Pan Boiling on the Hob

Had a great day on Friday at the 'Ancient Languages Taster Day' at the University of Liverpool on Friday. Got there slightly late as the train decided it had to terminate at Manchester Piccadilly rather than continue on to Liverpool Lime Street, which meant an annoying unscheduled half-hour wait until a connecting train could make up the rest of the journey. Arriving at last, I jumped into a taxi and managed to miss only the first few minutes of the Hieroglyphics lecture. After coffee (during which I got chatting to two other mature students) we continued with Sumerian/Akkadian and after lunch I sat in on the talk on Coptic. After a valedictory glass of wine, I walked back down to the town centre, calling in at the RC cathedral and a fabulous bookshop called (I think) Reid's Up the Hill (very much like Shakespeare & Co in Paris, an identification that the owner seemed to like very much indeed!). Once I got over my initial and habitual unease of being out and about, I enjoyed the whole day very much indeed and decided I should really tackle learning Coptic. Having some Greek seemed to make it quite feasible, so I've got a book from Amazon Coptic in 20 Lessons to get me started. As usual, it will be a bit of a problem fitting it in: I generally manage to over-schedule my day, and I've already decided that I need to revisit the consciousness studies and their applicability to linguistics. God knows when I'm going to fit it all in! I find micro-managment the best way - divide the day into 15 minute slots so that at any given moment I can cram in some vocabulary or the reading of a specific article.
However, today has been reasonably successful thus far: by 8.30am I had fed the dog, put on a load of washing and cooked tonight's ragu sauce for the pasta (a big pot of it that can be transformed into pastitsio or lasagne and chilli for two other meals) and was in the pool at the gym where I swam for half an hour and steamed for ten minutes. I washed my hair in the showers, so that's done, and called in at the shops on the way home to pick up salad-y stuff and croissants. At home I turned the laptop on (in my 'satellite' study, in the bedroom, because it's half-term), hung up the laundry, put the guinea-pig out in his hutch, sorted the recycling for putting out and made a skinny latte and grabbed a croissant. I managed to sit down at the computer by half-ten, but various annoying admin tasks (freeing up disk-space in my uni email allotment) meant that I actually didn't get down to work until eleven. I put in a good couple of hours before lunch - I've learnt that I cannot function efficiently without regular food - and after walking the dog, another good couple of hours. It was a bit bitty today, and I didn't quite manage the golden 714 words required.
I spent a lot of time chasing up a reference to a fragmentary piece of text by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus which apparently only exists embedded in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, and generally rooting through various etymologies but, all in all, I stopped at a good place to stop, with some reasonable writing under my belt for the day. Tomorrow, I'll probably be equally late in starting as I think that Daughter #2 and the Bouncing Bubba intend meeting me for a coffee after my gym (shoulders and biceps) and swim session.
I decided I'd got a taste for the workshop thing and booked myself on a 'digital researcher' day at Durham just before the Classical Association Conference kicks off. I haven't really looked at train times yet, but I'm guessing it'll be another very early start!

Tea shortly after finishing this post, and there's my Tai Chi class at 7pm.
I had strongly considered kicking this last thing into touch but -hey! - what else'd I be doing. Actually, I'd be watching University Challenge and then The Beauty of Books on BBC4 at nine, but I'll set the recorder.
So when I'm going to fit in some Coptic is anyone's guess...or do some academic reading! Although I do have half an hour before I need to get the pasta on so......

Back in the Saddle

This week, I have been inspired by my attendance at the Digital Researcher event at the British Library in London to dust off my academic blog and get down to some serious reflection (although this will be more of a panoramic catch-up).

I note that my last post was somewhat less than enthusiastic about the whole doctoral process, but I think I can put that down to a rather general air of gloom that can seize me as the days get shorter.

Things are moving on apace, as they are inclined to, even given a curmudgeonly outlook.
Christmas was surprisingly excellent, and I was surprised (and delighted) to receive a Kindle reader from the Husband. Turns out that not only can I get digital reading matter for it (no more Waterstone's 3-for-2 offers for me!) but it can store my PDFs on it! Now, PDFs are the bane of my life as I think I have mentioned before, cluttering up my laptop in digital form and desk in hard copy. Using a simple drag-and-drop action when the Kindle is attached via USB, I am gradually rationalising them into logical collections. Fab!

