what’s going on

I know it’s been forever since I really updated my blog, so here’s the run-down.

computer troubles

Soon after Mom and I got home from babysitting in Colorado Springs, my hard drive died.  Meaning that I couldn’t do anything on my computer.  I was so sick of putting more and more money into that computer, that I decided to just get a new one.  I’d really been wanting a Mac PowerBook … but I decided instead to have it custom-built by a local computer shop, for about the same price as my Mac would’ve cost.  I’m crossing my fingers, now, that I won’t regret that decision.  So in the meantime, I’m using my mom and dad’s old laptop computer.  It’s not too bad, but it’s not mine.  It doesn’t have my music on it, and it has a habit of freezing up when you’ve been on the internet for a while.  Meanwhile, I haven’t heard anything from the computer shop about my new machine since I ordered it last week.  Pray for me, folks.

new calling

Just after getting home, I also got released from my old calling as FHE coordinator.  Instead I was called to teach the Gospel Doctrine Sunday School class.  Which I love.  I’m not so comfortable with the New Testament, but I only have three more lessons of that, then some General Conference talks to round off the year, and then we start Book of Mormon next year. But, the really funny part: Mom and Dad have also both been recently called as Gospel Doctrine teachers.  Which makes three of us — or the entire household, whichever way you want to look at it.

sick

I’ve been feeling really sick lately.  Some of you know that I’ve had this recurring problem with nausea.  Well, My Brother The Chiropractor recently suggested that it might be my gallbladder.  We’ve checked a couple of things, and that does, indeed, seem to be the problem.  So I’ve been taking pills (mostly made of beet-root) to help thin the bile, and things are so much better.  I won’t go into detail, but my appetite is more regular these days, among other things.

However, I woke up this morning with an awful sore throat.  It’s been one of those days where I feel too sick to work — headache, tired, and coughy — but not tired enough to just sleep.  It really stinks.

holidays

I had a good Thanksgiving, with plenty of family.  My brother and his sister came from Colorado, so I got to see The Princess again — since I got pretty attached to her recently, that was very nice.  I also went to Pocatello with my oldest brother, along with Damber and their family, where we walked around downtown to do some children’s holiday activities — The Queen got a reindeer painted on her face, among other things — and then watched the annual Christmas parade.  That’s always a fun time, since absolutely everyone in Pocatello knows Kip. He got waved at a lot during the parade, not to mention getting tons of extra candy.

Now I’m all pumped up for Christmas.  Although I’ll be mostly working on my dissertation and my teaching plans for next semester.  Which brings me to my last point:

working

I’ve been hired to teach part-time at BYU-Idaho, starting in January.  I don’t know how long the arrangement will last, but I at least have a job lined up for a few months.  I’ll be teaching two sections of English 111, freshman composition.  I’m getting pretty excited about it.  Plus, Mom’s been helping me shop for some new clothes, since they have a fairly strict dress code for teachers.  And a new wardrobe is always good.

 

graduating in England

Dad and I had a good time in England. Once we actually got there. We both were delayed getting to Chicago, where we were supposed to meet up for the same flight to Manchester. We had to stay over in Chicago for a night to take thse same flight one day later, but that turned out to be fine. We got really well acquainted with the international terminal of the O’Hare airport, that’s all.

We got to Lancaster on Saturday. Riding the train from Manchester, I kept feeling like I was coming home again. Everything was just so familiar and comfortable.

On Sunday we went to church at the Lancaster ward, where I got to give the opening prayer in sacrament meeting and lead the closing hymn in Relief Society. I also got lots of hugs and got to introduce Dad to many of the ward. Vic and Sue Kureczko had invited Denise and Diana to dinner for that afternoon, and they asked us to come along as well. That made me very happy, because I really love spending time with Vic and Sue, and I also wanted Dad to get to know them a little, since they were such an important part of my life in Lancaster.

