatic in a while. It's a great piece for showing off. I'm determined to make it work. Whether it actually does, will of course remain to be seen.

In other news, I have been felled by a head cold this past week, which has made working on my chapter (and almost everything else) nigh impossible because the sentences I string together tend not to make too much sense when my entire skull feels stuffed full of cotton wool. This was highly inconvenient, as it was the last week of term, which mean that I had a great many things to do, and many of them were left until the very last minute as a result. All of the truly time-sensitive ones did get done, in between frequent naps, but as I am now on the mend, I must get cracking on everything that's left over. At least I will have the library at my disposal now that all the undergrads have gone home for the holidays.

It must be said that I am really enjoying learning stuff about F.R. Leavis for my last chapter because he was crotchety and frustrating and histrionic, and apparently I like that in authors I study who are now dead (see also: Carlyle). No doubt I would find him endlessly aggravating in real life, but on the page and safely in the past, fascinating and hilarious! Truly, he had all the subtlety of Fox News, it's pretty funny.

That's all the news for now; we've had utterly ridiculous weather that can't decide between snowstorms and sunny clear skies, often switching off between the two every half hour, and it is at best aggravating. I demand spring to spring, on the double. Maybe then I'd be more inclined to bring my work out to the library every day.

Back to the grindstone, and other things

As the title implies, I have been busy getting back into the rhythm of things after a delightful few weeks back home. I will try to remember what exactly it is I've been doing.

It has been quite cold since I've gotten back to Durham, and we even got a fair amount of snow over the past week or so, which was very lovely until it all turned to sheets of ice that took up a good quarter of my route into town, making travel somewhat hazardous. Luckily, the majority of it melted today, so I can start wearing things other than boots again. I like being able to walk places without running the risk of going arse over teakettle.

I am sucking it up and buying some itty-bitty bookshelves for my bedroom because I lack shelf space (and just space in general) so I'm compromising by getting shelves that are super shallow and will fit behind my bed against the wall. This has the dual benefit of giving me more places to put books and also getting my bed farther away from the wall that has a tendency to grow mould. Hopefully this will work. Hopefully I will have enough handyman skills to assemble the things by myself. It will be an IKEA adventure!

I've now had both of my novel groups and my combined honours class start up again, and I'm definitely noticing that I'm getting more comfortable leading groups and thinking of good leading questions to ask while going with the flow of conversation. I'm also particularly glad, I think, for the one-on-one meetings I have with my English students at the end of the previous term, as that seems to go a long way towards making my students feel comfortable with me as well. I don't have the luxury of doing the same with the CH group, and I'm bracing myself for the next CH session in a couple weeks time, as that will be all about genocide and various thinkers' reaction to the Holocaust, which will obviously be difficult for everyone including me. I'm thinking I'm going to take a full weekend to read up and prepare.

On my own work, I'm currently assembling a detailed outline for my last chapter, which will diverge from the previous models of my chapters and use a particular critic--F.R. Leavis--as a framework to look at the combined legacies of my central authors. I have high hopes that this will really make the rest of my material gel, though some of the connections between him and Shelley, for example, are going to be somewhat at a remove, seeing as Frankenstein didn't really get any critical reception from anyone until very late in his career. I'm still figuring that part out.

I'm also writing out a less detailed outline for my whole thesis, with an aim towards marking off what specific things I have yet to add and how transitions between chapters are going to happen. This is both more intimidating and more exciting, as I'm stumbling across various points of synergy that I hadn't before considered, which is great but of course requires more writing. My to-do list will probably grow exponentially for a while. But at least it's full of fairly concrete things, like, "You should definitely finally get around to reading that extra book" and "actually go through and make sure all of your spelling is British".

There are other things going on as well, like choir and the AHRC grant getting started, but that can wait for another time. In short, lots of things are happening, but I like being busy.

DONE

My work for this term is over! At least teaching-wise. I will be bringing the makings of my next chapter, as well as some marking, home. But for now, the deadlines that had to be met, have indeed been met. I am trés pleased.

Choir went exceedingly well all of this past week, with an advent procession in the cathedral, a big Sunday service, and then a concert and carol service on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Our director is changing jobs next term, so it was his last week with us, and it ended up being rather emotional, but very lovely.

Also, I'm happy to report also that my students seem to be doing very well--no truly terrible essays, and a few very impressive ones that I definitely could not have produced my freshman year of college, so kudos to them. I met with almost all of them individually to go over their work, and hopefully that was helpful to them as well.

It is bloody cold here, and damp, and I am currently wearing three layers and a scarf indoors. Last night I spent the evening with my back against the radiator in my room. It's pretty gross, is what I'm saying. But I got a second duvet the other week to stuff in with my first one, so I'm sleeping very cosily at least.

