smallgirl towers

Some things are just meant to go together

2012-02-14T21:40:00.000Z

And some things just make you happy.

(thought unknown)

2012-02-08T22:21:00.000Z

I miss one boyshape or another most of the time.

That's pretty much today.

A weekend, a wander (and some Rayman music)

2012-02-07T22:56:00.000Z

I was in Brighton this weekend, the one place that didn't get any snow to speak of. It was just cold, instead. We did a lot of staying inside playing Rayman and watching Arrested Development. I ate four Mexican meals in a row (on consecutive days, not all at the same time). Yesterday, I walked on the beach, stole another pebble, and took pictures of boats. I spent a few hours browsing for books. (I didn't buy any. The library has a stack of reserved items with my name on.)

Speaking of books, I am now blogging about my book-related adventures in my next-door blog, Bibliotekit.

This evening, I spent a couple of hours cutting up different materials into squares to help out my housemate, C, who is doing her teacher training at the moment and was in desperate need of another pair of hands to help make the resources for her science lesson tomorrow.

My other housemate, A, accidentally broke my Amsterdam mug, which made me kind of sad, but I have kept the largest part of it. It is now sitting on my shelf.

I am exhausted, and not looking forward to the swim I have committed myself to in the morning. But... I am also happy after a fun weekend, and smiling. Tiredly.

This makes me happiest of all:

The one where it's suddenly February

2012-02-01T21:51:00.000Z

These last few weeks, since coming back after Christmas, have been pretty hectic.

I am hoping February might present some decent blocks of time when I can finally get my thesis introduction sorted. Last month was taken up by two conferences, one which involved a mini-holiday to Ireland, and one which involved a 6am train to Canterbury. (No prizes for which one was my favourite.) I also started teaching last month, which was terrifying the first time, and not so terrifying the second time, which was today. (The module runs on alternate weeks, with a screening one week, and lecture/seminars the next.) From next time, I get to step out of my TA role and into a proper seminar-leading, teaching role, which will be terrifying all over again, but I've been desperately trying to learn all the students' names, so that if they all suddenly fall into a deathly silence, I can at least call on one or two of them. (Mean, I know. But possibly necessary, even though they are actually chattier and more forthcoming than I expected them to be.)

In other academic news, I finally have a publishing credit to my name! For a book review, so the next step is to submit an article somewhere. This month has actually been reasonably positive on the school side of things, so I'm hoping to keep the momentum and maybe add a dash of inspiration somewhere along the way...

I have also tried to sneak in little pieces of having a life around the sides of all of this. Last weekend I went secondhand book shopping, and spent Saturday and Sunday devouring said books. On Saturday night I stayed home alone and watched Borgen with a bag of frozen peas wrapped around my hand, because having put my washing in (a very cool thing to be doing on a Saturday night, aside from staying in alone to watch a Danish political series on BBC4, followed by a throwback episode of Top of the Pops from 1977, featuring, amongst others, Gary Glitter), I slammed the utility room door on my finger by accident. Said finger went a bit purple and swelled up in a reasonably alarming manner.

This is why I shouldn't be left home alone.

Having a lie down

2012-01-22T17:25:00.001Z

Yesterday, I went all the way to Canterbury for a film studies conference, where I was presenting a paper in the afternoon. To get to Canterbury in time for a 10am start, I started my journey by catching a bus at 5.45 in the morning. 15 hours later, I made it back home.

via PhD Comics

The conference was my last one for a while, and was an accident of bad planning on my part, in which I submitted abstracts for both Dublin and Canterbury with the assumption that if I was lucky, one might be accepted. I have lots of stuff for my actual thesis to do now, so the conferences will be going on the back burner. (I am still not a massive fan of standing up in front of a room of people and speaking, so I am not too sad about this fact.) Still, it was interesting, and I met some nice people, which is always a relief when going to a conference alone!

Hej, Strange. Hej, Meyer.
Borgen cast, via

I had enough time for tea and takeaway pizza last night before I collapsed into bed, and today I have been Taking The Day Off (capital letters necessary). I am still wearing my pyjamas, and I haven't been outside. So far I have watched another episode of Borgen, finally finished book 3 part 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire (A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow), ate a lot of leftover pizza, ordered my shopping, and played some of my favourite grizzly old man music.

A pretty good Sunday all round.

Dublin Zoo

2012-01-17T21:39:00.000Z

A whirlwind adventure around Dublin Zoo was how we spent the Sunday morning before our journey back to the airport. By this point we were getting pretty good at fitting in sightseeing and adventuring in around inconvenient things like conferences and scheduled flights.

Here are some photos from the zoo:

Red pandas

Tapir

Elephants

Penguins

Just don't do it.

Lion

Gorillas

Giraffes. (Plus me.)

Hippo! (Plus Jon.)

The giraffes were in a huge enclosure with some rhinos, zebras, oryx and ostriches. That was maybe my favourite bit, although I did like the hippo a lot, too. And the lemurs. And the super quick glimpse we caught of the tiger. Andandand... HAPPYANIMALSAAAAAAAAHHH.

A-Z of Travel

2012-01-17T06:00:00.001Z

Given that I have just come back from a mini travel adventure, and given that I have seen this in a couple of places now (on Toni's blog Reclaiming My Future and K's blog Melbourne on My Mind), I thought I would join in. :)

A: Age you went on your first overseas trip. Excluding the Channel Islands, the first 'proper' overseas trip I went on was the US when I was five. My brother, my parents and I went to Florida with my grandparents and spent a week at Disney World and a week at the beach. I met Chip and Dale. The photo of this event is one of utter excitement on my part.

B: Best (foreign) beer you've had and where. Hoegaarden in Amsterdam, probably, or the beer with the monk on the bottle in Berlin.

Monk beer

C: Cuisine (favourite). Mexican food is always my favourite, but on holiday I reserve an undying love (and relief) for falafel, which has saved us from a veggie wasteland on many occasions. (Hello, Brussels.)

D: Destinations, favourite, least favourite and why. Favourite destination: Amsterdam, Netherlands, for atmosphere, canals, and for being my first holiday with the boy, my most favourite fellow adventurer. Amsterdam was the first place I ever thought I could happily go and live. Least favourite destination: Las Vegas, Nevada. It was too hot, too garish, and not for me.

E: Event you experienced abroad that made you say 'wow!'. Flying over the Grand Canyon in a tiny plane was amazing. A close personal second are the second and third nights of the BBK festival in Bilbao, Spain, when we stood on a mountain and saw two of my most favourite bands, Pearl Jam and Faith No More.

F: Favourite mode of transport. I am partial to a tram (or, in San Francisco, a cable car).

G: Greatest feeling while travelling. Seeing new places with everything you need crammed in a rucksack. Also not having to check your email is a pretty good feeling.

H: Hottest place you've travelled to. Las Vegas, where it reached over 100 degrees (in American money, obviously, otherwise I'd be dead). I don't do well in the heat.

I: Incredible service you've experienced and where. I lived in North Carolina for a year, and the service was creepily good in most places. Maybe because I am used to slightly grumpy people in shops and restaurants at home!

J: Journey that took the longest. I guess the total journey from home to Greensboro, NC, at the beginning of my year abroad (and the reverse journey the following summer). Home - London, London - Washington, Washington - Greensboro.

K: Keepsake from your travels. I don't normally buy souvenirs, but I do collect postcards, and I do keep travel junk like ticket stubs, beer mats, hotel key cards, maps, and anything else I pick up en route. I have it all in a box.

A little bit of my postcard collection

L: Let down sight, where and why. THE LIBERTY BELL. After my year abroad, Badg and I went travelling around the States. Our first stop was Pennsylvania, where as conscientious American Studies students, we went to see the Liberty Bell, thus described in both our travel journals as "a big bell with a massive crack in it". The airport-style security to get in made it all that little bit worse. Runner up: the Mannequin Pis in Brussels.

M: Moment where you fell in love with travel. I think the epic road trip from Greensboro to New York over Fall Break '05 might have sealed the deal.

N: Nicest hotel you've stayed in. The Venetian, Las Vegas (complete with it's own canal). A kind-of surprise from Badg's parents, and much welcomed after three weeks of hostelling.

O: Obsession - what are you obsessed with taking pictures of while travelling? Erm, I do visit a lot of zoos when travelling, so maybe zoo animals? I also like to take pictures of street signs. And fountains. And graffiti.

Case in point #1

...and #2

I even do it in this country

P: Passport stamps - how many and from where? Just two - my US immigration stamps, one from Washington, one from Charlotte. I only found out this weekend that I could ask for my passport to be stamped in different places. Doh.

Q: Quirkiest attraction you've visited and where. I'm not sure it counts as quirky, but when in Philadelphia Badg and I visited the Jewish-American History Museum. Neither of us are Jewish. Or American.

R: Recommended sight, event or experience. The Berlin Wall, which was a lot more affecting than I thought it would be.

Guard tower, Berlin Wall

S: Splurge - something you have no problem forking over money for while travelling. Going to the top of things (see below).

T: Touristy thing you've done. I went to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, and the top of Sears Tower in Chicago, and the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, and the top of the Prudential Building in Boston... going to the top of things seems quite touristy.

U: Unforgettable travel memory. I tend to remember all the ridiculous things the most fondly: the point at which Badg and I realised we were communicating solely in non-word sounds, and had been for days; being woken up by REM being blasted through the speakers every morning in the dodgy Philadelphia hostel; the guy with the gun in Brussels; the foot massage guy in Haight-Ashbury.

V: Visas - how many and for where? One, a student visa for the US.

W: Wine - best glass of wine you've had while travelling and where. I don't drink wine!

...but here is another picture of beer

X: eXcellent view and from where. Probably the view of Mount Rainier, from the Space Needle.

Y: Years spent travelling. Well, on and off since 2005, I guess.

Z: Zealous sports fans and where. We were in Bilbao when Spain won the World Cup against the Netherlands in 2010. After watching the match in a bar (where we were initially mistaken for being Dutch), we went out into the town square, where the Spanish football fans were lighting fireworks and throwing them around. The car horns went on all night.

*Most of my travel photos aren't on my current computer, sadly!

Dublin / Baile Atha Cliath

2012-01-16T17:21:00.000Z

Dublin by night

This weekend I was in Dublin, partly for conferencing and partly for adventuring.

Dublin by day

It was my first trip to Ireland, and my first trip abroad to present at a conference. Happily, there were a few familiar faces at the conference, and to facilitate the adventuring, Jon came along too.

Dublin Castle, Upper Yard

We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and went exploring in the evening after checking into our hotel. We ended up wandering round Temple Bar and the area south of the river around Dame Street, where the Occupy movement has a camp set up, ate some pizza, and drank German beer in an Irish bar.

Trinity College, Dublin

On Friday I presented at the conference, which was held at Trinity College. In the evening we took a detour via the Oscar Wilde statue and his former home, before embarking on a falafel pilgrimage*, after which ventured to a couple of bars on our side of the river. In the first bar, an Americana/folk duo were playing a set that we stayed for a little bit of (quite a few of the songs were stuff my brother's band and duo both play in their sets), and the second bar was a Fibbers, with cheap(er) beer and good music.

Oscar Wilde's former home

Natural History Museum, and the boy's floating head. My photography skills REVEALED.

On Saturday, we spent a couple of hours in the morning wandering around the Natural History Museum, part of the National Museum of Ireland (no dinosaurs, but HUGE skeletons of Irish deer).

The Great Famine memorial

I spent most of the rest of the day at the conference, and then in the evening we went exploring some more, this time up to the Castle (which was almost deserted by this point, as it was dark). We saw the Record Tower (the surviving medieval tower) the State Apartments and the Upper Yard, the chapel, and the Dubhlinn gardens behind, where the old castle walls are, as well as the Garda memorial.

Dubh Linn gardens, and the castle walls

Record Tower, Dublin Castle, from the Garda memorial garden

Afterwards, we found another slightly grimy rock bar in the basement of a much more respectable bar, where Jon had a Guinness for the both of us.

Spooky wanderings

We left on Sunday afternoon, but not before squeezing in a short trip on the tram to Dublin Zoo, where we completed a circuit of the zoo in something approaching record time. This isn't quite as stressful as it sounds, mostly because we ignored all birds except penguins, and we still got to linger by everything else! (I will save the zoo pictures for another post.)

The Famine Ship, River Liffey

It was a pretty whirlwind trip, and my adventuring at least was a little bit limited because of conference commitments. But the conference itself was interesting, and it was nice to see some people again, including people I work with via email all the time but rarely see face to face. The time we did have to explore we managed to fill up pretty well with a lot of wandering, a little bit of beer, and not a lot of sleep. :)

*Every holiday abroad that we have taken since our first to Amsterdam in 2008 has involved copious amounts of falafel, based mostly on a constant quest to find non-wanky, cheap vegetarian food. As a result, the sight of a kebab house (or a Maoz!) in foreign climes is always welcome.

2011 round up: it's all about me

2012-01-02T06:00:00.001Z

So underneath that pile of books, boxsets, films and ticket stubs, what else did I manage in 2011?

1. Moved house
This was probably the major change, and the most welcome one. My old house became pretty unbearable at the end, and I decided to look for somewhere new kind of on the spur of the moment, after a particularly bad weekend. Two weeks later, in the middle of September, I moved in with A and C, and things have been pretty awesome since then.

2. Started swimming
Swimming is pretty much the only sport I am capable of doing without maiming someone accidentally. Ironically, I am most likely to injure myself, given the fact that I have to take off my glasses to swim. However, my friend B and I signed up to the university pool in the middle of the year, and have managed to average about once or twice a week since then (with a couple of lulls). I haven't recorded my progress for a while, but hopefully in the new year I will get back into the habit. It seems to help with my sleeping and my stress levels, which is always a bonus.

3. Dyed my hair
I went back to my black-with-red-stripes in November, after trying too long to be sensible and grown up about it.

4. Presented at a conference
This was a big, horrible, scary deal for me back in July, when I went to Liverpool to present my first ever academic paper at a conference. I was incredibly nervous and completely spaced out on herbal anti-anxiety remedies, but I survived. (My supervisor assured me it would never be that bad again.) I have two conferences scheduled for January, and presented at my second in November, where I was slightly less spaced out on herbal anti-anxiety remedies, and still survived. Which leads me to...

5. Organised a conference
On behalf of the British Association for [My Subject], B, myself and another colleague organised the annual postgraduate conference in November (which for some ungodly reason I also decided to present at; see above). A good portion of the year was taken up with room bookings and financial wrangles, keynote speakers and difficult (but mostly lovely) delegates, all culminating in a successful conference with lots of interesting people. I subsequently penned, with B's help, "Conferencing 101: How to Organise a Conference Without Losing Your Mind". Tip 1: Just say no.

6. Became editor of an academic journal
I took over as reviews editor of [our really awesome journal] in the autumn term, with our first issue under the (largely) new editorship due out in a couple of weeks.

7. Various other academic-related things
Training courses, the annual poster conference, organising a training course, a research trip to the British Library, and a tiny bit of funding. This year I felt much more involved in my academic life, which was something of a relief and a welcome change, however stressful my life has become as a result!

8. Became a Twitter fiend
I have been tweeting fiendishly since the middle of the year. I also inadvertently broke my trusty old phone, and had to upgrade to one where I can now tweet ON THE GO. This is a bad (wonderful) thing.

2011 round up: music

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000Z

After 2009 and 2010 being bumper years as far as gigs were concerned, 2011 was pretty quiet for me. I did, however, see:

February: Skunk Anansie (Academy, Birmingham)
March: John Shuttleworth (City Hall, Sheffield)
April: Fishbone (Underworld, London)
May: Skindred (Forum, London), Noah and the Whale (Institute, Birmingham)
August: Grassoline (Peak Inn, Castleton) (and numerous times throughout the year)
October: The Coo Coo Bird Old Time String Band (Vie, Chesterfield)

Gig of the year
Skunk Anansie, Birmingham

I also went to the Notorious choir's performance of Mozart's Requiem in Birmingham before Christmas, as a good friend of mine is in said choir.

