Not too far down the Primrose Path...

Bwahahaha! The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but at least the German reading skills grammar test is now out of the way, so I can concentrate on the task in hand.
So how am i doing? Well, generally I have managed to sit down at my desk at around the 9.30am mark, having delivered the Boy to school and made myself the obligatory espresso. Don't always manage to start work straight away though....
I did do the German revision though, and hopefully this has paid dividends: I certainly felt pretty confident during the assignment today.
I have to hold my hands up concerning my marked up chapter....it requires me to spend some hours at a stretch to address my supervisor's comments.....
I have finished parsing 1Corinthians, and have just started on 2Corinthians: plenty to go at over the Christmas break! (...and then onto Romans...)
Haven't managed to fit in much Greek translation: must do better!
Two hours of secondary reading? What was I thinking? Bit ambitious for every day, I think. Still, I'm fitting in a goodly bit when I wake up extra-early because of insomnia! Grrr!
So overall, not too bad. I also spent a bit of time reorganising and tidying my 'satellite' study in advance of the school holidays. Huzzah.
So: I'm hoping to look over my chapter in the very near future and clarify some paragraphs, introduce some more extensive quotations from scholars ("..you don't like quoting big chunks of text, do you?" Er, no, that seems like cheating to me...) and tidy up some generalisations and focus more on my study questions; carry on parsing (ooh er! Matron!) and read, as and when possible. Bibliography to follow....Translation may be done more by reading practice rather than more formally, in order to build up speed. I've got a new Greek New Testament on order from the Book Depository, so I can leave my trusty old NA27 as my working copy, and save the pristine new one for reading.

Mars to the Rescue!

Despite the fact that the children are back at school again, I am still largely working in the bedroom/'satellite study'. This is because many of my textbooks are upstairs at the moment and I can't be bothered to haul them en masse downstairs at the moment. Plus when the Bright-Eyed Boy arrives home from school, he is eager to get onto the family computer which occupies the big desk in the downstairs 'study' and hops about until I give in and move my laptop and books upstairs. Although I do work on my laptop there, I unplug it and take it upstairs for safe-keeping if I leave the house: the front room windows are a bit to close to the pavement and I haven't got the blinds I've been hankering after yet. Actually I have been working downstairs today. It's much brighter and the proximity of the street is a welcome distraction if I'm feeling gormless. At this time of year the south-facing aspect is really a pleasant bonus rather than a hindrance. I'm making reasonable progress at the moment trying to verbalise the scope of the thesis, but am constantly tempted to go off at a tangent on some sub-topic that I really intended to expand upon later. I keep having to rein myself back in and just put up 'signposts'. I've also discovered that my brain works better on a high-sugar intake - it really does! If the words start to fail, it's a fair bet that a coffee and a Mars Bar will ensure a return to full fluency. It's a dangerous precedent to set at such an early stage, particularly as I spend much of my time just sitting about. At this rate I could double in size before I finish my PhD!

Have finally overcome the moment of inertia and am happily gathering speed on the academic front! The mass - nay, morass - of admin. that cascades through the post and down the wire has been hacked through by the machete of persistence and grim determination. So now I'm officially registered (online) and I've done various lesser tasks such as applying for my NUS extra card, filling in my railcard application, sending off my latest work and routine supervisory form to my supervisor, and booking my train tickets for Wednesday (can't wait until I've got my railcard - it should save me a fortune!). I need to be organised to the nth degree, or I'll definitely forget/mismanage something: I have to have written lists!
I've been reading through my notes to get up to speed on my thesis and it's not as bad as I thought it might be, though I seem to have forgotten a lot of the background argumentation. I think that's what makes it all so tricky....keeping the salient arguments in your head. I'm not sure my mental RAM is very large! (hence the notes). I've got a LOT of books to look through, and it's a bit tricky trying to prioritise: they're ALL clamouring for attention. I think the best ploy is to start anywhere and just let an order evolve. I'm getting quite enthusiastic about the new term and getting down to studying in earnest again. The book I'm going to look at first is Wallace Chafe's Discourse, Time and Consciousness. Although it probably won't deal directly with verbal aspect/discourse prominence, it should be reasonably interesting on the phenomenon of perceived time.
Another good thing is that, with the children returning to school, I have claimed the 'study' room back for myself (at least, in school hours). It's south-facing, so a lot brighter than upstairs, and has my lovely old oak desk to spread my stuff out on. The 'satellite study' (a computer station in the bedroom) has been an absolute godsend over the summer break, and still is when the children need the family computer to complete their homework. I'm going to keep it as a back-up bolt-hole when I want to work on. The laptop is a boon in this respect.