between the rock and the cold, cold sea

The plan for tomorrow is:

1. Make sponges for pear sponge cake.

2. Make (highly experimental) treacle gingerbread for the care and feeding of friends.

3. Hope like hell the treacle gingerbread is edible. Successfully not blackened mess!

4. Translate two more pages of the French Article From Hell.

5. Finish one of the two non-fic pieces I have ongoing.

6. Turn one of the two drafts I already have into a finished piece.

7. Stack piles of books-to-research more neatly. (Followed, most likely, by 7a: explain to other residents of this house that yes, this is as good as it gets unless I get a Tardis or a magic wardrobe.)

8. Wrap the things-to-be-wrapped.

9. Try not to freeze.

---

This is enough to be going on with, right?

1. Produce abstract for research paper for postgrad research conference: deadline: Jan 5.

2. Produce article for [redacted]: deadline: Jan 1

3. Produce article for consideration of [also redacted]: deadline: Jan 1

4. Produce 10-12,000 words worth of notes for thesis: deadline: December 14.

5. Acquire and post the things which must be acquired and posted: deadline: December 7.


...Yeah, I think I'm kind of busy lately. Also, too tired tonight to do any real work. This is the week of running very very fast to keep in place.

Depending on what kind of Greek homework I get tomorrow, I may stay home on Friday and pretend to have a day off. Pretending, because I will in fact be reading.

If I were not meeting people and earning an hour's worth of money and having an evening talk tomorrow, I would be hiding. Hiding, I tell you.

1. I have started writing proposals for nonfiction articles. I have no idea how to do this for commercial or genre markets, and with my (lack of) track record this might be as fruitful as tilting at windmills, but I've started.

If any of you guys have helpful tips, please don't be shy about sharing them, because -

- point two:


2. This country is, er, doomed. Not the exciting kind of BOOM VOLCANO RIOTS APOCALYPSE doom, which is at least over quickly, but the grim kind of grey projected record emigration/joblessness doom. So it would be nice if I could start earning something towards stockpiling tinned beans and paying for my over-the-counter painkillers.

It's an apocalysp. Because we can't even pronounce our apocalypses right.


3. Small bit of happy news: by this time tomorrow, I will actually have the piece of parchment proving I am, indeed, B.A. (Hons). (I took a first! This is a tiny thing to be proud of, since god knows a first in ancient history is not going to do me that much good in the medium-term.)

Expect ridiculous engowned pictures.


4. Writing up anthropology notes is enough to make me suspect it might be possible to die of boredom.


5. There is no fifth thing. Except for doooom.

In the interests of accountability, my list of Things To Do before Monday morning:

1. Revise CV in line with recommendations. (eta NB. Fix last citation issue ASAP.)

2. Write up response to Lloyd, In the Grip of Disease.

3. Greek homework and flashcards for assessment test.

4. Modern Greek homework and flashcards. Sort of. Mostly. Almost.

5. Read and take notes on the whole of Timaeus.

6. Laundry.

7. No, really. Do the damn laundry.

8. Read and review Guy Gavriel Kay, Under Heaven, since the shop found my copy. Well. Not quite reviewed yet. But I have notes!

9. Send the emails to friend in Oxford you've been meaning to write for a while.

10. Other work as needed.

...Damn. I have more to do than I thought.

I've been sat working at the kitchen table since I got up today. Vladimir, the household's feline overlord, normally takes his ease in the living room.

But since I've been here, he's been sitting in the chair beside me. Occasionally on top of me, and - more regularly for him, since he's a windowledge sort of cat - sitting on the windowsill watching me.

The constant purring is equal parts reassuring and disturbing.

Apparently, when I go on a baking kick, I make enough for a week.

Saturday, this was. I had the usual brain malfunctions, and I decided to take my useless rage out on the kitchen.

Several hours later, there was lemon and ginger roast chicken, three different sorts of not-quite biscuits (so I used self-raising flour and not the plain kind. The cinnamon-supposed-to-be-biscuits made a nice shortbread, the chocolate-walnut biscuits were actually quite biscuit-like, and the maple-walnut ones are edible), and two plates of toffee. It was supposed to be caramel, but, well. It was hard and chewy enough for toffee. (And very tasty. All gone by Monday.)

It surprises me, you know? I used to think I was a failure at this domestic thing. I'll still go to vast lengths to avoid ironing and bathroom-cleaning, but hey. I appear to be able to cook.

