(no subject)

That tape is so very cool. A community of three hundred people and somehow it produced enough talented teens (and pre-teens) to put on these spiels. With music and (for the 1992 one) added public servants and an Easter Bunny invasion.

(no subject)

I have some really excellent news: both my ANU classes are going ahead (although they're both also still open for more enrolments). The one on novel writing starts this Thursday and the one on Medieval women begins in a week.

This means, of course, that Wednesday and Thursday are course preparation days (plus bibliography, I suspect, for of this PhD there will be an end). This means, also of course, that I won't have time to judge entries for my Ms Cellophane competition until Friday. THIS means (of course) that I shall not look at the entries until then, so if any just happen to come in a little late, that's fine. Friday morning, though, I enter into judgement.

(no subject)

I have demolished my VHS tapes and my PhD has an abstract. I have thrown out 20 children's paper flags (leftover teaching equipment - other people seem to be teaching Jewish culture in Canberra these days) and another shelf is now filled with books and only books. I have two-and-a-bit books to read, and that will take care of my articles through til the end of September (for the non-Medieval non-specfic review books arrived in the nick of time and my column can now be well-balanced) and during that time I need to kick start a really fabulous interview that died halfway through due to email problems in various places. That and a spec fic piece will get me past Jewish New Year and into the dying days of my doctorate.

Confusion over back pay is being sorted and I will be able to sort out a new computer towards the end of August (which is wonderful, for this one is causing me more and more hassles). And I only have urgent message today, which will take fully ten minutes to handle and can happen after lunch. Then I can settle down, finish printing my class handouts for Thursday (for Thursday is photocopy day) and read those review books until dinner, for this evening is dedicated to TV and bibliography.

And by spelling all that out, I'm committed to finishing things today. This is good, for I'd rather take off and go to the art gallery. Except that it's cold outside. And it's all happy-making work. Except the bibliography, but that has Time Team and later, SF, to make it palatable.

(no subject)

My mother has just received a renewal notice for my stepfather's driving license. The letter we think she should send goes something like this:

Dear Sir/Madam

Mr Oberman no longer resides here.

I would suggest that you have two options in this case. The first is to delete him from your records as he is unlikely to require a driving license in the near future. The second is to address all future correspondence to him c/ Springvale Cemetery.

Yours etc

(no subject)

I'm bibliographied out and only through a small amount of what I intended to do. I'm at the stage of having complete lists of refernces in different formats (depending on where I got them from - the ones where I used my old rules and made manual notes are perfect - the ones where I was cutting corners and took printouts of articles or thought "I have this already on the computer" are not) and it's a slow process checking each and every one and putting them into the correct format, which is not the correct format for any other work I've done this fortnight. I think I've hit a personal best: five bibliographies and five different formats.

My teaching is almost ready for tomorrow and Thursday and my handouts are ready for the next eight weeks, but my virus is having one of its many resurgences (as this virus does - I know many people who have it and none who have actually recovered from it yet) and things just go slowly.

I might spend a few minutes shopping on the way home and buy myself more fruit. That'll cheer me up. And maybe I can remember what I actually went into Coles for, yesterday and buy that. I'm not as miserable as I was, but I'm heartily tired of having to deal with the never-ending virus. Only one month more of winter. It'll be gone by then!

Actually, from tomorrow, I'll be so busy I won't have time to worry about being miserable. If I had not been virussed, I might have got just three more articles written and then I'd only have been moderately busy, but now it's non-stop until Conflux, basically. Which is reasonable, considering what I'm doing. I'm *supposed* to be busy. And that statement demands a cup of tea. A very large cup of tea. Then I'll do just one more hour's something and call it an evening.

(no subject)

Ten more minutes and I'll have finished with a book. This isn't some prodigious feat of reading. I discovered that I'd read the book in the 1980s and that all I needed was a solid reminder of what it was about in order to write about it. I think I knew it was a re-edition when I said I'd write about it, for it balances some other things I've been looking at, but I entirely forgot when I actually received the book yesterday.

Sometimes work piles up and up, and sometimes it disappears like snow in summer. Let me go read and take ten minutes worth of notes and make that snow melt, for I've already done my overview of the second book. This means that by Thursday night I just need to write up book 1, finish the detailed examination and write up book 2, and do everything for book three. This means I can read Team Human on the bus tomorrow morning and pretend I read purely for leisure. Although Book 3 looks rather like reading for pleasure, being all about the private lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. It's too heavy for bus reading, though, for my left hand is still not fully operational.

This time last year I was making vast headway with the Aurealis reading, for a large number of entries had already been submitted. We have some short stories and, I think, only one novel so far, though (and I prefer to read short stories all at once, in a giant sweep - I get short story indigestion, but get a better idea of who wrote what and how well) so all that's going to happen late in the year. This is a very good thing. I get lots of wonderful YA reading just as I'm tired of my own brain. Team Human is what made me realise that the Aurealis stuff isn't arriving. I borrowed it from the library and reflected on how nice it was to have the luxury of library reading when Aurealis and PhD were supposed to collide. Excuse me while I go earn that luxury by doing a spot of work.