Monday was my graduation day. We spent about an hour in the morning doing a little shopping downtown, where I managed to find really good presents for Margo, Erin, and Kimberly. I was so excited about them! I could hardly wait for them to open their presents. But I still had about 48 hours before that, so … Instead I showered and got pretty for graduation, and then Dad and I headed up to campus around noon. I got my robes and got dressed, and we went back to the Linguistics Department for our reception. (It was here that I fatally heard the song “Happy Christmas” by John Lennon. More about that later.) We got to speak to Jonathan and Elena, as well as Marj and a lot of the students who were there with me on the same course. I got pictures with them as well, some of which I’ve posted below.

me with Jonathan Culpeper (who supervised my dissertation)

me in Alexandra Park at Lancaster University

The graduation ceremony started at 3:00, so I had to be in my place by 2:00. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the information that I would be attending, so I had to get them to squeeze me in to the line somewhere. I ended up with all the LLM graduands (as they’re called in England), so I didn’t have anyone near me that I knew. The girl next to me was really nice, though, so that made things better. (Oh, LLM is a Master’s law degree, by the way.)

The ceremony itself was quite … ceremonious. We had a knight and a princess present. Princess Alexandra, is a cousin to Queen Elizabeth, and she’s nearly the same age as the Queen. She helped Lancaster University get its charter back in 1964 and served as Chancellor to the university from 1964 to 2004. At the end of the calendar year 2004 she retired from this (largely ceremonial) position, and Sir Christian Bonington took her place. Sir Christian is, I just learned, a famous mountaineer, and as Chancellor, he is the one all the graduands get to shake hands with when crossing the stage. I couldn’t even tell, personally, which one was Princess Alexandra until after we had all walked, and she stood to receive an honorary doctorate in Music. There was a lot of standing up and sitting down, and there were trumpet fanfares when the academic procession entered and left the hall … very ceremonious, as I said. Oh, and we also sang the first verse of the British national anthem right before the academic procession left the Great Hall. (I did sing along, in case anyone was wondering.)

That night, I went to sleep around 9:30, being very tired. I only slept a few hours, though, and woke up again just after midnight. I laid there for a while, found that I had John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas” in my head, and eventually got up to sit in the bathroom and read a Georgette Heyer book I had bought on Saturday. After an hour or so of this, I got back in bed, closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing. Instead, I found I still had “Happy Christmas” running constantly through my mind. Try as I might to get it out, it just stuck like glue. After a few more hours, I got up and went back into the bathroom to read again. Eventually Dad got up — apparently he was worried about me, sitting in the bathroom so long, and that woke him. He let me turn the light on again, so I got back in bed and read for a few more hours. Around 5:45, I finally fell asleep again. Unfortunately, we were planning to get up at 6:00 that morning to catch the train to the airport. Dad woke me around 6:40, and I happily still managed to get everything together all right.

We caught our train just fine, but it kept getting delayed on our way to Manchester. It seemed to barely crawl along most of the time, and I was getting pretty annoyed with them. Finally, they decided to terminate the service at Manchester Piccadilly, so we had to get out there and wait for the next train. That meant that we got to the airport around 9:15 instead of 8:45, and my plane was scheduled to leave at 10:00. Even after arriving there, we still had to go find the terminal, which took another 15 minutes. When I finally got to the American Airlines counter, the man asked me where I was going, and I said Boston. He looked at me and said, “You’re joking?” Nope, I sure wasn’t! He took me over to another lady, explained that I was going to Boston. She looked at him, looked at me, and asked, “You’re joking?” When I managed to convince that I was not trying to play a very terrible prank on them, they got me a boarding pass and asked one of the security guys to take me down to the gate express. (Naturally, my bag was subjected to a random search on the way there.) We got to the gate before they had finished boarding, so it wasn’t too awful. My flight was rather uneventful (except that the girl next to me got up to use the bathroom twice), and things were quite nice when I got to Boston. I hadn’t checked any baggage, so I got through passport control and customs very quickly and had plenty of time left to get to my gate, have some lunch, and even finish grading my students’ papers.