I delivered a short paper introducing my research at a study-day seminar last week, which was held off-campus at the Old Templars' Hall at Bolsall just south of Birmingham. the timing meant that I had to travel down from York the night before, but I stayed at the University of Birmingham Conference Park Hotel at Lucas house on Edgbaston Park Road. This was, pathetically, a bit of a daunting prospect as I haven't actually spent a night away from my family (except for producing them!) in years! I must say I felt a bit anxious on the train down and thinking about it, should have arranged to have arrived before it got dark. My thinking was that I'd still be around when the kids got home from school and then leave at teatime.
As it happened, they weren't terribly bothered (the Husband had promised them a Pizza Hut pizza) and I just felt like I been hanging around all day waiting to set off. I wasn't in the mood to do any writing up, so concentrated on getting my Powerpoint right and rationalising some prompt-notes, but that didn't take very long at all. Arriving at New Street Station, I decided to take a taxi to the hotel rather than negotiate the branch-line train and a walk down a rather dark tree-lined road. Consequently, I got to my room just before nine pm and was pleasantly surprised by the accomodation - simple but comfortable - although the hotel appeared to be a maze of corridors and right-angle turns. Turning in early, I drank tea (eeuw! - Millac Maid UHT milk), ate some 85% choc and watched Big Fat Gypsy Weddings ( the Husband would not be impressed).

The breakfast was generous, but I limited myself to three courses(!) and headed off to the minibus pick-up point. All went reasonable well, I think, although no doubt I would be horrified by my performance had I been captured on video. I ended up doing that thing at the end when you read from the slides (only the last two though!) because you've lost your train of thought. Still (feedback says) I appeared relaxed and confident. I did make the effort to stand up and move round a bit and it felt quite good, if not entirely convincing. The rest of the day was sociable and enjoyable, including a trip back to campus via Tolkien's old haunts.

Last Monday, as mentioned, saw me at the Digital Researcher event at the BL's conference centre. Early start: the 6.30 train from York to King's Cross, a quick catch-up with London-based Daughter #1 in the St Pancras Pret-a-Manger and round the corner to register and log-on to the facility's network. Things initially threatened to go tits-up as the system didn't seem to want anyone to get online with it and it sulked by going very slowly. Eventually it was sorted out and we had some workshops and a plenary talk before lunch (including being charged with the group-task of producing some reflections on the day to give to the participants later on in the afternoon. After lunch it was a workshop session of choice (I chose Social Citation and Bookmarking), tea and then reassemble to cobble together our piece which took the form of a Blogger blog. The day finished with a talk on the pros and cons of digital research and researchability and finally a welcome glass of wine in the bar. The train back to York was the non-stopping one (save for Doncaster) so I was back home in less than two hours - which is far swifter than the stinky CrossCountry train from Brum, and was altogether a nicer train experience (more leg-room and frequent at-seat service).

I've been trying to fit a reasonable amount of exercise around my studies since Christmas (honestly, my pastry-eating and laziness was getting beyond a joke!) so I've been popping to the gym (ten minutes walk away) and swimming first thing in the morning before I start work on the computer. This has been quite invigorating mentally, but I do feel quite physically tired and sometimes I wonder if I can keep it up (the exercise, not the doctorate). Still, I shall -nay, must! - persist until I see some good results.

Unfortunately, I overestimated how long I had to knock out the 10,000 words I breezily promised my supervisor for our next meeting.
I thought that we had agreed to meet on March 26th, but looking in my diary realise that in fact, the date we eventually arrived at (he had a meeting on the 26th) was the 17th!
Not only had I lost a working week, but next week is half-term which usually seriously compromises my work intentions! I worked out that I had to write 714 words a day to hit the target, but the research that has to be done just eats up the hours available. It's all quite fine-grained stuff at the moment (linguistic and exegetical commentary work) and almost every word has to be minutely looked into, and its usage and nuance examined in depth.
I am trying to be focussed, but things keep cropping up and distracting me. Like I had to re-organise my train ticket for tomorrow (I'm off to the Ancient Languages Taster Day at the University of Liverpool - another cross-country odyssey) because I realised I'd booked on one an hour later than I intended (which would get there way too late).
And books keep arriving from Amazon: I've decided I need to reinvigorate my reading into consciousness, so I'm trying to read some new stuff in the field; Domasio, Rose, and Searle on language. I think I'll take one on the train tomorrow, but I find train-reading doesn't lead to in-depth assimilation. Hey ho! The life of a doctoral researcher! At least I'm back in the academic blog-saddle!