I rarely buy CDs these days, relying either on Spotify, generous friends, or things I already own, but I did discover some new stuff this year. Special mention must go to the "pirate metal" genre, which my friend Jenny introduced me to via Youtube and the wonder that is the band Alestorm. This led me on a merry dance through various incarnations of Nordic metal, in particular Tyr, who I have taken quite a shine to.

My enduring love for Barenaked Ladies led me onto a brief flirtation with They Might Be Giants. I re-discovered Bush, or at least their first two (excellent) albums. Another band I got into in a big way was Wir Sind Helden, the German-language alt. pop band.

Album of the year
Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs.

2011 round up: books, film and television

2011-12-30T16:14:00.000Z

Books

I read 44 books this year, 4 over my target of 40. I discovered some new and exciting YA fiction, started the Song of Ice and Fire series, re-read some old favourites, and failed to finish just one book that I picked up: Stephen King's "Black House".

Top 5 books read in 2011:
1. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
2. Game of Thrones / A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
3. Naive. Super by Erlend Loe
4. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
5. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

Top re-read:
Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series.

(see also: my 30 Days of Books challenge, completed in June 2011)

Television

My 'staple shows' aside (Dexter and House), I picked up a whole raft of new favourites this year. Top of the list would have to be The Killing (Forbrydelsen), the Danish crime drama that BBC4 snapped up some time ago. I just finished the second series this week, and am now a little obsessed with the adventures of Sarah Lund.

Brix, Lund & Strange: My favourite crack team of Danish investigators
via

Top 5 TV shows of 2011:
1. The Killing / The Killing II
2. Game of Thrones
3. Bob's Burgers
4. Black Mirror
5. Boardwalk Empire

via

Special mention goes to 3rd Rock from the Sun, the boxset of which I got for my birthday. Reliving all six series was excellent.

Film

For a film studies student, I don't watch a lot of contemporary films, probably because I am analysing the balls off the 1990s. So to speak. I saw two films at the cinema this year: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and Pearl Jam Twenty. The first was good; the second excellent and just slightly nostalgic, and heightened by the fact that it was a one-night-only job in a little picture house, full of other Pearl Jam fans. :)

I do, however, have a well-hammered subscription to Lovefilm, so for the purposes of this list...

Top 5 films I have watched for the first time this year
1. Don't Look Now
2. Bridesmaids
3. The King's Speech
4. Rope
5. Inception

Stealth germs, saboteur cats and self-consciously German reindeer (aka It's Christmas!)

2011-12-16T11:45:00.001Z

Living with two teachers is fun, not least because we have genuine end-of-term feeling in our house this week. The university term technically ended a week ago, and I was all for being productive and postgraduate-y this week, extending my own term by five more working days and so feeling superior to all those well-groomed part-timers (undergraduates), but I have been thwarted by Christmas itself.

via

On Monday, B and I went into uni, all prepared to Do Work and Be Important and Studious (well, studious at least), but part way through the morning a man came into the computer room and took away our chairs. Apparently chairs get to go on holiday for Christmas. Not relishing the prospect of attempting to work at a computer while sitting on a (tall) stool, we decamped, work abandoned.

On Tuesday, my plans to work from home were postponed by Important Holiday Dealings like... posting all my parcels and, erm, hoovering my room, washing everything in sight, and feeling very accomplished at the end of it all. I made a lot of box office spreadsheets, which was a task that will be useful to me in the future, but wasn't exactly THE most useful thing I could have been doing. (But go on, quiz me on what the second-highest grossing film was in 1994. Or what film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves lost out to in the yearly takings. Or what Christmas film of the 1990s took the most money at the box office.)

The special Christmas wrapping
via

All this talk of Christmas films leads me on to Wednesday, when J, B and I embarked on a Christmas-movie-marathon. We started out with orange-flavoured Matchmakers and Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, and ended with Love Actually and heaps of tortelloni, via The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Holiday and Elf. All the classics, I hear you cry. (Although, with the exception of the tragic act of filmmaking and narrative that is The Holiday, they are all welcome at my Christmas any year.)

By the end of the night, I was harbouring a battalion of stealth germs, which amused themselves while I slept, so that I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and a foggy head. I would have stayed in bed, except my mum was coming to Birmingham to visit and Christmas shop, so wrapped myself in a million layers on clothes and went to meet her (as soon as we were inside the Bullring, I obviously regretted the million layers of clothes). We wandered around the German market and bought nice chocolates and saw the singing reindeer. I have lived in Birmingham for two Christmases now, and in the West Midlands for four, and the singing German reindeer is becoming a staple of my festive build-up.

Hallo!

Today, the germs have exploded. SAD FACE. I am trying to finish off all my journal duties and get everything in order for the holidays, but once that is done, I will be curled up with Maureen Johnson's The Name of the Star and copious amounts of tea, in the hope that I am better for the Christmas party tomorrow.

I will end on one of my top five Christmas songs:

Smallgirl & Mediumboy's Island Adventure

2011-12-13T00:00:00.000Z

Smallgirl & Mediumboy haven't had a legitimate adventure in a while.

(That isn't to cast aspersions regarding illegitimate adventures, just to be clear. They just haven't had any real, Famous-Five-esque adventures for some time now.)

However...

You might be able to spot them on the Isle of Wight. In, say, June sometime.

EEEEEEEEEEE.

That's right, the short, clumsy adventuress and her medium-sized boy sidekick are off to the Isle of Wight Festival 2012. I AM SUPER EXCITED!!!!!

It turned out the rumours were true. Along with Bruce Springsteen (who I have wanted to see for a long time now) and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Pearl Jam were announced as the third IoW headliner last week. Jon and I now have tickets! I had been tempted to get tickets for Springsteen in Hyde Park, but I'm glad I waited, because now I get to see my most favourite band for the fourth time (!!!) and one of my all-time favourite artists in the world for the first time ever.

And I get to do it all on an island.

:D :D :D

Let loose in the kitchen

2011-12-12T20:53:00.001Z

(But not this Let Loose in my kitchen, obviously. That would be weird. Although given the fact that I was listening to Heart FM on the radio at the time, I wouldn't rule it out.)

The first three batches, un-iced

But no! This weekend I embarked on a mission to make stacks and stacks of Christmas biscuits. My brother and I used to make these every year, and this year I decided to gift them to some people as presents. The "PhD budget" being what it is and all that, but also because I like making biscuits, and even more than that I like decorating them.

Personalised biscuits WITH GLITTER

I'm not particularly good at baking, but it's maybe the easiest recipe in the world (100g flour, 75g butter, 75g sugar, vanilla essence)*. I spent part of Saturday and part of Sunday baking different batches and icing them all with tubes of glittery icing.

More evidence of my latent art potential...

My housemates were also pretty pleased that I baked so many, because they got to a) play with the icing themselves and b) eat them. I have since boxed some up for people, but there are enough left over on our "reject plate" to keep us going for a couple of days.

All boxed up and ready to go

Next year, my aim is to (re-)learn how to bake a cake, and learn a new tasty veggie meal to make. That, and take over the world, obviously. Same thing we do every night.

*ACTUAL RECIPE (even bake-able by kitchen-phobes)
Take the ingredients mentioned above.
Cream together butter and sugar (or you can use margarine, I did) with a tablespoon-ish of vanilla essence
Gradually add flour
Mix together to make dough
Roll out and use awesomely-shaped cookie cutters
Bake for 15-20 minutes (or until they look done)
Let them cool, make silly patterns with icing
EAT

Mary Berry would be proud.

Coming up: something super awesome involving an island.

Brighton sunset

2011-12-08T16:26:00.000Z

Sunset over the Channel

I spent the first half of this week in Brighton. On Tuesday I spent the day holed up in the (rather busy) University of Sussex library, doing research and reading for my thesis introduction and surviving on chocolate and caramel cereal bars.

On Wednesday, I went Christmas shopping.

I am a pretty poor shopper at the best of times. I don't like crowds, queues induce panic attacks (no, really), and I am far too likely to get distracted by things that I like, rather than things that the people on my list would like. (Case in point: dinosaur cookie cutters.)

But, I did make some good progress, helped by going into all those shops I would never normally venture into. I had a whole day (and nowhere to retire to), so I ended up seeing a lot of things I would never even have considered. Added to that, Brighton has a pretty high proportion of quirky and interesting shops hidden away that you don't get anywhere else.

I'm not sure that writing about the presents I actually bought is a good idea, seeing as half the people I have bought presents for may well read this, but I am about half way done now, which is progress!

Moon over Brighton

And because no trip to Brighton is complete without me getting excited about being near the sea... I spent some time wandering around the pier, which is borderline eerie in the winter, when hardly anything except the indoor arcades are open. It was extremely windy, and parts were blocked off for a) cleaning and b) erm, asbestos, but I did get to watch the sunset.

This evening, I plan to watch some episodes of Hot in Cleveland, rented from Lovefilm based solely on the fact that it has Jane Leeves and Wendy Malick in it. But first, I will wrap Christmas presents to the sounds of Barenaked for the Holidays, my most favourite Christmas/Hanukkah album. Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel.

Christmas jumpers

2011-12-03T14:44:00.001Z

My dad and Jayne came to visit on Tuesday. We visited the German market in the middle of Birmingham, and ate VERY TASTY "berliners". It was a fun day, particularly as I haven't been home in a while (this seems to be the norm these days). They also brought me an advent calendar, because I am still a massive child underneath it all.

I also picked out a jumper for Christmas. I am apparently not the only one who is not-so-secretly channelling Sarah Lund's fashion choices. However, in the Christmas jumper stakes, I think I have been well and truly beaten by the Birmingham Bull:

I took this photograph today, as I ventured (crazy fool that I am) into town. On a Saturday. In December. "Town" being Birmingham, the second biggest city in the country. I got up early to complete my mission surrounded by the least number of people, which did help a little bit.

I also finally used the Waterstones' vouchers I've had since my birthday. I decided to give Maureen Johnson another go, and bought The Name of the Star, which I have heard a lot of excellent things about. I also bought the first in Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series, which I've always avoided solely based on the covers (I know, I know), but the first book was on sale and I have heard some interesting things about it this week, based on the Tournament of Heroines currently going on over at YA Sisterhood.

In other book news, my old housemate Matt has just released his first novel, a children's fantasy book called Twin Spirit, which you can read about here: http://www.dominogalaxy.com/ A couple or three years ago, we shared a house with a blue door, and he was writing this book during that time. I had a sneak peek at some of the early versions of the first few chapters, but I am excited to read the finished product!

And, seeing as I am an equal opportunities plugger... ;)

Grassoline got an excellent review in Americana UK in November, which you can read here. Mountain and Grave was given 8/10. She & Him's Christmas album (which I am actually a little tempted by) got 5/10. Just sayin'.

I'll stop now.

Just remember now / she's somebody's daughter

2011-11-28T20:18:00.000Z

I don't have a Bucket List or a 30 by 30 list or a 101/1001 list or anything like that, but if I did, Visit Ireland would be on it. (As would Visit Wales. Apparently visiting neighbouring countries is not my forte.) And today I found out that I will be going to Dublin in January to present a paper at an academic conference!

For someone who hates public speaking, I seemed to keep getting myself into these situations, but it has to be done, and I figure the best way to go about it is to submit abstracts recklessly so that when (if) I get accepted, I have no choice but to go through with it. I also have a paper up for consideration for a conference in Kent, also in January, so I figure after that I can maybe relax on the conferencing front a little...

Although I did write today, with the help of B, a guide to conferencing entitled "Conferencing 101: How to Organise a Conference without Losing Your Mind", which we are going to submit to our college in the hope of helping some other unfortunate postgrads who may have been tricked into thinking organising one of these things is a good idea.

My brother's band (Grassoline) also received an extremely good review of their album in Americana UK, which you can read here.

In other news, my weekend was nothing like I expected, but it was fun all the same. My housemate A's birthday is today, and on Saturday we had a small house gathering. My other housemate C and I arranged a little surprise cake-and-present thing this evening, too, which was fun, particularly as A has been off work ill and spent most of the day in the house alone. Hopefully we made things slightly more exciting!

Seks fantastisk ting

2011-11-21T20:07:00.000Z

I think the germs have finally decided on their holiday destination. ME.

Yesterday morning they were living in my ear (which makes it reasonably difficult to, erm, hear). Today they were living in my ear and my throat. I also had the misfortune of having to plan (although thankfully not use) an escape route from my supervisor's office to the nearest bathroom, given that I have been feeling sick since lunchtime.

But instead of whinging on (any more) about my germs and their holiday plans, I have compiled a list of awesome. (There are other lists of awesome here and here.)

#1: The return of Sarah Lund
Also known as BBC4 finally showing Forbrydelsen II (The Killing II). After being persuaded by my dad to watch the first series, I got hooked, and the two of us have been waiting (im)patiently for the second series to be shown over here. Sarah Lund might be one of my favourite TV characters ever, even if her jumper hasn't returned this time around. I will be spending the next month believing erroneously that I can speak Danish, so if you know me, you have been warned. Tak.

via Guardian (BBC / Danmarks Radio)

(Read Tim Dowling's excellent review from a newbie perspective here.)

#2: Tweets from awesome authors
This year I read "Anna and the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins, which turned out to be one of my favourite books of the year. I also think Stephanie Perkins is awesome, because a) she has crazy coloured hair, b) she lives in North Carolina (my old home and adopted US state), and c) in the acknowledgements of her first book, she describes her husband as being her "favourite", which made me smile. This week, she tweeted about dying her hair bright red. I responded. I got a high five via tweet in return. This is pretty cool.

#3: Getting lost in the Seven Kingdoms
I started reading A Clash of Kings a couple of weeks ago, but this weekend I finally made some headway into it. Today I came home early with all my germs and had a hot bath, book in hand. I am starting to warm to Tyrion, but I am still Team Stark all the way. Go, Arya.

#4: The Boss in London
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have just been announced as headliners for Hard Rock Calling 2012 in Hyde Park. I saw Pearl Jam at HRC in 2010. The Boss is waaaay up on my list of people I would love to see live, so perhaps I just need to convince someone to come with me now. That said, HRC has a habit of booking some pretty awful acts to accompany its headliners (or, indeed, booking shit headliners and relegating the Barenaked Ladies to the tiny stage, not that I am grumbling), so I might wait and see.

Minus Clarence, sadly.

#5: Payrise!
Well, what it says. I went to work for the first time in two months at the end of last week (I have a "casual" job, which sounds seedy now I've written it down but which in reality means I only get to go to work when there's work to do. It still sounds seedy. I work in a distribution centre, FYI.). While at work, I was informed that we have been given a (not too shabby) payrise, and that I will be working at least two days this week, which means I might be able to do some Christmas shopping at some point! (The Frankfurt market is now back in Birmingham up until Christmas, and my dad is coming to see me next week, mostly for the stollen, I think.)

#6: Little brothers
Who send you daft quotes from Guest House Paradiso for no reason, and make you smile.

Thankfully, this did not actually happen to me today.

Katie dear / make me a road map / with those brown old eyes / that I love

2011-11-19T16:14:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of a hair revamp.

Tiger hat rules

I dyed my hair black from about the age of 17. Later, Badg showed me how to bleach ridiculous colours into my hair, and for a long time I had black and red (or black and purple, or black and blue) hair. Around the time I moved back home, I stopped dying my hair at all, and it went back to being almost-black (my natural colour).

Recently I have been feeling a little bit like I got lost under all this other crap. All this being grown up and sensible and having grown up and sensible friends who don't take kindly to bad language and video games and grunge revivals and, erm, socialism. These are some things that are quite hard to ignore about me, apart from the fact that I am foreign (i.e. northern) and think Austin Powers and the Armando Iannucci football sketch is the funniest thing in the world. I also like having ridiculously coloured hair and wearing too much eyeliner.

(Incidentally, a friend of mine told me last night during our pizza-thon that I look "more like me" now, even though she's never seen me looking like this before.)

Sans tigery friend

Somewhere along the line a lot of this seems to have been buried under a sensible veneer of academia and respectability and dinner parties. I stopped thinking I was awesome (and I'm all for being awesome) and started thinking there was something a bit wrong with me. Dying my hair back to its non-natural colour is only the most visible step on the road back.