My roommates picked me up in Dallas, and we stopped off and had some dinner on the way home. It turns out that Erin and our friends Matt and Kimberly were going to see King Kong at the midnight show, and they had one ticket left. After a long struggle with myself, I decided to go with them. We enjoyed it immensely. It was very intense, and I found myself squirming in my seat a lot. I really love Jack Black, though, and he was wonderful in this role. The special effects were fantastic, too. All in all, we had a good time.

The last quote was from Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”

“I have a plan.”
“Oh, you have a plan. You, who are practically incapable of any thought entering your head that is not – trivial.”
(13 points)

 

another update

So, life here has been pretty hectic lately. However, this is the celebratory week of the semester, since my nasty six-hour-a-week graduate class on teaching composition is over now. YIPPEEE!!!!

On the other hand, that also means that this is now the middle of the semester, and classes are starting to get a lot harder. I have a Phonology test in a week and a half, and I need to start going on memorizing (and understanding) a whole bunch of phonological features and phonological processes. Yikes! That’s what’s got me most worried right now.

I am starting work on a new website that I would like to use for supplemental materials for the classes I teach. I’m trying to see if I can get it up to speed so that I can use it for next semester when I teach 1320. Speaking of which, I’m very excited about 1320, since it is more literature-based and has fewer actual papers for the students to write (or for me to grade).

Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding. (21 points)

P.S. I forgot to tell you the answers from the last post.
(1) “Let me ’splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.” –The Princess Bride
(2) a word that is ’sandwiched’ in another word (e.g., scrumdiddlyumptious) –tmesis
(3) “She foresaw that she was doomed to a lonely spinsterhood.” –Gerogette Heyer, Regency Buck (BTW, I decided to give Emily 20 points for that, since she did know it was Heyer, just not which book it was.)

 

the results are in!

And they’re good! I got a 76 on my dissertation (remember, anything above a 70 is an A grade at Lancaster). That means I also earned an overall distinction for my Master’s degree, and that’s definitely a good thing.

Erin wants me to mention her, so I just did. She is sitting on the couch behind me while I type this. I also have to just say that Erin is one of the best roommates I’ve ever had. She makes life very entertaining, and she’s really mellow and laid-back about roommate-y issues (like clutter in the room, or who gets the bathroom when, or whose turn it is to do the dishes).

A couple of weeks ago, I had a really wacky dream about my classes, in which Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were listed on my roll. Cary came, but Jimmy was absent that day. So when I went to teach that day, I told my students about it, and I was quite surprised by the reaction it got: “Who’s Cary Grant?” Wow. The things my students don’t know sometimes really shock me. I plan to show them a clip from a Cary Grant movie soon, in an effort to educate them for life and broaden their horizons — while at the same time teaching them how to write, of course.

 

eagerly awaiting …

Assuming that Marj (the Linguistics Department secretary at Lancaster University) was nice and not overly annoyed by my early email and those of dozens of other eager Master’s students, I should have an email waiting for me tomorrow to announce the results of my Master’s dissertation. I’ll be sure to let you all know right away as soon as I learn anything.

I have to get up extra early tomorrow morning so that I have time to go over to the media library on campus and check out ‘Shrek’. I want to use the “ogres-are-like-onions-because-they-have-layers” clip tomorrow in my composition classes. We’re doing a pracitce peer review in my classes, and I want to first discuss all the different layers of writing (e.g., grammar, spelling, wording, ideas, organization, etc.) and make sure the students understand that peer reviewing is much more than just saying that someone spelled a word wrong. Although I suppose I should check the media library’s hours first, just to make sure they’ll actually be there when I plan to be.

 

life in Texas

Well, here I am in Texas, and we finally just got our router working the other day so that I can get internet access on my own computer (instead of using Erin’s to check my email, etc).

The first week of school was pretty hard to take. I just feel so disorganized and unprepared for everything, and it has already caused some small trouble. Luckily, with this being Labor Day, I’ve got some time to get myself organized and prepared before anything else really major comes up.

