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Feb. 22nd, 2011 12:03 pmFriends in and near Christchurch, I'm thinking of you.
Feb. 22nd, 2011
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Feb. 22nd, 2011 03:47 pmI have actually managed to rub something off my urgent list. In fact, today is so much better than yesterday, that I've done a bunch of things. I'm still behind and I'm still a bit bushwhacked, but I'm wondering if tomorrow will be the day where my work meets last Friday. That means by this Friday I shall be where I should have been on Thursday, and over the weekend I can venture into new terrain.
To be honest, if I can do my teaching prep now, and teach tonight and then finish just two of the more urgent items later tonight (and maybe finish reading one of those review books) I shall count it a very good day's work.
Tonight is the first night of my new short course on Time travelling in the Middle Ages. With my Wednesday students doing poetry involving physics and my Tuesday students exploring time travel, I only have one teaching session where my PhD doesn't overlap with teaching. To be honest, that's going to make my life much easier for the rest of term. I won't have to switch brains all the time. If I spend Thursday on articles and book reviews, in fact, then all of Thursday can be about doing varied stuff, and the rest of the week I can make inroads into the stuff that must be inroaded into. When I've caught up with myself, of course. Next week.
To be honest, if I can do my teaching prep now, and teach tonight and then finish just two of the more urgent items later tonight (and maybe finish reading one of those review books) I shall count it a very good day's work.
Tonight is the first night of my new short course on Time travelling in the Middle Ages. With my Wednesday students doing poetry involving physics and my Tuesday students exploring time travel, I only have one teaching session where my PhD doesn't overlap with teaching. To be honest, that's going to make my life much easier for the rest of term. I won't have to switch brains all the time. If I spend Thursday on articles and book reviews, in fact, then all of Thursday can be about doing varied stuff, and the rest of the week I can make inroads into the stuff that must be inroaded into. When I've caught up with myself, of course. Next week.
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Feb. 22nd, 2011 08:37 pmI'm back from teaching exceptionally early because a nice student gave me a lift. She has done several courses with me and so we caught up with the last twelve months or so on the way home.
This is my "time travelling in the Middle Ages" course and I used some of my own work on courtesy and respect tonight. I don't like writing it down, for some reason, but it was a lot of fun to talk about the relationship between social usage and hierarchy and why someone was called by one term or another. I did the work for the Beast - it's the sort of thing that writers need.
I'm under a lot more pressure to do something about the Beast than I was a couple of years ago. I've taken a close look at it and suspect that I could put a proposal in to a publisher and then do that which needs to be done (including with the bits that weren't mine ie redo them from scratch) in a reasonable time. I keep thinking, though, that writers don't really want a reference book specific to their needs - they really want a brainfeed pipelined from several Medievalists.
I've decided to take the Beast with me to the UK and talk to writers and Medievalists and other interested souls and come back with a decision. If you think there is a crying need for a manual for writers who want to use the French and English Middle Ages in novels and you will be in my vicinity betwen now and August, by all means demand a look at it and give me your opinion.
This is my "time travelling in the Middle Ages" course and I used some of my own work on courtesy and respect tonight. I don't like writing it down, for some reason, but it was a lot of fun to talk about the relationship between social usage and hierarchy and why someone was called by one term or another. I did the work for the Beast - it's the sort of thing that writers need.
I'm under a lot more pressure to do something about the Beast than I was a couple of years ago. I've taken a close look at it and suspect that I could put a proposal in to a publisher and then do that which needs to be done (including with the bits that weren't mine ie redo them from scratch) in a reasonable time. I keep thinking, though, that writers don't really want a reference book specific to their needs - they really want a brainfeed pipelined from several Medievalists.
I've decided to take the Beast with me to the UK and talk to writers and Medievalists and other interested souls and come back with a decision. If you think there is a crying need for a manual for writers who want to use the French and English Middle Ages in novels and you will be in my vicinity betwen now and August, by all means demand a look at it and give me your opinion.