You can come if you want, but I get to pick the music.

The tiger's name is Sandra

(I don't normally photograph myself, so do forgive me this time.)

Katie dear

Make me a road map

That leads to old New York

Katie dear

Make me a road map

With those brown old eyes that I love

And I'll sing you a jailbird song

And all our children will sing along

They'll sing, "Louisiana ain't that bad,

When all you've had's Louisiana"

Felice Brothers - Katie Dear

The Doughnut Legacy

2011-11-14T21:15:00.000Z

This Saturday just gone was The Big One. The Conference, that is. The conference that I (and two others) have been organising since January. And after all the mini-dramas and massive headaches along the way, it happened. And it happened good.

That's rather poor English, right there.

Everything worked the way it was supposed to work. Everyone got fed, everyone who was meant to turn up and give and paper turned up and gave a paper. I gave my own paper, and did not a) fall over, b) pass out, c) screw up or d) accidentally embed clips of myself practising with a lightsabre into my Powerpoint, rather than clips of the films I was analysing. Lots of people said they enjoyed themselves, lots of people now seem to know who I am, and I am not only relieved at how smoothly it ran, but happy with the outcome and pleased to have met lots of awesome people.

Plus, we had doughnuts. And everyone I have heard from since the conference finished has commented on the awesomeness of having the doughnuts before anything else.

Sunday, however, was amazing, if only for the joy of being able to sleep once more. And no more Powerpoint-related nightmares in sight. Apart from a mad and unexpected detour to the delegates' hotel on Sunday lunchtime by yours truly, it was a day full of doing nothing except watching lots of episodes of Gilmore Girls and playing the Beach Boys, because that's about all my mind could stand. Conferencing is exhausting, both the organising and the presenting, and given that I did both, it was quite nice to come out the other side in one piece.

Out of this conference has come the possibility of two more: one in Dublin in January, and one in Glasgow in March. I suspect if I go to either or them, I shall see some (now) familiar faces, which makes it more tempting. But for now, it's back to the regularly scheduled PhD programming. And journal editing. And trying not to lose my mind before Christmas. Welcome back, life.

Top Ten Tuesday: Outside the Comfort Zone

2011-11-08T20:29:00.000Z

So I don't normally do memes, but I spotted this one originally on Jen's YA blog, Almost Grown Up (a blog that has expanded my book wishlist quite dramatically...), so I thought I would play along.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish, and this week the aim is to list ten books that I have read that were outside of my comfort zone.

(I like to read lots of different things, but I guess my 'comfort zone' would be contemporary fiction, mostly adult and mostly American.)

1. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin: the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and not something I would normally read, given that I struggle to get into fantasy books. I borrowed this from my brother after we both watched the TV series, and loved it. I have just started the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings. (Bonus: these books have maps. I love books with maps.)

2. The Hunger Games / Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins: I haven't read Mockingjay yet, but I read the first two books in the HG series after reading so much about them online. I enjoy dystopian fiction, but at the time this was out of my comfort zone simply because I had stopped reading YA. Although I have mixed opinions about the series so far, it did get me back into YA books in quite a big way this year.

3. Dead Sexy by Kathy Lette: I cannot describe how much I disliked this book. I don't normally read what I suppose would be termed 'chick lit', if I were writing in Cosmopolitan, but this was a gift from a friend and I forced myself to finish it.

4. Stasiland by Anna Funder: Out of my comfort zone for being a non-fiction book. I read plenty of non-fiction and theory for academic purposes, but this book, about life during and after the Berlin Wall, is a long way from any of my own research. I read this shortly before going to Berlin, and thought it was excellent.

5. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: Recommended to me by my mum, and I kept putting it off because historical 'fiction' of any kind isn't really my thing. It was a pretty hefty read, but one that I enjoyed, despite the fact that everyone appeared to be called Thomas.

6. Duma Key by Stephen King: I rarely, if ever, read horror books. A friend lent me this book after she took it on holiday and couldn't put it down. I could put it down, frequently. I did finish it, and it was creepy, but it was far too long and I have yet to finish another King book.

7. Maus by Art Spiegelman: A graphic novel, which I read for an undergraduate module in Jewish American fiction (and again for a class I took while studying in the US). I haven't read another graphic novel before or since, but Maus is excellent.

8. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell: And the handful of other Wallander novels I have read so far. Another recommendation from the mother unit, who got into Scandinavian crime noir a few years ago. I like mystery books rather than crime books, but I too got the bug for dreary, faintly sinister Scandinavian landscapes after picking up this first Mankell novel. I now have a lingering compulsion to visit Malmo.

A double duvet on a single bed?!

2011-11-07T20:40:00.001Z

Jon came to stay this weekend. We had a couple more days than we usually get, which was nice. Mostly we just hung out and caught up on all our House and Dexter and Boardwalk Empire (when Mad Men and Game of Thrones come back, it might get a bit busy...). We played Zelda and Mario Kart, and ordered way too much takeaway pizza by accident. On Saturday night we went out (along with my friend J) and did ~~some~~ a lot of rocking out. J and I also played pool, and I won, by some incredible fluke. Yesterday, we went to the nature centre (yes, we go there a lot). We saw the red panda up close for the first time, as well as the porcupines being fed, and the baby lemur. It sucks that we don't get to do all of this more, but when we do it is awesome. :D

I returned to the real world today, to a not-as-bad-as-I-thought (but dear god please stop emailing me for a second) inbox - at the moment I have three emails, which will be reduced to two once the conference is over next weekend. I also have the task of writing my paper, to be presented at said conference, and although I had written about 1000 words last week, I have pretty much trashed them and started anew. (I have about 1700 currently, with an aim of 2000-2200.) I have chosen my film clips, but I still need to clip them from the films and put them into a Powerpoint presentation, along with my screenshots and whatnot.

I will get there, but it's not going to be a fun week. J and I were under the mistaken impression that we had a time management course to attend tomorrow, but - demonstrating our complete lack of time management - it turns out to be next week, which is something of a relief. I do not have time for time management this week.

On the way home from taking Jon to the train station earlier, I bought milk and bread and a bar of chocolate. The bar of chocolate was going to be a reward if I finished writing my paper. I haven't quite finished it - and I plan to spend the rest of the work tinkering with it anyway - but I feel like I've done enough work to justify eating the Kitkat. I am currently listening to Kermode and Mayo's film review show on the BBC's radio catch up, but I plan to spend the time before I sleep delving into A Clash of Kings (the second Song of Ice and Fire book) and watching old episodes of Frasier. (I have the DVD of Vertigo to watch, continuing my Hitchcock Fest, but sometimes all I have the energy for is Kelsey Grammer being pompous.)

So, to recap: awesome weekend, awesome boy, and hopefully that's enough awesome to get me through the next week. :)

(Also: I have changed my blog design to reflect the fact that it's now hat-scarf-glove weather, although it is making me wish I was in the Netherlands again. Een meisje kan dromen!)

Send me a postcard, darling

2011-11-01T00:00:00.001Z

Just a quick one today.

Today has been busy, and productive, and reasonably tiring. You may be aware by now that I am in the process of organising a conference with two colleagues of mine, to be held next Saturday. You may also be aware that in the months gone by, this conference has been top of the list of Things That Are Stressing Me Out.

We're coming to the end of the road as far as the organisation goes, although I still have to write the paper I'm going to be giving. Today, B and I realised that in ordering the food and the tea and coffee and wine, we'd forgotten one rather vital ingredient. MILK.

We have since remedied this.

However, instead of (more) grumblings about the conference, I thought I would share some things that are making me happy right now:

Postcards - B has recently returned from a research trip in the US, and brought me back a collection of postcards from the various places she visited. I collect postcards from exotic (and not so exotic) locales, and am excited to add these to my collection.

Anti-clockwise from bottom left: Dewey wins!; Minneapolis; Washington DC;
Lansing, MI; Kansas City, MO; Detroit.

A little bit of my collection on display.

Twix bars - mostly because it occurred to me yesterday that I haven't had a proper chocolate bar in ages (rest assured, I have had plenty of other biscuit-related items). Today I bought a Twix. NOM.

Swimming - I slacked off on the swimming something chronic while left to my own devices, but now my aforementioned swimming buddy is back, I'm making more of an effort. I have fallen out of the habit of recording it, but today we did 12 lengths, and last week I did a total of 30 (one lot of 20, and one lot of 10). The week before I did 36 (20 and 16). I'm hoping to go again later this week.

Job interview - my current job, which is casual and used to equate to maybe a day of work a week, has dried up a lot in the last couple or three months. I have applied for another job, still at the university, which works on the same kind of casual basis (which fits in well with my studies). I have an interview for this job on Wednesday morning. Fingers crossed!

The weekend - even though it's only Monday, I am excited about the weekend, mostly because Jon will be here, and it is almost a month (maybe it is a month, I can't quite remember) since I saw him last. BIG SMILES.

Or thumbs up. Whichever.

What's making you smile this week?

*Edited to amend the rather embarrassing mistake of claiming that I'd labelled the postcards in a clockwise fashion. That's some clock.

Na-not

2011-10-31T00:00:00.001Z

NaNoWriMo starts at midnight on Monday. This year, I will not be participating.

Time is the central challenge to Nano. Write 50,000 words (or more) of a novel in the month of November. Don't edit, just write. And write. And write.

I stumbled upon Nano in October 2009, when I was living in Leamington. As a child, and as a teenager, I used to write all the time. There are boxes of sheets of notepaper and journals with my often terrible, often angsty stories in them, and they're just the ones I managed to keep. I have no doubt consigned many more to the bin. I stopped once I got to university and never really picked it up again.

When I discovered Nano, I'd been re-discovering my love of writing, and had been editing an old (complete) 'novel' that had previously found a home--along with a handful of others--on fictionpress.com. When I was at college, me and a friend of mine at the time would both post chapter-by-chapter novels online, in the giddy days when we had just discovered the wonders of the internet beyond MSN Messenger. When I found out about Nano, I abandoned the old editing project and decided to write something new, from scratch.

My completed first Nano novel

So I outlined a reasonably ludicrous but fun kid's book about dinosaurs and boarding school, accidentally naming it after a Jamiroquai song in the process, and set off on a month of bizarre plot twists and stilted dialogue and repeated references to people "shrugging", or else performing actions "wryly" (an old favourite). I spent another six months editing it, got my free proof copy from CreateSpace, and let people read it.

Last year I embarked on another new project. During both my forays into Nano, I was doing my PhD - the first time, I was part-time and floundering; the second time, I was full-time and fitting in the 50,000 words of my novel around my uni work. Perhaps for that reason, I struggled to make the 50K, and squeaked over the line on the last day. I have barely touched that story since.

I suspected I might not make it this year, but the Nano emails still creep into my inbox, and the buzz is still there on Twitter, and it's tempting. I love to write, and although last year's story doesn't hold much interest for me, the previous year's is one I would love to go back to and improve at some point. Unfortunately, time is not only a challenge this November, but my sworn enemy. Every year, the boards are full of people who stay up all night wired on coffee, who write on the bus and on their breaks and forgo meals and friends and everything else to get to the finish line, and I'd love to join everyone. Sadly, this year it's just not possible.

And not only because I like meals too much. :)

Nevertheless, I will miss Nano this year, not only the writing but the borderline craziness of the boards. If I get chance, I might pop in. Just for a second. You know how it goes...

Nothing like the Three Musketeers

2011-10-30T11:46:00.001Z

On Friday, I went to Leicester for the annual-ish and affectionately called "Triunion".

Triunion is a contraction of "Tripod Reunion".

"Tripod" is from the following exchange in The Girl Next Door:

Eli: Okay, you know what the three of us are? We're a tripod.

Klitz: A tripod?

Eli: Yes, a tripod. Which means that if you knock out one of our legs, WE ALL FALL!

In case you needed the background. Clottie, Badg and I were Lawns-mates, housemates, and generally partners in crime during our time at university. We have been hysterical, happy, sad, angry, and very, very drunk together, many many times. When I started uni, I was probably the most timid person in the world. I spent the first few weeks re-writing my notes and hiding from my appalling neighbours. Then I met these guys, and everything just kind of... worked.

For the sake of anonymity, a show of hands. (Photo by Clottie.)

There have been some sticky patches. In more ways than one. (Because this wouldn't be a post about the Tripod if there wasn't some mild innuendo underlying everything.) But for me, those three years in Hull (and one year in the States) that made up my undergraduate years can't be separated even for a second from these guys.

Clottie and I now see each other reasonably regularly, she living a) in the same country as me and b) near to both my parents, by a fortuitous fluke. Badg lives in the US, by virtue of meeting a boy on the year abroad mentioned above. (They are now married.) So when we all do end up in (roughly) the same place, we have to engineer hasty reunions. Case in point: Badg comes back to the UK for her brother's wedding. The three of us (and Mr. Badger) decamp to Leicester (the mid-point of our three separate locations) for two hours on Friday afternoon to speed-relate anecdotes / not buy inflatable pigs* / drink all the Archers.**

It was good to get together again. There is generally an underlying madness whenever the three of us are in the same room. We are now 8 years from when we first met, and it's nice to know there's still a little space left for us.

* * * * *

After returning from Leicester on Friday afternoon, I went straight out for J's birthday celebrations. A group of us went out for curry and then for drinks afterwards. It was a fun night. Following the drinks in the afternoon, and then the beer at the meal, I managed to come home and watch half an episode of Bullseye before deciding I should probably go to bed. The perils of turning on the TV when mildly drunk.

The rest of the weekend so far has been spent wading through a good, but lengthy book (And The Band Played On, by Randy Shilts) - partly for fun, but mostly for research background. My housemates and I spent yesterday evening with trashy reality TV, takeaway and cake. It is hard to overestimate the improvement since I moved out of the nightmare house...

*In the men's toilets (apparently), they were selling inflatable pigs in the vending machine. In the ladies', they were selling vibrators for £6. :|
**To be fair, the pub's stores of Archers only stretched to two glasses.

Technological failure

2011-10-23T13:24:00.000+01:00

So, I was originally going to post a little more about my trip to the BM&AG, illustrating said post with some photos I took on my phone.

My phone was working fine until I plugged it into the USB port of my computer. It has been dead ever since. (Well, it turns on and off every few seconds, but never gets past the keys-lighting-up stage.)

My phone is pretty old and pretty basic, as phones go, and I have been resisting getting a new one mostly because I dread having a phone where I can check my email, or rather where people might expect me to read my email constantly. This is one of my pet hates: being constantly contactable. There are very few people I want to be able to harass me at any given moment, day or night.

(A lot of this fear stems from having spent the last six months organising a conference, but that's another story.)

But it looks like, finally, I will have to bite the bullet and buy a new phone. Unfortunately, my plan to do this online (and thus avoid phone shop dickheads) backfired when I needed to provide a contact telephone number. Which I don't have, obviously. I wouldn't mind, except my house is pretty much unfindable by delivery men, and being able to answer the phone to them is pretty much a prerequisite to getting your delivery.

So phone shop dickheads it is.

Not having a phone is a bit weird, mostly because I just know that my mother probably currently thinks I am dead. Everyone else who might need to know to not bother texting me is on facebook or Twitter or email. Except my mum, who may well turn up on my doorstep just to make sure my voicemail doesn't equal my death.

So instead of pictures of a mummified Nile crocodile, you'll have to have this:

The death of the Sony Ericsson C902

The triumph of the little green men

Billie Jean is not my mummified Nile crocodile

2011-10-19T20:14:00.000+01:00

This weekend, I went home to see the faaaaamily. It has been two months since I set foot on any soil further north than here, so it was a welcome (and long overdue) trip.

On Friday night, I went to see my brother's band, The Coo-Coo Bird Old-Time String Band, at a bar in town. (This is a Americana/folk duo he is in with a friend of his, Esme.)

Here is a video of them performing Billie Jean:

(The video is terribly dark, because I filmed it on my phone and there was no light in that place, but the sound turned out okay, barring the siren at the beginning... GLAMOROUS.)