Above all, I'm looking forward to being home for the holidays, but seeing as that's coming up very soon, I really have no reason to complain!

We have been granted!

I'm very pleased to announce that a bid for an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) grant that my friends/colleagues Nicole and Bea and I wrote up has been approved! As such, we'll be organising and running a training programme focussed on archival research into Sir William Armstrong and his role as a scientist and philanthropist in the Victorian northeast this coming spring. It's going to be a big project, and we've got a fair chunk of change to do it, and I'm quite excited about the prospect of making it happen. If it comes off well, it will be a big feather in all our caps.

Durham was totally flooded the other week when we had torrential rain for a few days, and as such two of the central academic buildings in town, both of which are usually occupied by the departments I work for, have been shut down, because someone had the bright idea of keeping all of the electrical workings in the basement, so as soon as the river climbed a few feet higher than usual, all of it got ruined. As such, I taught one of my classes all the way across town, and I had to retrieve a whole bunch of my books from the postgrad study room before everyone was shut out of the building entirely. Also, my advisor is now in exile from his office. It's all rather inconvenient. We can only be thankful, I suppose, that it occurred so close to the end of term, so that they have time to fix everything over the holiday.

In any case, the term is winding down or up, depending on how you look at it--I just finished with my last teaching session, and soon it will be time to mark essays madly and have a marathon session of handing them back and meeting with all my students, and as previously stated, do a lot of choir. Also I should probably get more mundane things done, like cleaning and laundry and errands, but those are secondary at the moment. Oh right, and I should fit some research in there as well, that would be good. There is a vague feeling of hectic-ness in the air, and it is very distracting. On the whole, I am tired.

But! I have a direction for my last thesis chapter, and a lot of books to read for it, and an idea of how to go about doing a big chronological overhaul of all of my chapters so that they begin to cohere to each other, as well as internally. So that's good. I was in a coffee shop today between class and choir and managed to write a good page of introductory material that better articulates what it is exactly that I'm trying to do and why I should bother to do so, which is encouraging. As always, I fear that I am better at pontificating than analysing, but sometimes some free pontification is very helpful for clarifying my thoughts, which can then be used more analytically. Or something.

All in all though, I am looking forward to Christmas! I require reading by the fire, pianos that are not keyboards, and kitties. Not necessarily in that order.

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.

Roma! Choir Tour 2012

A somewhat late round up of my week in Rome with the choir, because the week back has been a little hectic!

Firstly, Rome was lovely, and the group was surprisingly congenial, given its size. I think there were about thirty of us in all, but as far as I know we managed to escape most forms of drama, which was excellent. We all had to trundle over to Leeds Bradford at five in the morning, which was just lovely, and then queue for forever due to the airport being under construction, but other than that, our travel was mostly smooth.

(As it would turn out, Leeds Bradford apparently hates me, but more on that later.)

Rome was ridiculously warm, and getting warmer, which was initially entirely welcome because Durham when we left it was cold and miserable. On the other hand, however, it was really, really warm. I got a bit sunburnt initially, then tanned, and then just oppressed by the heat, which was up in the very high 90s by the time we left, such that the Durham weather now seems, while not precisely nice, at least a bit more comfortable.

I am really happy with the tan, though. I forgot my skin could turn this colour.

Our first rehearsal was in a Jesuit meetinghouse that had been restored to its former glory after being forgotten for some time, and it was resplendent with the usual Italian aesthetic of coloured marble and gold festooned in every direction. It was a pleasure to sing in, and pleasantly cool in contrast to the outdoors. We ended up doing an evensong service in there at the end of the week, which was attended apparently by some bigwigs from the Anglican church, among others--all in all, it was a surprisingly good crowd.

In fact, we got quite good audiences for nearly all performances, probably in part due to some impromptu performances in St. Peter's Square, the Spanish steps, and various street corners.

Incidentally, I should mention that we were practically staying on the Vatican's doorstep. We were hosted by four very kind nuns with very limited English and were able to mostly come and go as we pleased, with the exception of a curfew. This was the view from my window:

Pretty crazy. We saw the pope drive up in a motorcade the first evening, complete with tinted windowed town cars and circling helicopter.

Anyway, other than the Jesuit venue, we also did a concert in a small medieval church near the Forum, San Giorgio, and couple of services in the only Anglican church in Rome, All Saints, which was also lovely, but which I resent due to the fact that I blame its warm central hall and chilly basement for my cold, which developed half-way through the week. It wasn't long after that I lost my voice completely and therefore failed to contribute all that much to performances, which was more than somewhat irritating.