(Too many biscuits. The neighbours, the parent's boyfriend, the grandparent, and the climbing partner have all been beneficiaries of the baking madness thus far, and there is still more left. Although I suspect it will all be gone by Friday night.)

This is what the best parts of my town look like.

It's not much, but sometimes it's all mine.

In which our heroine acquires a new dangerous hobby.*

I am, I will confess, scared sick by heights of any significant distance. Let's say, ten metres up? Yeah, that's plenty high enough for the drop to kill you.

This is why, of course, that having attained, or nearly attained, completion on essay#2, I betook myself to the Climbing Club's Tuesday session, and after twice nearly (I say nearly: I could smell it, damn it) reaching the top of the easiest wall and falling (banging my elbow a good one in the process), signed myself up - and paid in advance - for the belaying-and-minimal-competency lesson on Saturday afternoon. Once I have that, they'll give me a licence, and then I can go cripple myself in the company of a partner pretty much any time I feel like it.

Bear, please don't hurt me. It's too much damn fun to give it up.

After essay#3, I can go back to karate on Sundays. And after essay#4, I can take up judo/ju jutsu on Saturday mornings.

Yeah, my personal reward system involves getting up to go do hard physical exercise. It's kind of weird, but so far, it seems to be working.

(If I attain Schols, or even a nice little exam exemption, I'm taking up fencing in Trinity Term. But that's rather putting the cart before the horse.)

I'm looking forward to the week where I'm sufficiently on top of things that I can hit the gym three times, too. I have hopes that it'll be next week. High hopes.

(Which reminds me, I should look into the gym's holiday opening hours. They have a swimming pool**, and if I don't have a lecture to run for or an immediate train to catch, it'd be rather nice to have a dip.)

---

Things've been rather quiet on the writing front. I promised myself I wouldn't beat myself up about not writing while I was aiming for Schols, and so far, not so much with the guilt. But I broke a long dry spell at the weekend when I started something new, and in the wake of that, I've finally figured out one of the things that I keep stalling on in the duellist book.

It might be a good idea if I manage to give both my main POV characters different arcs. Rather than have the one clinging onto the other like a limpet.

As soon as I figure out how, precisely, I should do that, I'll give it another shot.

---

Progress on essay#2, once I realised what I needed to do, has been gratifyingly rapid. Hopefully this streak of good luck will hold true for essay#3, which is also a presentation, and needs to be done by Monday.

Damnit, but I love my work. Love. I've found my vocation, and while it'll never make me rich, studying, reading, discussing, learning: it makes me happy. Which is altogether the preferable thing.

Also, adrenaline from falling off walls. But the fact remains.

Now if I could only finish a novel, my small, personal world would overflow with joy. :P



*Previous (current, as soon as I climb Essay Hill) dangerous hobbies include karate and scuba diving.

**Yes, it's a sad thing. Gyms with swimming pools are usually rarefied animals, in my experience. Not right there! In my college! For me!

I have an essay draft. This is good.

But this is only the beginning. Since the essay deathmarch from hell is now underway. Eight weeks, eight 2000-word essays. Death or glory*.

I doubt I'll have brain enough to work on the novel, much less the endurance to do it well. So I think I'll stop beating myself up over that and go play with short stories with what little brain I've left over. They don't, at least, require novel-type endurance.

Speak not to me of Minoan trade with Egypt. Unless you have a good map.


*Typoed as 'gory'. Paging Dr Freud...

1930 hrs.
Right. I'm typing this in the library, though it won't get posted till after I get home. I'm halfway through an essay on the connections between Egypt and Minoan Crete in the Bronze Age - I swear, every time I think I'm closing on the end of this thing I discover another piece of vital information - and bored, tired and hungry is how best to describe me right now, I believe.

Hope everyone who went had a good WFC.

I don't have anything to say. Would you believe that? So much for my escaping my essay to wax lyrical on... I don't know what I was going to wax lyrical on, but it would have been good, trust me.

...And I just realised something. An essay a week is the same as 2-2.5K a week, or 500 words every working day. With lots and lots of reading. No wonder I haven't felt so much like writing: all my time and all my brain has been eaten by the giant sucking black hole of essay-writing.

Trinity: eating students' brains for >400 years
( my slow work in progress: a long snippet from a short )

---

whatever time it is now.

Tonight I discovered a great and terrible talent: when sufficiently tired, I can burn pasta.

Yes. Pasta.

I sleep now, I think.