I have absolutely no idea where my brother gets such a voice, because when I sing I sound appalling, but there you go.

Aside from that, I spent some time with both my parents, went shopping with my mum, and went for a meal with my dad. I am now back in Birmingham, working my arse off on about five different projects, all of which are taking up far too much of my time. I have two separate research threads going on - psychoanalysis-related, and AIDS-related - as well as all the conference organisation, and the journal, and the article submission, and...

I need a lie down.

Today, my mum came to see me, which was slightly bad planning on my part seeing as I was at home just a couple of days ago, but it was a fun day. We went to explore the BMAG (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), which has some of the Staffordshire Hoard on display. That was interesting, and I really enjoyed the Ancient Egypt exhibit too, which had a mummified Nile crocodile, possibly my favourite thing in the whole museum.

Tomorrow I am determined to swim, seeing as I have been slacking off on that lately.

There is another CCBOTSB video from the same gig up on Youtube, also filmed by me, and I have another to upload, so if you like the above one, feel free to check out the others.

Do you want ants?

2011-10-11T18:16:00.001+01:00

Apart from new Dexter (!) and new House (!), Jon and I have also been watching Archer. H. Jon Benjamin does Archer's voice, and in the absence of Bob's Burgers, it's a pretty awesome fix. Archer also stars Jessica Walter and Judy Greer from Arrested Development (and sometimes David Cross and Jeffrey Tambor, too). I have about half of series 2 left, I am trying not to eat it all in one go...

I have also started on a bit of a Hitchcock marathon. I've seen Dial M For Murder a couple of times, and really enjoyed it, so this week I have also watched Rear Window and Strangers on a Train. (Not Snakes on a Plane. It's not the same thing.) I have got Rope, Rebecca and Psycho lined up for the future, although tonight I am taking a break from Hitchcock to watch Memento.

I have also reached my Goodreads target of the year, which was to read 40 books (not including academic ones, which I don't track). At the moment I am still reading Bad Boy by Peter Robinson, which dipped a bit in the middle and led to me putting it aside for a while, but it's picking up again now. I have also started reading a review copy of And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts (who also wrote the Milk biography), about the outbreak of AIDS in the US. I will probably end up reviewing this for the journal.

I have also been awarded my very own (!) blood pressure monitor by the doctor, hurrah. :| My blood pressure is always high at the doctors, although I have taken it since, at home, and it seems normal.

My friend J and I have become ridiculously intrigued by the idea of llama trekking. Also, my new housemates seem (almost) as eager as me to visit the nature centre down the road, which I am quite excited about! I hope if we do go, the capybaras are still there. WOOF. (That's the sound one of them made last time, I'm not suggesting, via some dodgy out of date slang, that I find capybaras attractive or anything.)

End transmission.

Face in the sand

2011-10-10T18:53:00.001+01:00

I found this little guy on Brighton beach last week.

After the freak-summer, it has turned into autumn. In the case of Brighton, wind-so-strong-it-knocks-you-over autumn (or at least, wind so strong you almost flash multiple members of the public when wearing a dress). I arrived on Wednesday and stayed until Saturday morning.

Remnants of the old pier

On Friday night, Jon and I (and lots of people from his work) went for pizza and then to the Brighton Comedy Festival for the opening night gala. The show was hosted by Jo Brand, one of my most favourite comedians, in aid of the Sussex Beacon, who provide support for people living with HIV.

The new(er) pier

As well as Jo Brand, the performers were: Sean Lock, Jack Dee, Andi Osho (maybe my favourite of the evening), Simon Evans, Mark Watson, Adam Hills and, in the interval, Abandoman. The whole night was pretty awesome.

The pictures are from Thursday, when I went for a walk despite the very real threat of being dashed into the sea any moment. I found out what a "groyne" is. I saw a brave seagull paddling in the surf. (I am still not friends with seagulls, however, mostly because they were far too interested in my falafel wrap.)

I also spent some time in the delightful confines of the library, where I read a lot about Bill Clinton, and managed to finish a whole Famous Five book (by this point, it was Friday afternoon and I had given up on any actual work).

When I wasn't making my own fun, Jon and I hung out and revisited the excellent combination of enchiladas and Dexter. He stole all my rupees on Zelda: Four Swords, but I've been practising for next time.

Southbound; sailboats

2011-10-03T21:35:00.001+01:00

I spent this weekend in Poole, visiting a friend of mine (H) and her son (James), who is 15 months old and my godson. I haven't seen either of them since December, when I attended his naming ceremony.

I seem to be spending a lot of time on the south coast these days.

The reason for visiting was H's birthday, which we celebrated pretty sedately on Friday night with a few drinks and some food with her cousins. Saturday we all went for a meal with her parents, and on Saturday afternoon we went down to the quay, which I find exciting simply because, well, WATER AND BOATS.

I like the water. So in a way, all this time spent on the coast is a good thing.

James is now older and therefore able to do things, which is good, because I am terrible with babies, mostly because they can't play. I like to play. We built with some blocks this time. Kids' games, at least, I am good at. Making stuff up with toy monkeys and the like.

In a couple of days I will be back down south, this time in Brighton to see Jon, and to go to the comedy festival. And then... then, I think I'm gonna take a break from all these trains. Maybe just for a little while. I have a couple of friends who seem to think our friendship is built solely on me being able to spend time and money going to see them, and them never reciprocating. A friend of mine recently got engaged, and we agreed to have a drink to celebrate and catch up generally. When I asked for some dates she was free, she said, "you know when I finish work every day, so whenever you can make it here." Oh, okay. I get it. These are generally the same people who mock me for "still being a student" or "never leaving uni" (er, see, "I'M WRITING A THESIS, DAMN IT", from previous post), and yet act disbelieving when I suggest that the £50 train fare might be out of my price range.

Anyway. Rant over. Almost.

If you get this far on a bike, you deserve to stay on, I think

Oh, hey, autumn

2011-10-02T19:23:00.000+01:00

Last time I was in Brighton, I bought a woolly jumper. I may have been slightly inspired by my new favourite Danish police detective. But mostly, I was inspired by the fact that it was almost October at the time, and therefore Proper Autumn.

Last Monday I wore my woolly jumper to uni. My friend J will attest to how excited I was. (I like jumpers.)

Sarah Lund & co.

Half way through the day, we realised it was actually blazing hot, and both nearly melted in the computer lab at uni, where millions* of freshers** were loitering and browsing for pushchairs online.***

Not autumn

Ever since then, it has been like the middle of summer. After submitting my chapter on Monday afternoon, I had all week to "slow down" and "relax", which actually turned into catching up on my editorial duties for the journal and writing abstracts for conferences that I'm hoping to attend, but at least I could do this sat by the pond in the back garden.

My new work-from-home spot

(My new house has a pond. WIN.)

Kings Heath park

This weekend I went to visit H in Poole, and my godson**** James, who is now 15 months old. Last time I saw him he was 6 months old, so it's more fun now he can actually do stuff! I shall post about that later, though, because right now I have to make the mega-important decision of: veggie chilli or veggie bolognese for tea? DECISIONS.

Water birds and ducks

*If not millions, then definitely MULTIPLE DOZENS.

**The most annoying thing about freshers, I have decided, is not that they incessantly browse Facebook, or look at pictures of horses online (true story), or that they all talk through their nose in their newly acquired "uni-accents" (I had one too), but that they make such an effort. They're all in their new gangs of friends, with their hair all done and their clothes all clean and picked out especially. And then the hoary postgraduates turn up in their unseasonal jumpers and last week's jeans, and the hair that should have been washed two days ago but I'M WRITING A THESIS DAMN IT, and... yeah. We feel like unwashed, friendless losers.

***Also a true story. Please browse the Mamas & Papas sale in your own time.

****I have given up trying to find the atheist equivalent to "godson", because although I am a "supportive adult" and not a "godmother", there seems to be no child equivalent. Answers on postcards, please. Tasteful ones.

Belated: Moved

2011-09-25T17:25:00.001+01:00

Today marks one week in my new house. I moved last Sunday, with a little help. We had to make two trips, my mum claiming that what I thought was a reasonable amount of stuff was "a lot" (I'm still not convinced), but within the afternoon I was unpacked.

The best part about my new house is probably the lack of dirty, drug-addled boys. And the red walls. And the awesome shower.

The best part about my new room is probably the desk. I haven't had a desk for a whole year, and it made working from home pretty difficult. Now I have one, which has come in particularly handy this weekend, when I am battling against a deadline. It also means I am no longer perpetually sat on the edge of my bed when checking my emails.

For part of last week, I was in Brighton for PJ20 and other assorted awesomeness. Most of my time has been taken up by chapter drafting, both there and here. The rest of the time, I have been scouting out my new surroundings. Admittedly, my new house is less than 1.5 miles from my old one, but I have had to figure out new routes to the train station and the university (which I can now walk to, hurray!). This week, once my chapter is submitted and I have slightly more time, I have to track down a doctor and all that boring-but-necessary stuff.

So far, though, I am feeling a lot more positive.

PJ20

2011-09-23T17:32:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday night, Jon and I went to the screening of Pearl Jam Twenty at the Duke of York Picturehouse in Brighton.

101 years later, almost to the day

The screening took place all over the world on the same night, for one night only. We chose to see it in Brighton because of the midweek timing, but the Picturehouse turned out to be a cosy little cinema and a much nicer venue than a huge multiplex. When the film came on, everyone clapped. When it ended, everyone clapped again. One guy in the cinema was in the film very briefly during the credits. He got a cheer.

Back-in-the-day Pearl Jam (Eddie, Mike, Dave A, Jeff & Stone)

The film was awesome: two hours and tons of footage I'd never seen before. It documented how the band came about (with footage of Mother Love Bone and Temple of the Dog), and the early days of Ten and Ticketmaster and Kurt Cobain, and then moved on to some later, post-Roskilde stuff. It was more focused on the early days, which was fun to see - a lot of the footage from the early gigs was kind of amateur and messy but more interesting. They did a bit on each member of the band, which is how I know that Stone has very dirty mugs.

Film poster outside the cinema

What was more fun was seeing it in a cinema full of fellow Pearl Jam fans, including my PJ buddy.

And no one said the word "rockumentary".

20 years of Pearl Jam makes them nearly, almost as old as me. Give or take a few years. (Okay, give.) I didn't really get into them for a long time. I knew some of the stuff from Ten because of MTV, but the first record I ever bought was actually the single of I Am Mine, which came out in 2002. Now I am in possession of their entire back catalogue, it doesn't strike me as one of their best songs, but for some reason I raced out to buy it. I remembered getting Riot Act from the library, and being underwhelmed, and then my Luxembourgish penpal Roxane sent me a copy of Vitalogy, which seriously made me wonder if they were the band for me.

Except then I bought Ten, and I thought it was amazing. So I bought Vs., which I thought was even more amazing, to the point where I pored over the handwritten booklet inside, like I was 13 again. So then I got No Code, and went back to the two albums I'd written off previously, and then it all started to make sense. They've been my "favourite band" (as much as I have a favourite) ever since.

Us, waiting for Pearl Jam in Manchester. See how excited we are?

I never thought I'd actually get to see them live, which has nothing to do with them never touring and everything to do with thinking that never in a million years would I be able to get tickets. When they came to the UK in 2009, Jon had the job of clicking "refresh" incessantly at 8.59 in the morning until the clock flipped over and the tickets went on sale. I remember being at work, and I remember not daring to hope that he'd managed it until I turned my phone on during my morning break. Two days earlier, we had got tickets for Faith No More, so the Pearl Jam tickets were like the icing on the biggest, tastiest cake EVER. (Fact.)

You can read my excited review of that gig here.

We have since seen them twice more, once in Hyde Park the following year, and again a couple of weeks later in Bilbao. By the time we saw them in Spain, I had almost gotten over the "OMFGITSPEARLJAM" state (in which seeing them was extremely exciting and weirdly tense at the same time, because it was such a big deal), and was able to relax more. Seeing Pearl Jam Twenty has just made me want to see them again. And again. And again. Maybe for the next twenty years.

Umzugskartons

2011-09-12T18:00:00.000+01:00

The packing has begun.

Re: the Madonna film. Blame the PhD.

There's quite a lot I can't do until right at the end, because I still need my computer and half of my books, and it's still a week until I move. But I've made a start, at least.

The bag of wires. Always important.

"It's a secret no one knows"

2011-09-11T20:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I started packing. I had Metallica playing at the time. Metallica are many things, but they are not music for cleaning and tidying and filling boxes with stuff.

So today, I dug up some trashy 90s pop rock on Spotify.

Including this:

Mmmbop, for my sins, was the first single I ever bought. As a kid I had a handful of tapes that I played to death: a FastForward mix from about 1990 (there was a picture of MC Hammer on the front), the American Graffiti soundtrack, ABBA: Gold, and a Beach Boys greatest hits album.

If nothing else, it certainly spanned the decades.

As time went on I got bought various tapes for birthdays and Christmas, including my first ever Now album, Now 29, and I spent more time taping cassettes from the library using my dad's dual cassette player. In 1997, when Mmmbop was released, I was 12 years old, and I remember vividly that I bought it on a trip to Meadowhall with my parents and my brother. I paid £1.99 for it. It came in a cardboard package, and I must have played that thing to death.

I only ever had a handful of cassette singles (the other two I remember are a Spice Girls single and a 911 single) before I moved on to CDs, and you'll be pleased to know that my musical taste has improved. Gradually. But I don't remember what my first CD single was. If I am ever interviewed about my first record, I'm not looking forward to having to admit it was Hanson, but I won't be able to lie.

And it still makes me smile.

Swim for your life!

2011-09-11T12:03:00.000+01:00

This is another swimming update, but I'm trying to consolidate a couple of weeks' worth of activity into one post, so it doesn't get too tedious. This is more just so I can keep track of my own progress!

Last week:

Tuesday 30th: 30 lengths
Thursday 1st: 20 lengths
Friday 2nd: 15 lengths

On the Tuesday I went swimming alone in the morning, and the pool was practically empty. I was aiming for 20 (I tend to swim less on my own because I get bored more easily!), but I kept doing 2 more, and then 2 more, and by the time I got to 28 I figured I might as well push through to 30. I am very pleased that I finally made it to this point!

Thursday and Friday B and I swam together. By Friday I was really feeling the effects of the 50 lengths gone before, so it turned out to be quite a short session!

Also: on Tuesday, the pool was so warm it was like taking a bath. Thursday and Friday it was icy. This may also have affected my progress... :)

This week:

Wednesday 7th: 20 lengths
Saturday 10th: 26 lengths

There was an open day on campus yesterday, which meant the whole time that I was swimming, parents and their 17-year-old offspring were peering into the pool area trying to get a glimpse of the sporting facilities. Slightly off-putting...

4 Unexpected Things of the Week

2011-09-08T18:56:00.000+01:00

Unexpected things that have happened this week:

1. The Almost-Accident
B and I went to Nottingham on Tuesday morning, for a meeting with the other editors of the journal. B drove. On the way back, it was extremely windy on the motorway - so windy that a van in the inside lane (we were in the outside lane) had its ladder blow off the roof and cross three lanes of traffic to land right in front of us. B did an emergency stop (luckily, the car behind us stopped in time). Had she not, the ladder would most likely have smashed into the front of her car. Fucking scary.

2. Postcards from Luxembourg
My friend J got back from her trip around Europe this week. The four of us (me, J, B and R) went out on Tuesday night for a meal to commemorate B leaving on her Stateside research trip. Knowing that I collect postcards from places around the world, J brought me back two from Luxembourg, one featuring (I think) a member of their royal family, and one featuring... the Egyptian pyramids. No shit.

3. Teaching!
Well, this wasn't so unexpected, but I met with a member of staff in my department this week to discuss doing some teaching this semester. I'm now scheduled to give a lecture later this semester, plus the seminars that correspond to my lecture. I have a topic, but I now need to figure out what film I'm going to screen, and what reading I'm going to set. I also have to think up some seminar activities, but today R told me she has lots of ideas from her days of teaching, so I may have to bend her ear nearer the time...