Nevertheless, I did manage to continue to have fun and socialise, albeit while apologising profusely for having to blow my nose every fifteen seconds. I went with one group of people to the Coliseum, and another to the Spanish steps and the Pantheon, and got some shopping in as well. Roman fashion seemed all about the nicely cut pencil dresses and suiting, which was good for me and bad for my wallet, and I only barely managed to restrain myself from acquiring many nautical dresses and comfy shoes. Overall, it was a very fun trip with very good company.

The only hiccup luckily/unluckily occurred at the very end of the trip when we arrived back at Leeds Bradford, at which point I was questioned yet again about my visa, only this time they didn't simply ask me about my past failtasticness at paperwork; instead, they decided to not tell me what was going on, pull me aside for questioning while handing me a sheet of paper that says they're "withholding my right to remain in the UK" (thereby inducing panic in me while several more plane-loads of people went past me in line), search my bags, question me again, and then finally ask me about my visa trouble, which I suspect would have prevented all of that hullabaloo in the first place. So it seems that despite the fact that I've now had three customs officers tell me they're going to clear this nonsense from my record, it still hasn't been cleared, so I'm going to have to call/make an appointment with the US Embassy to basically ask, "WTF, mate?" and have them deal with it. Oy.

Oh, and of course this was all taking place while everyone else in the choir had already gone through and was waiting in the bus on the other end of things, causing me to tell them to leave without me, which they would have...had the bus not gotten stuck behind some ridiculous barrier, therefore delaying them long enough for me to emerge, searched but unscathed.

It was a bit of a mess. There was a lot of trash talking about Yorkshire on the way back.

But anyway, that was the only hiccup, and it was my hiccup alone! So all in all, a good trip indeed.

Productivity! In one form or another.

We've finally got clear, if not warm, weather after about two weeks straight of truly demoralising rain. It has been absolutely miserable, and I want spring/summer to come back posthaste. I have had quite enough of wearing flat boots! I wish to wear dresses and pumps now please, thank you.

I am slowly getting better at paperwork, which is quite an achievement, considering my dislike of it. My gripe is not so much the actual doing of it as the utter paranoia I'm struck with just before sending it out, which means that I have to reopen and check the file at least five times before either printing or emailing for fear that something has happened to it while I wasn't looking directly at it. My neuroses, they grow by the day.

Anyway, in addition to finishing my marking for last term, I assembled my first grant application, albeit with most of the work already done for me by the rest of the NENC. We've gotten money from the British Society for Literature and Science to hold a symposium in the fall, but needed just a bit more to make it feasible, so we've gotten some from Newcastle and I was in charge of applying to Durham. Hopefully Durham will come through as well, because then we will be flush to make it happen! I have never been on an organising committee before, 'tis very exciting.

I've also applied for teaching next year, and am very sad that they aren't running the Victorian module for second years. Thus, I'm hoping for a few groups of Intro to the Novel, and maybe a second-level module on the Romantics if I'm lucky. Department money is tight, as per usual, so fingers crossed.

In other news, I think I have finally solidified a system of research that works for me, which has taken more than long enough, thanks very much. Apparently, I really need to handwrite my notes, then type them up, then have a cut-and-paste extravaganza in order to form an outline, and then write a chapter. I'm sure this is just thrilling to hear about, but I'm kind of relieved to be able to say that I have a method now, so I figure I'd announce it. I was almost ready to resort to index cards for a while, it was getting so chaotic. This is far more compact. And I'm utilising Scrivener's split-screen mode so that I can reference my outline and my chapter all at the same time, all from the same document, woohoo! Technology, I like it.

And on the other end of the spectrum this method also means that I get to use my fountain pens a lot, which I appreciate.

So yes, I have to type like mad tomorrow and then Monday I'm assembling my outline to hand in, and then I'm taking a break from Shelley to write my paper for the 'Transforming Objects' conference, which should be fun. Far more general than the stuff I'm doing now, and a nice break from long-form work.

I think that's all! I must try and get to bed early tonight so I'm not shattered for choir tomorrow. I've been accidentally nocturnal the past week, so here's hoping for a hard reset.


P.S.: The Avengers movie is AMAZING! AHAHA the UK gets to see it a week before the US does and I saw it on opening night and I have so many feelings about it, oh my god. Oh superhero movies, you will always be my favourites, but this one especially is fantastic and just legitimately good as well as fun. I'm probably going to see it again...soon.