I am teaching two sections of Freshman Composition, which is a challenge. Along with that, I’m taking three graduate courses: one in teaching composition (which only lasts half the semester, thank heavens!), one in phonology (which makes me feel like a linguist again, since lots of other things are making me feel more like an English major these days), and one online course in principles of linguistics.

My roommate’s family was wonderful in donating lots of furniture to us when we moved in to our new, unfurnished apartment. That means that all three of have beds (halelujah!), and we have a couch, a kitchen table and chairs, and lots of dishes and cleaning supplies. My other roommate also bought a washer and dryer, so we have our own laundry facilities, which is also great.

We are living just a few blocks away from campus, so we can walk to classes and to institute and church. I’m taking a church history institute class, which I’m pretty excited for. Also, all three of us just got callings at church yesterday. Margo is the ward pianist and Erin is a family history consultant. I’m either a Visiting Teaching supervisor or coordinator — there was a slight confusion, and the RS president wasn’t there, so we couldn’t ask her. I haven’t been set apart yet, and we’ll wait until next week so that we can be sure I get set apart as the right thing. Either way, though, I’m feeling pretty happy about that calling. I do love Visiting Teaching, even though I’m not always great about getting it down, and I think it’s frequently misunderstood and underused. And besides, I think it will take a lot less effort and time than many of the callings I’ve had recently — no ward council meetings, no conducting RS meetings, etc.

Last, but not least, here’s the movie I just finished watching on TV:

A man in a really nice capmer wants to put our song on the radio! (76 points)

 

Travelling to Texas

I am here sitting in our hotel room in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Dad’s on the phone with Mom, who claims to have been sitting by the phone waiting for our call, though we don’t quite believe her. Last night we stayed in Blanding, Utah, and this morning we went to church there. That means we got a later start today, and then we went to both Four Corners monument and Monument Valley. Dad was pretty excited about the latter of these, as there were apparently some great westerns filmed there. His favorite of those is She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a John Ford film starring John Wayne. We stopped several times to take pictures. We were hoping to make it to Tucumcari, New Mexico, tonight, but with our late start, we decided that was just a bit too far. Tomorrow we will be going through Amarillo on our way to Denton, where I will be installed in a hotel for the rest of the week to wait for Erin and Margo to show up. On Friday we will then move into our new apartment. I just hope I don’t get bored to death waiting for that day.

My dissertation

I haven’t written much during the summer, as I’ve mostly been very busy with other things. I sent off my dissertation last Thursday, which was a great feeling. I felt like there should be someone there taking my picture at the post office while I handed it over.

I had the devil of a time of it getting my dissertation printed in the first place, actually. I had forgotten until Thursday morning that it had to be printed and handed in on A4 paper. A4 is the standard letter-size paper throughout Europe, but we don’t use it here in the States. I knew before I left England that it would have to be printed on A4 paper, but I didn’t think it would be a big deal. And, unfortunately, I had forgotten about that detail until Thursday. I called around to a few places to find out if anyone sold A4 (which they don’t), and got hold of someone at Falls Printing who suggested that I print it on 11×14 paper and then cut it down the right size (A4 is about 8.3 by 11.7 inches). When I got to the place, though, I talked to someone completely different who said it was really odd to want 11×14 paper, which it is. She cut some paper for me, though, probably close to 1,000 sheets of it, and gave it to me for free, referring me to Zip Print a few streets over to get it printed. Zip Print was unable to print it, though they tried diligently, and it was there that I had the inspiration to use a standard legal size paper, 85.x14, and then cut *that* down. The folks at Zip Print sent to someone at a place called Beta Graphics, telling me that he could do it if anyone could. So I tried him. His office was supposed to be just a few streets over again, but when I got there I found that he had moved. So I found his new location, clear on the other side of town. But no one was there. So I sat on the curb and called his number on Mom’s cell phone. I got him fairly easily, but it turned out that he was on vacation in Reno, Nevada, until Tuesday. Of course, I needed the job done by the next day at the latest. He suggested I try Eagle Press, so I headed over there. Happily, the folks at Eagle Press were able to get it taken care of for me. Sheesh, though! I sure wish I had thought about that particular complication much earlier. Although I guess I’m mostly just glad that I remembered it at all, and didn’t try sending it on 8.5×11 paper — that would have been a much bigger mess in the end.