4. Foreign films
My research focuses almost exclusively on Hollywood cinema, except for those few indie films I watched when I was writing about New Queer Cinema. This week I watched La stanza del figlio (The Son's Room) and Trois couleurs: bleu (Three Colours: Blue), and I have yet to watch Olivier, Olivier, which is also in French. Unexpected dash of culture. I has it.

Getting Stuff Done

2011-09-06T19:00:00.000+01:00

I'm pretty bad at procrastinating. I can't be the only one - my university offers a training course geared specifically towards beating procrastination. (I haven't taken it yet. I'm still getting round to it.)

via Pinterest

These last few weeks, though, I have been trying to improve at Getting Stuff Done. I've had to, mainly because my life is about the explode in a big way. Or rather my schedule. I haven't had the summer off, but it's certainly been slightly more laid back than the normal term time, mostly because I arranged it so my summer would be spent researching. But now term is just around the corner, and on top of my usual pile of work, I'm now co-editor of an academic journal, co-organiser of a conference, and teacher. I have lectures to give, and seminars to lead. (Yes yes yes I am TERRIFIED. Excited but terrified.)

All of this means more work and less time to umm and ahh about dumb stuff, like should it be "Dear" or "Hi" at the beginning of this email? (I have a problem with email etiquette. I am only just getting used to Best, Smallgirl. Obviously I don't sign my emails Smallgirl, though - THAT would definitely raise a few eyebrows. Mine included.) The conference in particular has been a ~~nightmare~~ wonderful journey through unsolicited emails and rejecting people (including people I am personally friends with) and liaising with big powerful please-don't-crush-me academics, as well as all the things that go with organising any kind of event, like finance and budgets and catering and room hire and... my head hurts. It's been a great thing to be part of, honestly, but it's been a huge, huge commitment. There are three of us involved in the organisation, which obviously helps, but as of the end of next week one of the team are away on a research trip, and the other doesn't live in Birmingham, so I am holding down the proverbial fort. I am in the process of growing balls for just this occasion.

via PhD Comics

Things like this just aren't my strong point. Dealing with people and making hardcore decisions. It might sound stupid but it's true. But I think that maybe I am getting better. All this organising has helped, because now I get that I can do stuff. I can fix things that need fixing, most of the time. I might be scared of teaching a load of undergraduates, but someone thinks I can do it, because they asked me to. I didn't think I could go to a conference and give a paper, but I did, and I have more coming up.

This is what's underlying everything: my quest to make a mark for myself and my research. My first year was a bit slow going, because I was working full time as well, and I seem to be playing catch up now (i.e., most of the people I know are first years, and I seem to have more in common with them, extra-curricular wise). But I'm coming up to my 2nd conference, and I have abstracts planned for another in Ireland, and I might even take a punt at the Albuquerque one. My next big goal is publication, which is a minefield in itself, but... it can be done.

I need that tattooing in my field of vision, and then we'll be all set.

(Also, PhD Comics rocks my world right now. I originally stumbled across them through Loz's blog, and they've been making me smile ever since...)

Good news!

2011-09-05T19:41:00.000+01:00

So I had a post all scheduled, all about procrastination and growing balls (not literally, obvs.), but then something AWESOME happened, and I figured a happy blog post was probably in order!

*tension*

I am moving!

Hurrah.

After Friday night (which sucked, and I won't go into it, but basically my most idiotic housemate "moved out", then came back, let himself in and got super drunk and kind of messed the place up), I spent Saturday morning hunting for rooms online. I sent out 2 emails, posted a room wanted ad, and got responses back to both emails within the day. I scheduled viewings for yesterday afternoon (both around the corner from each other). I viewed a lot of houses in Birmingham before I finally moved here originally, so I was kind of anticipating the same, but the first place I saw was amazing. The girl (who owns it but also lives there) was really nice and the house was exactly what I wanted. Plus the walls downstairs are bright red. That might have swung it, but only slightly. The room is a little smaller than my current one (and a single bed, not a double, so I will have to try not to fall out), but everything else more than makes up for that. (Normal housemates, for one.)

I went along to the second one, but I kind of already knew I wanted the first room, so when I got home I sorted it out with the girl (who was also pleased I'd said yes, which I'll take as a good sign!). This morning I called my landlord and told him I was going. Not that he really cares, but just because he's a knobhead, I refuse to be the same.

And... yeah. She just text me to say my deposit went through, so I am moving in two weeks! Eeeee! Super excited. I didn't really know how much I wanted to move until I did it, and now I'm so glad I did. The new place is closer to uni (a 25 min walk, or a bus), and a 15 walk to the local train station. Happyhappy.

In other news, I am completely re-discovering Bush (take that, search engines). I have been playing Sixteen Stone and Razorblade Suitcase on and off for a few weeks now, and I thought I would share a video:

(Even if the tag didn't say 1997, I think it's evident from Gavin Rossdale's hair.)

And and and...

The new Kieronononon EP, Komplaints Department, is out now! You can download it for free here: http://brutaltechnopunk.com/music

Which you should totally do, because it's not often you can get your hands on some free Brutal Techno Punk. Plus there's a cover of Holding Out For A Hero. Plus, they were once described as "the most unexpected thing to come out of Hull since Dean Windass' promotion winning volley", which is a ringing endorsement if I ever heard one. Plus, I've put these guys up at my house before, and they did the washing up.

Plus, y'know, their bassist is pretty cool.

To move, or not to move.

2011-09-03T16:46:00.000+01:00

House hunting kind of sucks.

You would think it would get easier the more I do it. When Clottie was here earlier in the week, she was counting how many times she's moved house in her life, and got all the way up to 19. I'm nowhere near 19, but to say I lived in the same house for the first 18 years of my life (not counting my first year when my parents lived somewhere else), I've made it through a fair few residences since. (For the record: one halls of residence in Hull, two houses in Hull, one dorm at UNC-Greensboro, one house in Norwich, one house in Leamington, my grandparents last year, and my house in Birmingham now. Interspersed with moving home every summer from uni, and that's a lot of moving.)

On the plus side, I can move fast and I move light. Kind of. My dad, who helps me move most of the time, would disagree, as when I left Leamington and we had so much stuff we literally couldn't fit it in his car. (Clottie to the rescue here, who lives in the same town as my parents and happened to be at my house in Leamington the day I moved, and who drove some of my stuff home.) And I have a lot of stuff in a lot of places - my mum's loft and my grandparents' spare room in particular. I horde books, but I don't horde clothes or shoes, so it kind of balances out.

I've now been in my house for ten months, and I go from being fine with it to wanting to move out RIGHT NOW. I have a landlord who generally can't be fucked, and my housemates are on a pretty fast rotation, but I currently live with four guys. I don't mind living with boys - in Leamington I lived with two, and in Norwich I had two female and three male housemates, and the boys are the ones I spent all my time with. The ones I live with now, however, don't seem to work and spend most of their time messing the place up and building towers of beer cans every night in the living room. (Case in point: when they broke the living room window and left it like that for a whole week, until I came back from visiting people and got it fixed.)

Various things have kind of pushed me over the edge in the last few weeks, so I started actively househunting again. Last week I met two girls who were looking for another student to fill their spare room. That didn't work out, so this morning I sent out a couple more emails in the hope of getting some response. I've heard back from one already, and am waiting to see if I can arrange a viewing.

I find the whole thing super stressful, though. Scouring 'room available' ads is not my idea of fun, mostly because once you've weeded out the creepy sounding ones the choice is narrowed severely. Being restricted by proximity to public transport, finances, and a burning desire not to live with 7 second year undergraduates is not helping. And then I go full circle and think, well, maybe this place isn't so bad... until my room starts to smell of weed again, and I step in a huge pile of cigarette ash on my way downstairs.

The one part of being grown up I am definitely starting to look forward to is being able to live in a real house. It might be a while yet.

#grumbleover

Lynx Wink

2011-09-02T19:28:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday, en route to Cornwall, Clottie - Elk, fellow Tripodian, all round brilliance - stopped off in Birmingham for one day and one night. We made the most of our day by going to see the little collection of animals just down the road from me.

Lemur with lemur baby in arms

("Just down the road" translated as more-than-30-minutes-walk, but it was a nice day, so...)

This was my fourth time at the Birmingham Nature Centre. I almost qualify for season ticket status there. The animals change and move around slightly, so I'm never quite sure what I'm going to see. For instance, when we went on Wednesday, the red panda was back!

Hiding in the middle - look closely!

They also had two capybara. I love capybara. My mum is actually more frightened of them that she is of any other animal, mostly because they are the largest rodents in the world. I just think they're cute. The keeper went in to check one of them over, and when she got too close it barked at her. Not the sound I expected to come from a capybara!

They had some new, small monkeys, one of which kept climbing through the electric fence and taunting the otters in the next enclosure. I saw one of my favourites, the wallaby, and Clottie and I chased the food prep guy halfway around the park trying to catch all the animals being fed.

This guy was a little perturbed at being left out of the feeding session.

We also saw some new pigs, and the otters, who were in the process of devouring some dead chicks when I took this photo.

After seeing all the animals, we walked through Cannon Hill Park and into Kings Heath, by which point my legs felt like they might drop off. We recovered in Manic Organic with falafel and tea. Clottie wanted diet coke, which is NOT ORGANIC. Must remember this. I also finally set foot in Polar Bear Records, reputed to be one of the best independent record shops around (according to the back pages of Mojo). I did find an original copy of Vitalogy, with the booklet and everything, but I resisted the (£4) temptation.

We came home on the bus, where we had the misfortune of being caught by a "talker" - a woman at the bus stop who, for 20 minutes, recited the bus timetable to us, including all the buses that should have arrived but had yet to.

In the evening, we hid upstairs from the massive spider loose in my living room, and watched The Next Best Thing (with Madonna and her terrible hybrid accent) and Who Do You Think You Are? (with Larry Lamb and HIS GRANDAD ARTHUR) with a ton of sweets and the requisite Lovehearts (whenever Clottie and I are together, and indeed whenever the Tripod is together, Lovehearts are a must).

To conclude, here is a picture of the one-eyed lynx, eagerly awaiting his lunch:

"My face is in the butter."

2011-08-29T15:28:00.000+01:00

The weekend I partook in my first ever "Hugh Grant Fest". (When I typed that originally it came out as "Hugh Grant Gest", which is a more terrifying prospect. Nobody needs a fest of Gest.) The HGF came courtesy of B and A. I provided the Haribo and copious amounts of crisps.

So on Friday night there was pizza and jelly babies and Pringles, and Sandra Bullock saving a community centre while Hugh Grant fell in love with her, and then there was James Fleet being James Fleet and John Hannah reading W. H. Auden and Hugh Grant kissing Andie MacDowell even though he forgot to put a coat on. And then more crisps.

On Saturday B and I went to Worcestershire, which is less impressive than it might sound, given that we were right next to Worcestershire before we even set off. We saw some falcons and owls, and some ducks, and some soap sculpted into bizarre shapes. We mistook this for candlewax, and were chastised (nicely) by a passing woman. We also watched Music & Lyrics (the third instalment of HGF), which I find far superior to anything else Hugh Grant has ever been in*, mostly for the magnificent "Pop! Goes My Heart". I first saw M&L at the cinema (yes, I paid) with le tripod, so it was nice to revisit the cheesetasticness. Yes, that's a word. Shut up, spellcheck. (Even "spellcheck" isn't a word, apparently. Touche.)

We may have eaten more crisps.

We also watched Beauty & The Beast, which it turns out B knows all the words to, following which we went to cinema to see the last instalment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I haven't seen the first part, but I figured out where we were after a few minutes. It was kind of sad to see it all come to an end, although the bit where they age them right at the very end was quite amusing. Watching the film made me wonder if it's time to re-read all the Harry Potter books again, to which the answer is: probably. It's probably two years since I re-read them, but I might leave it a bit longer.

Of course, I won't be reading anything else for a while yet, because yesterday I finally started Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I'm about 160 pages in (out of 800), and I'm not normally one for fantasy books, but so far I am enjoying it a lot. It probably helps that I watched the TV series not that long ago, and so far it seems like they stuck quite faithfully to the book, so I can picture a lot of the scenes in my mind (sacrilege, I know).

I also started watching The Killing / Forbrydelsen last night, which they are finally replaying on BBC Four (and so iPlayer too). My dad has been raving about it for ages - he's watching it on DVD - so last night I watched the first two episodes. They've been showing it nightly on BBC Four, so I'm racing to catch up before the episodes disappear off of iPlayer, which is only holding them for a week each. I am hoping I will be fluent in Danish by the end of it...

This morning, I had the misfortune of watching My Girl - I am researching portrayals of child death at the moment, and after the frightening-but-excellent Don't Look Now, I finally bit the bullet and watched My Girl today. Gah. The bees. To say it is a bank holiday, I have also done some (research) reading, made a list of possible training courses I want to enrol on next semester, updated my academic website, and am currently contemplating submitting an abstract to a conference in Bellevue, WA. (Pros: it sounds like an interesting conference, I have an idea already for a paper, and I would love to go back to Seattle. Cons: erm, it's in the U.S.) Hence why I have also done a bit of preliminary (and not too hopeful) research into short-term travel funding.

I think that's enough for today.

*Apart from Love Actually, obviously.

Splish splash: swimming update

2011-08-26T16:45:00.000+01:00

Last week: 25 lengths
This week: 24 lengths

Yeah, I am kinda sticking at that 25 mark. I also haven't been swimming a lot lately, mostly because I have been suffering with an evil cold that has so far popped up twice in three weeks. Hopefully next week I can get back on track!

Bonus: today's swimming means that tonight, when I am eating copious amounts of pizza, ice cream, and Haribo with my buddies, I can do it all guilt free.

Although any guilt associated with Haribo is just wrong.

Library Tour 2011: The One Where My Productivity Came Back

2011-08-25T19:39:00.002+01:00

On Monday I got up early. At least, I find 5am early, but on catching the bus at 6am, I realised that the rest of Birmingham is not asleep at 6am. They're all up, snagging their shiny new copies of the Metro and not sitting too close to each other on the bus. (There are no X-City trains at 6am. Sad face.)

This face is more PERTURBED than SAD, Mr. Triceratops

The reason I joined the great unwashed at such an ungodly hour was to catch a 7am coach to London, so I could be in the British Library at a reasonable hour. This was my first time visiting the British Library, which is neither as grand or (shh) exciting as I thought it would be, but it was still pretty cool. I got my reader's pass (and I would post a photo, except I have never in my life seen such a bad picture of myself as the one that now adorns my valid-until-2014 BL card) and collected my books from the Humanities Reading Room, and settled down with my notebook and pencil.

Even though the building isn't too exciting, the reading rooms just exude KNOWLEDGE. Walls of books and total silence. Like, the man next to me was researching Airplane Design. Later, the woman next to me was researching photographic journals. I spent most of my time there reading Serge Leclaire's A Child Is Being Killed (On tue un enfant, but in its English translation, obviously) and making furious notes. Before I left, I had a little wander round some of the exhibitions, thinking that I couldn't very well go all the way to the British Library without at least poking my nose around a little bit.

I saw the Magna Carta room, and a little snippet of the Magna Carta itself, plus some extremely old copies of Shakespeare's plays and a lot of different, preserved holy books. They had a prayer roll that once belonged to Henry VIII, and a lot of old maps. I like maps, and these ones were interesting to look at - one was of Port St. Julian, where the author had drawn in little pictures of all the native animals he'd seen when his ship had arrived. Another was of the British Isles, except Scotland was completely the wrong shape and Cornwall was just a little stub on left hand side. I spotted Sheffield (Schefeld, I think it was spelled) and Derby (Derbia), but no Birmingham.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I took my library tour one step further and went to the University of Sussex library, where I did not have to have my photo taken to gain entry, thankfully. They had quite a collection of film studies books that my university doesn't have, so I whiled away the hours making more furious notes in there. In the evenings, Jon and I hung out in Brighton.