Easter vacation is not actually vacation

It is, in fact, an opportunity for me to spend lots of time in the postgrad study rooms when they are really empty. I have a stack of books to get through, and they must be gotten through by the end of the month! I've had a couple of skype meetings with Simon, so it looks like I can leave Goethe behind for a while, so now it's all Shelley all the time. Primarily, I'll be looking at Frankenstein, but Percy's Prometheus Unbound will probably play a significant role as well, once I actually read it and its surrounding material. Reading about the Shelleys is super entertaining, as well--so much scandalous living! The only drawback is that their letters and things aren't archived online, as far as I know, so it's a bit more work to have to read through massive compilations rather than search by key words. Clearly I was meant in this round of research to kick it old school, so that I can gain further appreciation for how much easier my life is with the help of the internet.

Speaking of more books, just before the end of Epiphany Term there was a massive book sale held at one of the college libraries, so I have managed to add to my personal library in unexpected and awesome ways. They were trying to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff, so every book was 50p, so my housemate and I spent a lot of time combing through the chaos to find interesting things. I now have some old editions of the first volume of Carlyle's The French Revolution, and H.G. Wells' The Dream, which I have never read, as well as critical books on industrial culture and structuralism and various other things. My best find was definitely Landes' The Unbound Prometheus, which is an well-respected commentary on technological change, and a must-read for me.

I am already dreading having to move house to wherever I'm going after finishing my degree.

In other news, I have been generously invited to be part of the central organising group of NENC, so I will be blogging there a bit more as well as helping out with organisation of events and things. I'll post here with links about my contributions when they appear. Nicole and I will be talking about our first tentative steps into teaching, and I'm going to do a short essay at some point on an aspect of my research that I haven't decided on yet.

So, many things afoot, though I have to get over my disappointment at the weather going back to rainy and cold after a glorious couple of weeks of nice weather. Grar, hazards of the northeast.

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!

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!

Rain and Disraeli

Ack, I had a coughing attack TWICE in the middle of seminar. At least this time I wasn't stuck in a lecture hall, and could excuse myself to go be disruptive outside. I think my professor thought I was dying, though. It only happens when I'm sitting down too, which is not conducive to class participation. Okay, enough whining. It means my cold is going away, so hooray, I guess.

Anyway! Sybil was...interesting. Disraeli, being the political animal that he was, couldn't help but vacillate between trying to tell a romance and giving a treatise on historical and political theory, with some race and class analysis thrown in for good measure. Not precisely entertaining stuff, but it was a fairly good survey of the political climate and the state of unrest among the working class in the 1830s and 40s. It was published the same year as Engels' Conditions of the Working Class in England, and one can see Disraeli warring a bit with those socialist views in the Sybil, which was quite interesting, particularly since Disraeli was fairly conservative, and had some rather interesting opinions about how aristocrats should completely separate themselves from the working class so as to better care for them in a terribly paternalistic way. However, my basic knowledge of Marx, or even Carlyle, did not prepare me nearly enough to parse what precisely Disraeli wanted to say about his own political model, because he made it incredibly dense, convoluted, and often a shade hypocritical. That, woven in with the romance of Sybil-the-woman, and Sybil-the-ultimate-symbol-of-Albion-itself, made for some seriously uneven text. But hey, those are more fun to have discussion about, because then we have room to complain a bit.

Incidentally, getting to class was a bit of an adventure, as all us poor English students had to venture into the giant scary complex of science buildings in order to get to our assigned tutorial room. I was very glad to run into some classmates before actually getting into the building, because otherwise I would have been woefully lost. There is some seriously bizarre architecture around that whole block, which reminded me a bit of the H.R. Giger architecture from the Alien movies, except in concrete rather than black piping and slime. I'll post pictures when I finally track down a cable to attach my camera to my computer. I'm very glad I don't have to deal with that part of campus that often. It's even more confusing on the insides of the buildings.

In other news, today was my first genuinely rainy day in England. It's rained a bit during the night before, but I had to drag myself through a light to medium downfall to get to class this afternoon. It was a bit unappealing in terms of actually willing myself to go outside, but it wasn't bad once I was out there, so I suppose that bodes well for my general tolerance the weather here. I'm also mostly used to looking to my right first before crossing the street, sorting out the shapes of all the coins and knowing their corresponding value, and generally getting about. I'm even getting used to saying that 18 degrees is nice weather. So all in all, it's been a fairly easy acclimating period, no doubt aided by massive ingestion of the BBC.

However, I will say this: I cannot for the life of me understand Manchester accents. They are impossible. The guy who came to fix my faucets had a broad Manchester accent, and about four in every five words he said was completely unintelligible to me. Same with Erin's housemate, who's also from around the Manchester area. I'm going to have to develop my ear a hell of a lot to get used to that.