between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Cataloguing the Arch Soc/Class Soc library: still not done. On the other hand, I brought biscuits, and there was conversation, and fun: the committee is stacked to the geek end of the student pool (case in point: we had Stargate jokes and Dune jokes and Princess Bride jokes, and only one person doesn't get the references).

Climbing: sent the blue 5 route, the orange 5 and the yellow 4 back-to-back; scrabbled my way up the red 6a feeling weak and failworthy, but improved the grey 6a. I like that dyno move: it's good fun, and I'm getting better at it. I am also figuring out how to do the last couple of moves of the black 6a with the undercling: I suspect the solution is to ignore the undercling, get my feet up higher, and go up with the left rather than the right hand. (The right hand grip is the first two fingers in a hole in the hold. It is not excellent, but far more stable than the undercling.)

Failed of the blue 6b, of course, without even getting as high as on Monday. But I kind of expected that. That Friday feeling, of course.

---

Everyone's afraid of something, right?

It occured to me today that my - not an obsession, precisely, but definitely a need - my need to be doing exercise, to be fit, strong, able to run at least a couple of miles... it's related to fear. (It also feels really good to be strong and fit - endorphins are made of win, as they ought to be - but bear with me, okay?) I've been living with the constant, albeit purely psychological, need to prove myself 'worthy' (do not, I implore you, ask what that means: I am beyond ever thinking I can define it) for years.

Physical stuff, unlike academic stuff or writing stuff or people stuff, gives me measurable, quantifiable improvement that relies in the final estimation on me, not on other people's judgement. It's like the biscuit I can give the nagging sense at the back of my mind: Shut up. See there? Better than last week. Look, we're doing okay here.

Which is why, I guess, if the choice is between spending my time climbing and running and falling over dead when I get home, or spending my time writing? (And that is where the choice is, these days, mostly. My time is sadly not infinite.) I'm going to do the physical stuff.

This is my Deep Realisation (tm) for the week.

Yesterday, climbing. Two 6as sent, and one 6b improved. (By a little, not by much, but still, a metre and a half of progress is damn well progress.) Three more 4+s and 5s that I've done before.

Today, crawled out of bed by ten to ten, grabbed a muffin on the way to the train, and spent three hours (Three. Hours.) in college cataloguing the (conjoined) library of the Archaeological and the Classical Societies, with the assistance of one very good, very brave, very hero-of-the-revolution friend.

The Classical Society, you see, claimed that everything was catalogued already. Well, yes, they do have a catalogue. Unfortunately, it is right arseways - alphabetically by title, and not consistantly even there - and of the two, three hundred books we pulled off the shelves today? Less than one in ten was in the catalogue. (Also, there are at least four copies of Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution and Paul Cartledge's The Greeks, three each of Boardman/Murray/Griffin The Greeks and the Hellenistic World and The Roman World and of J.K. Davies' Democracy and Classical Greece...)

It is a very odd collection, for sure. And it seems one of the former librarians was a conspiracy nut. There are a couple of odd books on comets, and one copy of The Stargate Conspiracy. Ten minutes were lost to mad laughter, on our part, and on the part of one of the professors who happens to be a Stargate fan.

We are nowhere near done. So next Friday will be another cataloguing day.

The train home had many weird people on it. Met the parent at the station, grabbed a roll from a wee place in the Naul, and headed off for PC World, for Project Mortgage Soul and Find Reasonable Replacement Laptop.

My soul is well and truly mortgaged now. But I have a shiny new machine with an actual graphics card, 15'4 inch screen, that weighs less than a sack of bricks and has enough processing power to actually play a couple of games, to boot.

(It is called Sir Galahad. Yes, I named it. And I plan to take really good care of it, too. I don't have two souls to mortgage, you know.)

Okay. I want to bite something now. You want to know why?

...Or maybe you don't want to know why, but, well. I'm going to tell you anyway.

See, as it happens, I got myself hooked up as a committee member of TCD's Archaeological Society. And now, instead of being sane (was sanity ever a thing I should have expected from my fellow college students?) and conducting business through email, the joint Auditors have gone and set up forums on some community site thingy called 'Bebo' or something, for organising the Society for Fresher's Week.

Wankers. They too lazy to expend the effort to co-ordinate via email? Not filling me with confidence of the most massive. They could have done something slightly more sane, and set up a Yahoo mailing list - at least one can send and receive communications from one's inbox that way, without needing a whole 'nother rigmarole.

I are pissed. Pissed. Because I've been avoiding Bebo and MySpace and the like like the plague itself - LJ is my timesink of choice, and the last thing I need is the temptation of another one.

I'm also pissed because I'm a pessimist.

There are three major problems with working in committee. The two most important - and connected - are leadership and communications, the whole 'I thought - he said - but you' thing that happens when nobody knows who's setting the agenda, or even if an agenda is being set, and nobody is taking responsibility for making final decisions, and making sure the rest of the committee is informed in a timely manner.

The third is cooperation. Keeping the committee as a whole and as individuals involved and working towards the same goals.

My previous experience with committees doesn't leave me hopeful.