Dolphin Derby, Brighton Pier

On Monday night, we walked down to the pier to see it all lit up. You can see for miles in each direction along the coast. We watched some films and ate some Mexican food, had a falafel picnic, and did not win any dolphins (or other sea creatures) on the Dolphin Derby. I also lost at air hockey in the arcade (barely), and was forced to wrestle the puck from a grubby-fingered child at one point. Yes, WRESTLE.

I raided the Oxfam bookshop in the Lanes and found a copy of Ally Condie's Matched (which I have been wanting to read for a while, but have never been able to find either in a shop or in the library), as well as buying my second ever copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (not for me this time, but for the boy). I also spent half an hour wandering around the shopping centre in Brighton, which for the summer is home to a handful of animatronic dinosaurs.

T-Rex

Ankylosaurus

I has a fish.

This research trip actually came at a perfect time. I did a lot of work, and, as happens from time to time, re-discovered my enthusiasm for my thesis. Which can only be a good thing. That's not to say that I have grown to hate it (yet), but sometimes I need reminding why I love my topic so much. And then I get three days of doing nothing but sitting in libraries, scouring books and making notes and having ideas while making a cup of tea last in Starbucks for a whole hour and a bit just so I can keep scribbling manically in my notebook.

Sign outside a shop in Brighton. HEADCHEESE.

So I have fulfilled one thing on my (non-existent, only in my mind) "bucket list", which was to visit the British Library. I'm now going to see how many university libraries I can cross off the list. Right now I have: Hull, UNC-Greensboro, UEA, Birmingham, Warwick and Sussex. I can totally do better.

And yeah, I know. Nerdtastic.

The kind of girl who takes photos in the library.

YA Roundup #1

2011-08-17T20:34:00.000+01:00

I posted recently about my renewed interest in new Young Adult fiction. Although I read a lot of YA as a kid, a lot of it was pretty formulaic and not particularly challenging. For every (awesome) Paula Danziger book, there were three SVH books just waiting to suck me back in.

So I abused my library privileges and raided the shelves, as well as reserving a whole stack of stuff from other libraries in the city. (Birmingham is the first place I've lived where this service is free. This is pretty awesome.) Here is a list of things I've read so far, and things still on my TBR pile:

Read:
13 Little Blue Envelopes, Maureen Johnson
Looking For Alaska, John Green
Paper Towns, John Green
The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon, Sara Beitia (still reading)

(bonus excitement that I am the first person to take this book out of the library EVER)

However, most exciting of all was the delivery of Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins. I ordered the paperback of this on Amazon, which was released a week or two ago. My copy appears to have been imported from the US, and weirdly the pages are all uncut:

Odd! But the book itself was excellent. I'd heard so many good things about it (including this review by Jen at Almost Grown Up, which is what finally prompted me to place my pre-order!), and happily everything I'd read was right. I read it in two days straight, and it only took me so long because in between starting and finishing it, I had my own boy to hang out with. :) I haven't read like that in a while. I miss reading like that, when you start a new chapter before you even realise you've done it. I am now impatient for Lola and the Boy Next Door, the companion novel, but until then I will just have to keep adding to my TBR pile...

TBR
Lock and Key, Sarah Dessen

I update my Goodreads profile regularly, and review some (but not all) of the books I read. Come say hi!

Library Tour 2011

2011-08-15T20:28:00.000+01:00

No, this is not the one where I go to Acocks Green Library and call it a tour.

This is where I (hopefully) get to go here:

British Library
via Wikipedia Commons via user CPGrey

I say hopefully, because the BL apparently reserves the right to turn you away and towards a different library. I am hoping this doesn't happen. They possess a book I am desperate to get my hands on for my latest thesis chapter. (Everywhere else, including in my own university library, the book exists in its original French only. I don't read French.)

And because I will be in that neck of the woods, I am also hoping to incorporate Library Tour 2011 into a short visit with The Boy, which also means I will be able to exercise some of that SCONUL awesomeness and visit the University of Sussex library, too.

University of Sussex Library
via Wikipedia Commons

(SCONUL is the scheme whereby HE students can access other university libraries for free.)

I nearly went to university at Sussex as an undergrad, so it'll be fun to see what might have been!

I might also visit the University of Brighton library, just to round things out. So it might not be as exciting as the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which my mum visited a few weeks ago, but I'm still pretty excited! My two PhD buddies, B & J (if only I was a Penelope, we'd be PB&J, and I would be amused for at least a week), get to take infinitely more exciting research trips to Greece and the US, but I'm making sure they send me a postcard. :)

Whales and dolphins, yeah!

2011-08-14T21:35:00.000+01:00

There is nothing quite like seeing a dead sperm whale spray a combination of gas and insides into the face of a comparative anatomist.

This is how I spent my Friday evening. What made my Friday evening even more awesome (if the whale action wasn't already enough) was that I spent it with The Boy. This weekend was more fleeting than most, because weekends are still only 2 days long, and National Rail do enjoy carrying out all their major work when I am trying to hang out with said boy, but it was still a lot of fun.

The magic of Old El Paso.

I made enchiladas, and if this was a cooking blog, or I was any more domesticated, I might post the recipe, except the recipe goes something like: chop up vegetables. Boil kidney beans. Throw in a pan with some baked beans. Wrap in wraps. Cheese with cheese. Etc. J & I have also decided that we can't ever go on Come Dine With Me, because if we did, we'd be forced to acknowledge that our main ingredient is "Old El Paso".

We watched the aforementioned Inside Nature's Giants, which is one of my favourite programmes, and which only comes on every once in a while, as it relies mainly on the availability of large dead animals. But when it does come on, it's pretty amazing, and full of people who are genuinely excited about something genuinely exciting. Joy Reidenberg is particularly super cool.

We also played some Kirby, ate a picnic in the back garden, and today we went into town and ate veggie burgers by the canal and spotted this outside Paradise Forum:

The "Kenco Crab", apparently. Yes, like the coffee.

Dear Weekends: If you could be a bit longer in future, that would be great. Kthnx.

Round trip (germs included)

2011-08-11T19:43:00.000+01:00

I went home this past weekend. I took some germs with me, it turns out. All that swimming and sleeping with the window open combined with the unfamiliar northern air combined to give me a wicked cold. Yay immune system!

I went out for bean burgers and massive chips and ONE PINT OF BEER ALL NIGHT on Friday (because drinking imported beer by the canal in Birmingham is double the price of drinking paintstripper in a seedy old man pub down the road, although if you discount the drunken wannabe city workers, it is nicer, although being ID'd at 26 is kind of funny), and went home on Saturday morning. An ill-thought-out choice in the end, because as I was well aware, Saturday was the opening day of the football season, on which Derby and Birmingham were playing at Pride Park. As a Derby fan living in Birmingham, I spent my train journey at 11am in the morning surrounded by already-drunk men on their way to the match. (I say "surrounded". "Stuck in between" would be more accurate.)

(Derby won 2-1.)*

I met my brother in town and we had lunch with my mum, and on Saturday night my dad and I went to Castleton to see Grassoline play in a tiny little pub. Here is a photo:

I also spent some time with my grandparents, did not win at Scrabble, tried to spot The Boy's dad on television, ate a lot of cheesecake, and ventured to Meadowhall on Monday afternoon, where my dad bought books and my brother frightened a woman in Waterstones by saying the word "paedophile" too loudly. He also lent me a copy of Game of Thrones to read, which I am excited to get stuck into, but I also have a huge pile of other books to read, including some that I've already started. (But but but... GoT has a family tree AND maps! And I love books that have those things.)

I hung out with Clottie and my germs on Monday night, and came back to Birmingham on Tuesday morning, just in time for some rioting. (I have not encountered any rioting, just to be clear. I live in south Birmingham. "There's nothing to see here.") I have been to work, and spent the rest of the week in uni, kind-of studying and mostly sorting out all the shits and giggles that come along with trying to organise an academic conference. And wondering whether there are nicer bits of south Birmingham to be living in. (Answer: probably.)

This weekend: a boy! A dead sperm whale! Mexican food! What more could a girl ask for... :)

*Derby then lost 3-2 to Shrewsbury Town on Tuesday night in the Cup. Because I wanted it to be one of those seasons all along. :|

Splish splash: swimming update #4

2011-08-09T19:42:00.000+01:00

Week 5
Tuesday: 14 lengths
Thursday: 26 lengths
Friday: 16 lengths

Tuesday I literally had 15 minutes to swim. The pool opened at 4pm, and I needed to catch the train home and walk to the local library by 5pm to pick up my freshly-delivered books (well, okay, I didn't have to be, but the libraries are closed on Wednesdays and I was eager to get my hands on them!). So a short, sharp swim was all I managed.

Thursday B and I surpassed our own record. I devoured a lot of pasta afterwards. I noticed that it's getting a lot easier to do 20+ lengths. It's still exhausting, but it doesn't hurt my body so much, or even at all.

Friday was pretty easy, and we might have, erm, taken a few breaks to play keepy-uppy with a small foam weight.

I was impressed with my ability to motivate myself to go swimming three times last week, but this has evidently backfired on me as I am now suffering with a raging cold. Boo. I'm steering clear of the water until the end of the week, but I'm hoping I will be better by then!

Some awesomeness

2011-08-01T16:59:00.001+01:00

So, today I am over at the lovely Sophie's blog, threetimesf, guest posting on my [triumphant! ha] return to the water and my new found swimming habits. Go check it out, and if you haven't visited Sophie's corner of the web before, do it now!

To coincide with this little piece of awesome, I thought I would offer up two more:

First of all, this review of Grassoline's EP Mountain & Grave. (Cached version only, the original has disappeared.) For those of you who aren't aware / have not had the misfortune to catch me in #proudsister mode, Grassoline are my brother's band. They're good. Really good. And the album is awesome. I go and see them play whenever I go home (including this coming weekend!). I think I posted a video of Tom solo once, but here is a video of the whole band:

If you can guess which one is my brother... well, you get nothing, we look like twins.

[Sound quality is a little off, apologies!]

And finally... If that's not your thing, then maybe this last slice of awesomeness will float your boat:

Sunday roundup

2011-07-31T13:08:00.000+01:00

So far this weekend has been wonderfully lazy.

My next couple of weekends are already full, so I've been making the most of it.

Yesterday I finished two books that I've been reading recently: The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, and Sixsational by Meg Cabot. The Plot Against America was a re-read - I first read this book a few years ago and devoured it. It was, and still is, my favourite book by possibly my favourite author. It took me longer to read this time, mostly because halfway through I broke off to dive into my sparkly pile of YA, but I finished it yesterday and loved it just as much as I did the first time (and had totally forgotten how it ends, so bonus!).

Sixsational is the sixth Princess Diaries book - I read #3 and #5 before this - and although I am AT LEAST ten years older than the target audience (as evidenced in the back of my UK version, where you could text a number to join the 'princess club'), they're kind of fun and fluffy and remind me of other diary based YA stuff like the Georgia Nicholson books/. I don't know if I'm going to keep going to the end of the series - I'm not sure how much longer I can put up with reading "Do It" in place of "sex" - but they've been surprisingly good reads so far.

In a mini-YA update, I have also finished 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. I loved the premise (a kind of travel-treasure-hunt) but the story just didn't do much for me - the main character is unbelievably passive and possesses almost no discernible thought process throughout the entire thing.

Yesterday, I also watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on TV, followed by half of Crocodile Dundee 2. This was a mistake. (Crocodile Dundee, not HP.) I made it through most of Penn & Teller before deciding there is a reason I don't watch much television, particularly not Saturday night television, although I do like a good magic trick now and again...

I've played a lot more Kirby's Epic Yarn. It's a lot of fun! I am also nearing the end of series 4 of 3rd Rock From The Sun. My brother and I would watch this on BBC2 late at night when we were young, and this is the series I remember the most vividly. The whole thing so far has been well worth the years of trying to hunt this programme down on DVD. John Lithgow is brilliant, in particular, and I'm happy to watch most things with either him or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in them.

This morning I have been listening to the wonderful Danny Baker on Desert Island Discs, trying to bring my cactus back to life, and starting yet another book, Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. Happy Sunday!

Kirby AND dinosaurs

Splish splash: swimming update #3

2011-07-29T14:36:00.000+01:00

Week 3: no swimming

Week 4
Wednesday: 20 lengths
Friday: 24 lengths

It's now the summer holidays, which means the kids are out in force, and that includes the uni pool it seems. (Insert grumbly adult face here.) Wednesday I swam in the afternoon, which proved to be a minefield of diving children. I wanted to go for more than 20 lengths, as I seem to have been stuck at this point for a couple of weeks now, but getting those in was a feat in itself!

Today (Friday) I finally broke through and managed 24 lengths. We also swam in the morning, which meant the pool was almost empty. Less grumbly adult face!

I am now sitting in the computer lounge at uni, having completed both my conference abstract and the book I've been reading, and now feel a lot like falling to sleep. Zzz. On the plus side, swimming still equals better sleep. And a bigger appetite for pasta, it seems.

Ismi, Smallgirl

2011-07-28T21:25:00.000+01:00

Last week, I attended a beginner's Arabic class as part of the interview process for a new Arabic lecturer in the Modern Languages department at my university. We had two half an hour sessions, in which I learnt to introduce myself, say where I was from, where I lived, and various greetings and ways of saying goodbye.

My (anglicised) Arabic scribbles

I love languages, and my one regret as far as my education goes is that I never took my German GCSE any further (i.e. to A Level, even though I was already doing 4 A Levels and the thought of taking German was enough to make me run away and join the circus at the age of 16). Whenever I go abroad anywhere, I always feel cheated that most other kids my age, certainly in Europe, are bilingual, while I am still sadly... unilingual? Hmm.

I try and keep on top of my German by watching films with the German subtitles on (no, really) and watching German language videos on Youtube, and bugging my German penpal with my poor attempts at her native language (and carrying my tiny dictionary around Berlin and embarrassing myself in front of shop assistants), but after that Arabic class it makes me want to get back into learning a language properly again.

The university offers open access language classes, one evening a week, for a pretty cheap rate, but I'm just not sure trying to learn a language while, erm, going into the third year of my PhD is such a good idea.

Ein Tag, vielleicht.

Wookey Hole Caves #2: Valley of the Dinosaurs

2011-07-26T20:00:00.000+01:00

Howdy, folks.

(Yes, there are lots of photos.)

T Rex junior and senior

So, to continue from yesterday. When we exited the caves and walked under the King Kong statue, which a small child was attempting to beat up with some relish, we found ourselves in the Valley of the Dinosaurs.

Plesiosaurs

It's a pretty small space, but there are a lot of dinosaurs (and associated creatures) and a little bit of information about all of them.

Smilodons (sabre toothed tigers)

My favourite was probably the woolly mammoth, but they also had a huge apatosaurus, and a stegosaurus. Quite a few of the dinosaur models were hidden away in the bushes, so they would surprise you when you looked closer.

These guys died out only 4000 years ago.That's NOTHING.

I obeyed the sign and did not climb on any dinosaurs. :)

Dire wolf!

They reminded me a lot of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs (I can't even remember how many years ago it was, but Jon and I went to see these one summer) - some of them needed a lick of paint, but they were still a lot of fun to see!

Stegosaurus, hiding

After the dinosaurs, there were some other attractions scattered about the place, including an exhibition on circuses through the ages (in Europe and the US). This exhibit had one of my least favourite things ever - wax figures - but it did have a section on the "freak show" type circuses, and the kinds of people/animals/things they would put on display. (They had a photo of P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb, and the massive chair they used to make him look tinier, as well as some "petrified mermaids" and various two-headed animals and whatnot.)

The elephant model was a little worse for wear

There was also an old-fashioned Victorian penny arcade, with a selection of pier attractions, fortune telling machines and one-armed bandits that you could try, by trading in ten pence pieces for replica "1d" penny coins. We learned during this exploration that I am a "thrilling" kisser (the wonders that can come of randomly gripping a lever...) and that M shouldn't make any rash financial decisions. STOP WITH YOUR INSIGHTFUL INTUITIONS, STOP.

Oh, to be declared "frigid" by a machine. :|

There was also a hall of mirrors, and a mirror maze. I gave the guidebook to M to keep, but in it the pictures of the mirror maze featured kids wearing jade green sweatshirts and those silky football shorts we used to wear as kids in 1990, so I'm wondering if the guidebook might need a little updating.

One-armed bandit from the c1910s

We skipped on the pirate adventure golf (I would be way better at adventure golf if it was three holes long, which is about when my attention span lapses and I start swinging wildly at nothing), and drove all the way back to The Midlands, as it is handily designated on all road signs south of Gloucester.

"Hallo, you can almost see The North from here!"

It was a fun day, and nice to catch up with M, who I haven't seen properly for ages!

Me, rocking the "triceratops over your shoulder" look

When I get time, I will chatter on about my forays into learning Arabic, and my renewed obsession with 3rd Rock From The Sun, and maybe even an update on all that YA I've been reading...

Wookey Hole Caves #1

2011-07-25T21:31:00.000+01:00

Wookey Caves, from the outside

I read somewhere recently that you should aim to see one new place every year. (I would like to see more than one new place every year, obviously, but it's a nice sentiment.) Liverpool was my first new place of the year. Wookey Hole was my second.

Yeah.

Wookey is in Somerset, a county I've never visited before. I went with M, who I used to work with back when I was living in Leamington. I got the train there this morning, and then we drove the rest of the way. (I say 'we'. You know I mean, 'not me'.)

Inside chamber 2.

We got there just before lunch time, and the first thing we did was embark on one of the cave tours. I haven't been in a cave since I was in Colorado, travelling with Charlie, and we visited the Cave of the Winds (otherwise known as the caves featured in the episode of South Park, where Cartman eats all the treasure). The Cave of the Winds was a pretty tight squeeze at times. When I was a kid, because of where I grew up, we took endless school trip to caves, and they were a lot wider. The Wookey Caves are more like that.

Looking down from the bridge. The blue line is a diver's rope.

We saw a few of the chambers, and saw the places where they store the cave-aged cheddar in big underground cave stores, where it (apparently) takes on the flavour of the caves. There's a requisite witchy legend to go with the caves, but we emerged unscathed...

Fairy Garden

...into the Valley of the Dinosaurs! (Via the Fairy Garden and a huge King Kong statue.) I will post photos / write more about the dinosaurs (and the circus exhibit, and the retro penny arcade) tomorrow, but now I must rest. And/or play Kirby. Whichever.

happyweekend

2011-07-24T20:31:00.000+01:00

Jon was here this weekend. Because of various big things in July (conferencing and festival..ing and whatnot), it is a month since I was down in Brighton. So by the time Friday rolled around, I was a LITTLE BIT EXCITED.

If you were wondering, this is us.

It has been a pretty relaxing weekend - enchiladas and 3rd Rock, walking on the canal and feeding the ducks, watching more Game of Thrones (we have two episodes left, although my brother, spoileralertboy that he is, has already kind of revealed part of the ending, gah), sampling different beers, pizza and building this little guy:

Nice to meet you.

You may remember the shark and the dinosaur from previous builds (they all build from the same kit). This was my birthday present last month, and this was the final (and most difficult) build. Tada!

Pretty ferocious.

Today we wandered around Birmingham and I somehow ended up coming home with a copy of Kirby's Epic Yarn, which I have spent my evening playing, now that I am on my own again. (That and uploading pictures of Lego crocodiles to my blog, obviously.)

This weekend was exactly what I needed - awesomeness with my favourite person.

Okay, this is us as well.

Rediscovering YA

2011-07-21T22:03:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed from my recent blitz on the 30 Days of Books that a lot of my choices were books from when I was a kid. I was hugely into YA fiction, but looking back, a lot of the stuff I read was written in the 1940s and 50s, and even the really 'new' stuff was mainly a product of the 80s. I gave up reading YA when I was around 16 or 17.

Oh yes I did.

I gave up writing YA around the same time, too. I started writing really young, and carried on all the way through secondary school, and when I got to college I made friends with a girl who also wrote, which led to us posting our angsty teenage trauma to fictionpress.com for all to see. When I went to university, I buried all the notebooks somewhere under my bed at home and never looked at them again.

I tried writing since then, but seeing as I was more grown up I figured I should be writing about more grown up things, with real adult characters. And it sucked, and I didn't enjoy it, so I stopped. I only really started again when I found out about Nanowrimo in 2009, and for the first time in a long time I plotted out an honest-to-god young adult story. It was the first one I finished in about 8 years.

Proof copy. More pics here

More recently, I started reading more blogs by new YA authors. I started reading reviews of amazing-sounding books that were all hiding away in the 'teenage' section of the library. So at the beginning of this week I went to my tiny local library and picked up Lois Lowry's The Giver and an instalment of Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries (the 3rd one, if you were wondering). (Yeah, I know I don't seem like the kind of girl who might be going around reading anything named The Princess Diaries. I paint my nails sometimes, too.) I've already read them both. Raced through them, in fact. I live equidistant between 2 local libraries, so I raided the other one today.

Not only am I excited about the stack of books I now have to read, but I'm also looking forward to getting in some writing this summer, too. Here's to a summer of awkward teenagerhood. But only between the pages.

It's never good to find yourself represented in The Onion

2011-07-17T10:37:00.000+01:00

But it happens.

8 hours in Liverpool

2011-07-16T21:01:00.000+01:00

Radio City Tower

So, all the SUPERSTRESS that I have been alluding to was all building up to today: my first time giving a paper at a conference. This one was at Liverpool Hope University, so I hopped on a train from New Street (very) early this morning - early enough to be confronted with people going home from their Friday nights out - and trundled up to Liverpool.

Royal Liver Building

I was super nervous about the conference, mostly because although I've been to them before, I've never presented until today. One of my great fears is public speaking. I get nervous about most things (some justified, some not), and suffer from anxiety attacks that make reasonably straightforward things more stressful than they need to be. So today I took some herbal remedies and went for it.

And it was fine. It was better than fine, it was good. I did not turn into a sweaty, shaky tomato. I had some minor technical problems that meant my Powerpoint went mostly unused, but I managed to play my clips. The paper went well, I got some questions, all of which I could answer, and I met some nice people.

If I wasn't so freaking bone tired, I'd be super happy. :) :) :)

After the conference, which finished at lunch time (it was over 3 days, but I only attended for the final day), I went back into Liverpool and did some exploring.

The Cunard Building

(The photo quality is quite poor because I didn't have my camera and just captured a few things with my phone.)

Lifebelt from the Lusitania

Everyone I asked said the best place to visit were the Albert Docks, which I duly did. A freak rainstorm propelled me into the Maritime Museum, where they have exhibits documenting Liverpool's past as a major world port, and another exhibit about the Titanic, Lusitania and Empress of Ireland disasters, and their relationship to the city.

Lifejacket from Titanic

When the sun came out, I had another wander around the dockside, saw the Mersey (I am a sucker for any city that features open water. I have a similar fondness for this living-near-the-canal business.), and resisted the urge to climb on any boats.

Last night my housemates and I had a barbecue, and even though I went to bed pretty early I didn't get more than 4 hours sleep, so tonight I am going to crash out completely. I will hopefully summon up some appropriately proud/happy/relieved feelings tomorrow, when I wake up and realise I did the scary thing and won!

View across the Mersey

Splish splash: Swimming update #2

2011-07-15T16:29:00.000+01:00

Week 2
Thursday: 20 lengths
Friday: 20 lengths

This week both my swimming ventures were alone. I normally shy away from swimming alone because of the not-being-able-to-see thing, but my swimming buddy is on holiday and I didn't want to miss out, so I braved it. It went reasonably well. I did not fall over, or walk into the wall, or indeed walk into the men's changing room. Hurrah!

Thursday, I also attended the "lengths" session rather than the "general" session. I stuck to the slow lane - I'm a pretty competent swimmer but I don't swim crawl, which slows me down. It was also the 5pm session, so it filled up quite quickly. I did my 20 lengths in 25 minutes and got out.

Thursday was also a bit of a struggle to begin with, around the 8 length mark my lungs felt like they might explode (this did go away after a while). Today (Friday) was a lot better.

So far, I've noticed that my sleeping is better if I've been swimming. Swimming in a morning makes me feel more energised and focused when I'm tackling work, and when I feel exhausted in the evening, it's a kind of "deserved" exhaustion, rather than lethargy.

I've been horrifically stressed this week, so I can't really tell if it is helping with stress, but we'll see how it goes!

The lighter side of 26

2011-07-11T18:35:00.000+01:00

Yes, hello.

On Sunday, I went to Graves Park in Sheffield, where they have (amongst other things) an animal farm.

It's free to get in, and then you can buy cups of feed (vegetable pellets) to feed some of the animals.

I haven't done this since I was a kid and we used to go to White Post Farm in Nottinghamshire, where you could also feed the animals. You got a choice between 'small animal' food and 'big animal' food, and in all the times we went I always went for the big animal food, because that meant you could feed the cows. That's where I found out that a cow's tongue is like sandpaper, and where a goat tried to eat my brother's anorak.

At Graves Park they have lots of chickens, but I was (just like 20 years earlier) far more interested in the mammals.

Plotting your Orwellian demise.

We saw piglets and some very muddy pigs, and there were two deer, one of which I managed to pet on the nose.

There were also quite a few goats (who are always one of my favourites, just because they're so pesky) and lots of sheep, including one very frightening ram, who had the hugest balls in the world. (That wasn't why he was frightening - he also had a scary, scabby face and an angry 'baa', but the massive balls didn't help.)

I fed some of the donkeys, and a very blond cow. There were four donkeys altogether - one grey, one white, and two brown ones, one of which was smooth and the other of which was shaggy. That one was my favourite.

There were llamas, who were being aloof, so I didn't get to feed or pet them, and some barn owls, who were happily tearing up some dead chicks. The girl feeding them was launching the dead chicks through the fence and one nearly hit my mum in the face, which caused my mum to go 'a bit funny'.

While at home, I also got to see the mighty Grassoline (for the uninitiated, the band my brother plays in - there are videos of last night that haven't been posted yet), and my dad and I went for a long walk around the fields with the dog, who may or may not have almost leapt in the lake to chase the ducks. I didn't do any of the work I planned to do, but I did catch up on some sleep and take advantage of being able to have a bath. This might sound ridiculous, and I'm aware of that fact, but I love a bath, and for the last few years have only ever lived in houses with showers. Home = bubbles and wet books.

Speaking of books, I am re-reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" and managed to dream that I was a) Jewish and b) trying to escape Paris as Hitler marched on it. :|

Thanks for reading. Now, give me your cagoule.

Splish splash: Swimming update #1

2011-07-07T23:00:00.001+01:00

I think I may have mentioned that B and I have taken up swimming recently. I thought it would be fun to track my progress, so you might see a few of these updates scattered around in the weeks to come.

Week 0 (trial week):
Wednesday: 15 lengths

Week 1:
Wednesday: 22 lengths
Thursday: 20 lengths

Primarily I'm swimming for the endorphins (dolphins?) and the exercise. Doctoral researcher = sitting down a lot of the time, thinking and reading and writing, and while that all sounds lovely (and it is, most of the time), it also means I get lethargic quite quickly. Hopefully this will be one way of fixing that. I don't have any weight-related goals (if anything I'm hoping to put some weight on), but I am going to keep track of the lengths I do, to see how much I can improve my fitness!

(Also, the pool is 25 metres long. Because I'm not a ninja swimmer, just a regular one...)

Flucht

2011-07-05T19:14:00.000+01:00

It seems I have been bitten by the travel bug again.

It's almost a year to the day that I flew to Bilbao for the BBK festival last year. (I still have the wristband on my arm, but unfortunately it reads "BONOA" in Basque, and the frequency with which this is mistaken for "Bono" alarms me. It happened again today, when my supervisor said, "Oh, you went to Glastonbury!") I won't claim that I have been particularly deprived of travel - not counting my year in the States, since 2008 I have managed to squeeze the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Germany into my schedule (and rather sad bank balance).

But it must be that time of year again, because I am itching to see a new country and go through the amusement of trying to order a tea with milk in a different country. The fact that I have spent the last couple of weeks soaking up more than my fair share of German-language music also suggests I have a hankering to embarrass myself with my poor language skills once more. Te con leche? Tee mit milch? Thee met melk? I have memorised them all.

It may well be that the furthest I go this year is Liverpool to give my paper (and in my haze of anxiety, I may not actually remember Liverpool once its all over), but here is a list of the top 5 places I would like to visit in Europe*:

1. Dubrovnik, Croatia
2. Krakow, Poland
3. Reykjavik, Iceland
4. Copenhagen, Denmark (with the added bonus of being able to visit Sweden at the same time!)
5. Bled, Slovenia

Lake Bled

via Adiel lo / Wikimedia Commons

*Not that I don't want to see huge swathes of the rest of the world, too, but Europe being RIGHT THERE, I feel like there's so much to see on my own doorstep (albeit quite a wet doorstep). Having seen a fair amount of the States from coast to coast, I feel like Europe needs an extended sorry-I-went-away hug. Or something.

Where would you go?

stuffdump

2011-07-03T20:42:00.000+01:00

After my hectic week, I had a reasonably non-hectic weekend. I watched a lot of Wimbledon with two of my housemates, M & T. Pretty much the only time we ever really interact for any length of time is when there is sport to be watched. I am a pretty big armchair sports fan - football, obviously (and yes it is only one month and 3 days til the start of the football season!), but I also like 20/20 cricket and I've started to appreciate tennis, too (my mum being the huge Wimbledon fan that she is). I like the Olympics, too. And I have been known to watch the snooker, but mostly for its meditative qualities...

Anyway. Aside from watching a lot of tennis (and wondering if its a sign of madness than I've started to think Sue Barker is quite cool), I have also been reading, half for work and half for pleasure. The pleasurable part was finishing American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which I highly recommend. She has become one of my favourite authors, which means I must now wait impatiently for her to write and release a new novel, have read all three so far. The work reading was for a review I am writing for a journal. It's an interesting book, but making notes on anything at the weekend just seems wrong, somehow...

There was also Ghost Trick, and 3rd Rock from the Sun (including the 3D episode from 1997, which my brother and I originally owned on VHS and which looks so super dated now!), and OH DEAR GOD - Twin Peaks. I have never seen Twin Peaks, but given that my PhD thesis relies on 90s pop culture, I figured I should watch it. And it's good, so far - I only watched the pilot and the first episode, I'm renting it disc by disc - but fucking hell, there is one creepy guy in it. The dead girl's mother has these split second visions of this unknown man, and I haven't been that scared of a character in a film since the twins in The Shining. I would post the screenshot, but I don't even want to google it...

Oh hai there.

2011-07-01T21:25:00.001+01:00

These are garden eels.

Splendid garden eels, to be exact.

These were in a small, hidden away tank at Brighton Sealife. They can grow up to 30cm in length, and they bury themselves in the sand and silt with half their bodies poking out. They're pretty nervous, though, and whenever anything approaches, they burrow right down until they're almost completely underground. In the same tank was a small fish that would scoop up a mouthful of silt and filter it through its gills, and whenever it swam near one of these eels, they'd shoot back down out of reach.

As well as these splendid garden eels, there were some spotted garden eels in the same tank.

As for other types of eel: here are two moray eels, sharing one tube.

I am not a fan of moray eels in the slightest, or any eels bigger than the tiny garden eels really. (And really, even they work better when I'm not dwelling on the 30cm thing.) But these two eels crammed in together look both hideous and funny, so I thought I'd share.

(If I dream about two headed eel monsters tonight, I won't be happy.)

There was also a huge lobster, and this pig-nosed turtle, whose name is Herman.

I didn't take too many photos, mainly because my camera doesn't like fast-moving objects, and besides, I was having far too much fun following the sea turtles and sharks around the tank! (Not in a stalker-ish way, mind.)

This week has been exhausting (yesIwillsayitagain), and I was originally going to grumble, but instead I am going to post my obligatory sea-starved-girl photographs instead.

Brighton Pier

Not a bad way to start a Monday morning.

I would hasten to add that the caption on that last photo should not be taken to mean I woke up on the beach, or anything. Also, note my sticking to the shade, even at 9am. (Also, note the black jeans. Bad choice.)

These 20 minutes on the beach were followed by several sweaty hours on two coaches back to Birmingham. One day, I will live a lot closer to the sea. I may or may not take up an alternate career breeding garden eels and pig-nosed turtles.

30 Days of Books: Day 30

2011-06-30T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 30: Your favourite book of all time

Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

...and about a million others. Okay, not a million. But a fair few books that have made this list could be considered my "favourite of all time" (so far). I tried not repeat any while doing this list, even though I could have listed some more than once. So in contention alongside The Handmaid's Tale were Into The Wild, The Plot Against America and Tales of the City, along with The Catcher In The Rye, We Need To Talk About Kevin and Fever Pitch (a book I felt so strongly about, for some reason, when I was growing up that it made me cry). And all those books from my childhood that I rambled on about, some of them would be up there too, because even though I couldn't claim that Harriet The Spy is my favourite book now, I loved it fiercely as a kid, more than I probably would love any book now.

As for The Handmaid's Tale, I read this book a fair few years ago now, and it was another one of those punched-in-the-stomach books where I couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards. I still think about it now. It still scares the shit out of me. There are enough grains of truth for it to have that effect even now. I'm a huge Margaret Atwood fan, and have read any number of excellent and amazing books by her, but this one wins out by such a long way.

So ends my 30 Days of Books, which I managed to do over 30 days straight with the help of a little auto-posting. I promise to stop spamming the book love and go back to some normal programming soon.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
~~Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something~~
~~Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending~~
~~Day 28 - Favourite title~~
~~Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked~~
~~Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time~~

Like a demon

2011-06-29T21:02:00.000+01:00

The last couple of weeks have passed by in a bit of a blur. A fun, if busy, blur. Which was exactly how my life was last time I blogged properly, if I remember rightly, except times that by seventy six and you get the idea how this week has been so far.

In good news, I finally got some work hours in last week, which has made my bank account less sad, and means that I am no longer struggling quite so much to a) buy food and b) pay for the Liverpool conference, which is now in TWO WEEKS AND THREE DAYS. Two weeks and one day until the conference, that is, but two weeks and three days until I am due to give my paper. My first ever conference paper. I may have a breakdown. (I probably won't.) (But I might.)

I spent the weekend in Brighton with Jon. We went to the Sealife Centre, which is the oldest aquarium in the UK (I'm pretty sure it's not always been a Sealife, however...). Inside, it's very Victorian, and a lot of the original features (hello Kirstie Allsop) have been preserved. I got to touch a starfish, which I did before at Sealife Birmingham, but they're very squidgy and not at all how I expect them to feel. (Touching the starfish involved shunting a few kids out the way, a challenge I happily accept.) Touching the starfish sounds ruder than it should.

We also got to touch some sea anemones, which were small and kind of sticky. Also not rude. They have turtles, and we witnessed a bout of turtle sex. This was rude. There were also lots of rays, including some juvenile rays which have yet to sprout their... wings. And a walkthrough tunnel, where we got to see three giant sea turtles up close (one loggerhead and two green), as well as a few different types of shark (zebra, blacktip reef, and some others that weren't identified, so I won't hazard a guess). I took a couple of photos, which I will post when I unload my camera!

We also spent some time on the beach, narrowly avoiding the trauma of a Punch & Judy show. We successfully made pasta in the microwave and watched the first few episodes of Game of Thrones, a recommendation of my brother's which so far has proved worthwhile. Sean Bean is one of the only famous people whose voice I can imitate. (Not really. But we have the same accent.)

I travelled back on Monday, and since then I have been battling away with the current chapter I am in the process of writing. I spent any spare time last week and the week before trying to organise my notes into something coherent, last Thursday wrenching the thing into shape, and the last two days solidly crying inside while racing to the finish line. It needs to be finished and handed in by tomorrow afternoon, so... wish me luck.

In other news, B and I went swimming today in the uni pool. I love swimming, but because I am blind as the proverbial bat I can't go alone (I could wear my glasses in the pool, but my severe short-sightedness is compounded by my clumsiness, and I fear the worst), so I haven't actually been in the water since I lived in Leamington and J and I used the leisure centre around the corner from my house. After spending twenty minutes trying to track down a 10 pence piece for the lockers, we got in 15 lengths, which I am quite pleased by for a starting point. I may pay for those 15 lengths tomorrow.

By the weekend, I am hoping for a sliver of free time...

30 Days of Books: Day 29

2011-06-29T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 29: A book everyone hated but you liked

Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections

So I know very well that not everyone hated this book. It won the National Book Award in 2001, and was well-received critically. Yet I've seen it pop up on a number of lists of books people were "meant" to enjoy but didn't, or that were loved by the critics but hated by the general public. (I also saw The Plot Against America on a similar list, another one of my all-time favourite books...)

But I really liked The Corrections, so much that I've read it two or three times now. It's a huge, epic book, and one I felt at times was going to be never-ending. But it was also a book I got lost in, in that way that makes you wish there were more books like this, that every book was one that you fell into for hours on end.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
~~Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something~~
~~Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending~~
~~Day 28 - Favourite title~~
~~Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked~~
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 28

2011-06-28T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 28: Favourite title

Kinky Friedman - Kinky Friedman's Guide to Texas Etiquette: Or How To Get To Heaven Or Hell Without Going Through Dallas-Fort Worth

Perhaps not the most pithy of titles, but one that makes me smile. My dad originally pointed me in the direction of Kinky Friedman's mystery books when I was around 15 or so. In the books, Kinky is a cowboy-hat-wearing, cigar-smoking, ex-country-singing Texan living in a Greenwich Village loft, solving mysteries with the help of his buddies, the Village Irregulars.

I'm pretty sure Kinky Friedman is a cowboy-hat-wearing, cigar-smoking, ex-country-singing Texan in real life, too.

"I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes." - Kinky Friedman, When The Cat's Away

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
~~Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something~~
~~Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending~~
~~Day 28 - Favourite title~~
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 27

2011-06-27T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 27: The most surprising plot twist or ending

Ian McEwan - Atonement

I actually saw the film before I read the book (I know, I know). I read the book last year, and the plot twist is still as heartbreaking, even though I knew it was coming.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
~~Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something~~
~~Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending~~
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 26

2011-06-26T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 26: A book that changed your opinion about something

Lee Edelman - No Future

This book infuriated me the first time I read it. I read it as part of my research for the chapter I'm currently writing for my thesis, and I struggled through and battled with this book the whole way. Only as I've come to write about it a second time have I begun to appreciate the argument that Edelman puts forward. His theory of 'reproductive futurism' concerns the notion that all politics is driven by this investment in the future 'child', and so what occurs in the present is always done for the good of the future, with privilege being given to those who reproduce (i.e. heterosexuals). Edelman's argument is for a rejection of this structure, rather than a blind embrace of it. In short: don't challenge for your right to be included in the structure; challenge the structure.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
~~Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something~~
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 25

2011-06-25T00:00:00.004+01:00

Day 25: A character who you can relate to the most

Anastasia Krupnik (created by Lois Lowry)

These books were another staple of my childhood. I'm not sure what it says about me, that the character I can relate to the most is an eleven year old, but although I have partway identified with lots of characters since (like Lee from Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, until she became an uber-bitch and shunned her family, or Mary Ann Singleton in Tales of the City, until she, erm, became an uber-bitch in the later books), I remember relating completely to Anastasia, not least because she a) had a little brother who she loved, but who terrorised her; b) she was the kind of girl who was always asking 'why?'; and c) she had a habit of wrinkling her nose to push her glasses up her face, which I did (and still do). Those things mean a lot when you're a kid.

The book cover above is from my favourite Anastasia Krupnik book, the second one, in which they move to the suburbs and end up living next door to a woman named Gertrude Stein. (At the time, I had no idea who Gertrude Stein was, and so the joke was kind of lost on me.) Anastasia writes a mystery novel in the book (something I was probably doing at the same time), including all the new people she meets in her new neighbourhood, and in the end (if I remember rightly) it becomes 'The Mystery of Saying Goodbye'.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
~~Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most~~
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 24

2011-06-24T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 24: A book that you wish more people would've read

Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

I read this on the recommendation of my friend and ex-housemate C a few years ago. From one atheist to another it was hardly scandalous, and a little like preaching to the choir, as it were. But it's an interesting and thought-provoking book. It's not, however, I book I generally recommend to other people (unless I'm pretty sure they're already on board), for fear of having a repeat of that whole Southern Baptist incident from my childhood. (I had a penpal in South Carolina for a while, at least until she asked what church I attended and I told her that I was an atheist. I got one 'you need saving' letter, and then no more. Shazam.)

"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.."

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
~~Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read~~
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 23

2011-06-23T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 23: A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't

Jessica Valenti - The Purity Myth

A few years ago I watched a programme on TV about these 'purity balls' they hold in some places in the US, where girls pledge to keep their virginity until they're married (in the process, kind of pledging themselves to their fathers, which is all kinds of extra-creepy on top of the already creepy).

Then more recently, in the last couple of years, I started reading Feministing, the US-based feminist website that Jessica Valenti founded, and through that I found out that she'd written this book on the 'purity myth'. I've read another one of her books (Full Frontal Feminism), and have been meaning to read this one for ages, but haven't been able to track it down in any library that I am a member of so far. Once I've finally finished Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, I will tackle this next myth!

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
~~Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't~~
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 22

2011-06-22T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 22: Favourite book you own

This is quite a difficult one to answer, because I own a lot of books, including a fair amount of my 'favourite books'. So instead of picking a specific book, I instead choose any book that I own that has a dedication written inside it. My parents both do this when they buy me hardback books, the most recent being a copy of Siri Hustvedt's "The Summer Without Men", which I got for my birthday last week.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
~~Day 22 - Favourite book you own~~
Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 21

2011-06-21T00:00:00.000+01:00

Day 21: Favourite book from your childhood

Enid Blyton - The Famous Five series

Okay, so first of all I've already talked about a few books I loved as a child during this meme. I read vociferously as a child, so this was quite hard to narrow down, and in the end I had to choose the whole series. (While I remember these books being absolute favourites of mine, I have a hard time distinguishing now between the stories.)

The cover is the 1991 edition of the first Famous Five book, Five on a Treasure Island. I remember having this particular edition mostly because for some reason, I really wanted that red jumper. Strange what you remember.

The Famous Five were some of my favourite books because they were full of adventure. Then there was George, tomboy extraordinaire, who I desperately wanted to be, not least because she had her own island. Even when I was reading these books in the early 1990s, it was obvious they were set before my time, and I liked that escape into this world that was kind of like mine, except with more caravanning and picnics and spooky old castles. My obsession with camping when I was young (one that hasn't really endured, in case you were wondering) probably stemmed directly from these books, as if I was expecting adventure to pop out from behind the nearest tree.

I'd be tempted to re-read them sometime, just to see if the magic is still there...

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
~~Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood~~
Day 22 - Favourite book you own
Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 20

2011-06-20T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 20: Favourite romance book

William Shakespeare - Much Ado About Nothing

This question was one of the most difficult to answer. I don't read romance novels in general, and I struggled to think of a book I do like that leans in any significant way towards romance, at least since the dearth of teenage books I have read over the years.

But then I remembered reading Much Ado About Nothing for my A-level English course about... erm... nine or so years ago. So it's not a book, but it does revolve around romance, and all without descending into fluttering pulses and the like. The relationship between Benedick and Beatrice is probably my favourite part of that play, and I do enjoy a bit of farcical overhearing and mistaken identity.

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
~~Day 20 - Favourite romance book~~
Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood
Day 22 - Favourite book you own
Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

Ein elefant fur dich

2011-06-19T19:48:00.000+01:00

Last week was full of busy days, not least Tuesday, when I attended an APJ meeting (Annual Postgraduate Journals), and Wednesday, when I was part of the Research Poster Conference. The latter I had been quite nervous about - I had to produce a poster detailing an area of my research and then present it at the conference to a variety of judges - but in the end it turned out to be quite fun. There were 111 posters in all, and the delegates were split into 3 groups, so at any one time, one group was in a team-building workshop, one group was peer-judging, and the other group were presenting.

I was hoping to present first and get it out of the way, but in the end I was in the group that built a team first, and presented last. I am not a huge fan of team-building workshops, but this one wasn't entirely frightening. We got to build a house out of Lego, which was pretty fun. The peer-judging was just a chance to go around and score some of the posters and see everyone else's research, and the presenting didn't go as badly as I imagined (once my propensity to go bright red had abated, anyway). I roped J & B into coming along in the afternoon for the free lunch, and in the end it was quite a fun day.

This weekend has been completely lazy, in contrast. Yesterday I spent an inordinate amount of time playing Portal, which I finally finished today. I have also played two new albums I bought to death (Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs and Wir Sind Helden's Tausend Wirre Worte), finished the second Hunger Games book and started on my pile of new reading (currently 2/3 of the way through another Daisy Dalrymple mystery), finished the first series of 3rd Rock from the Sun (I never realised Wayne Knight was only in one episode in this whole series; I'm looking forward to seeing more Officer Don in the later episodes!), and eating lots of cookies.

30 Days of Books: Day 19

2011-06-19T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 19: Favourite book turned into a movie

Jon Krakauer - Into The Wild

I saw the film before I read the book - twice, in fact, once with my ex-housemate and then once again with Jon. At the time I didn't know Eddie Vedder had done the soundtrack, but right as the film opens and he starts humming it was obvious, and that got me even before the film got me.

This was one of those very rare films that stuck with me for so long after that it's just lodged there now. The feeling like you've been punched in the stomach when you read a ~~good~~ great book or hear a ~~good~~ great song (basically this in a can) - that's what I get from this film.

Then I read the book, and had exactly the same reaction. Since then I have sought out and devoured everything else Krakauer has written (from mountain climbing and the 1996 Everest disaster, of which he was a part, to polygamous fundamentalist Mormons and the story of Pat Tillman), and loved every book.

I can't really sum it up much better than this:

"It was startling how easy it was for me to get into his head. I found it to be uncomfortable how easy it was, because I thought I'd grown up." - Eddie Vedder, on Chris McCandless

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
~~Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie~~
Day 20 - Favourite romance book
Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood
Day 22 - Favourite book you own
Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time

30 Days of Books: Day 18

2011-06-18T00:00:00.001+01:00

Day 18: A book that disappointed you

Jasper Fforde - Shades of Grey

I really, really wanted to like this book. Odd, distorted dystopian adventures all mixed up with paint colours and ridiculousness. I was so there. In the end though, I struggled to keep track of all the characters and all the rules and although it was funny, and I didn't dislike it, it wasn't the book I was hoping it would be.

(I feel like I am a distinct minority here, as not only have I only ever read great reviews of this book, but a friend of mine read it after me and loved it - she also read it in the space of two or three days, which might have made it easier to keep track of!)

~~Day 01 - Best book you read last year~~
~~Day 02 - A book that you've read more than 3 times~~
~~Day 03 - Your favourite series~~
~~Day 04 - Favourite book of your favourite series~~
~~Day 05 - A book that makes you happy~~
~~Day 06 - A book that makes you sad~~
~~Day 07 - Most underrated book~~
~~Day 08 - Most overrated book~~
~~Day 09 - A book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving~~
~~Day 10 - Favourite classic book~~
~~Day 11 - A book you hated~~
~~Day 12 - A book you used to love but don't anymore~~
~~Day 13 - Your favourite writer~~
~~Day 14 - Favourite book of your favourite writer~~
~~Day 15 - Favourite male character~~
~~Day 16 - Favourite female character~~
~~Day 17 - Favourite quote from your favourite book~~
~~Day 18 - A book that disappointed you~~
Day 19 - Favourite book turned into a movie
Day 20 - Favourite romance book
Day 21 - Favourite book from your childhood
Day 22 - Favourite book you own
Day 23 - A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven't
Day 24 - A book that you wish more people would've read
Day 25 - A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 - A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 - The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 - Favourite title
Day 29 - A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 - Your favourite book of all time