Going to storage

The only other terribly important thing that happened since coming home from England actually happened during the first week. I went down to the family storage unit to get some things out of there and found that my big metal trunk, which was stuffed with my possessions, had been leaked into and several of my things were both water-logged and mildewy. I had to throw away several of my books, including my Holladay lexicon of the Hebrew Bible, my Hebrew grammar, and my cherished American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. I was seriously bummed! In fact, I was so upset about my American Heritage that I almost cried about it if I thought too long. A large part of my attachment to that particular dictionary was that it was a gift from my parents when I graduated from high school, so there will never really be another like it. Luckily, though, most of my other books were just fine, including my actual Hebrew Bible — I’d much rather have to replace my lexicon and grammar than the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

Well, I suppose that’s about it for now. Dad and I are watching an old western on TV, and I’m feeling pretty tired, so I’d better go to sleep now. In any case, it’s certainly time to get dressed for bed. I’ll let you all know when I get to Denton … provided, that is, that there is wireless internet access in that hotel.

 

reporting for duty!

And though before my fall I was captain of you all, I’m a member of the crew. (16 points)

So, this week I went to Portsmouth. Well, not for the whole week, of course. But I ought probably to start with the weekend, when I went to Huddersfield.

Huddersfield

I don’t know if you may have heard of Huddersfield, but it was a very important town in the Industrial Revolution, though not so important as, say, Manchester or Birmingham. Anyway, that basically means that there is really nothing there to see, even though they try to pretend they have a cultural heritage. I went out there to see a performance of “The Yeomen of the Guard,” a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, by the Huddersfield G&S Society. It was lots of fun, as always, though the first act lagged quite a bit. However, both of the finales were good, and that’s very important in G&S. It was a bit depressing for G&S, too: of the 3 marriages at the end, 2 of them are not very happy ones, and there’s even a jilted lover, which never happens in G&S. The story ends with the jilted lover falling dead to the floor as the happy couple set off, cheered by the chorus. Ee.

Bucklebury

My great-great grandfather grew up farming in a little, bitty village community called Bucklebury, in West Berkshire. (This is on my Dad’s side of the family.) So on my way down to Portsmouth, I stopped at Reading and took a bus out to see Bucklebury. There was basically nothing there — the actual village consisted entirely of an old Norman church and a few cottages scattered about — but it was sure beautiful country. (For those of you familiar with the Idaho Falls area, it was very much like taking someone to see Coltman or Ucon.) I had a nice little walk from the bus stop down to the village, and took some public footpaths through the field along the way. I felt a lot like Elizabeth Bennet, walking the three miles to Netherfield and in the process getting her petticoats soaked “six inches deep in mud” (7 points for that quote, though I hope you all know it). It had been raining on and off all day, and so my pants really were soaked through by the time I got back on the main road. I took some lovely pictures of the countryside, which I will put up on my website ASAP so that you can see them. By that time, though, I was worried that I wouldn’t make it back to the bus stop in time to catch the last bus back to Reading (there are less than 5 buses to Bucklebury per day), so I didn’t linger long in the “village.” And on the way back, I did something really daring and … hitch-hiked! (Gasp! Oh, horror!) I think the guy was rather surprised when I told him I only wanted to go a mile up the road to the Bladebone Inn. I’m sure he would have taken me all the way into Reading if I’d asked him to, but it was probably best as it was. (He was a very nice, middle-aged man in a nice, clean car, on his way to a business meeting, apparently, so I would have felt comfortable going that far with him, too … but I’d already paid for the return to Reading by bus.)

Portsmouth

Portsmouth was just what I had expected. The worst I can say for the town is that the cabbie was pretty rude to me. But he may have been funning, I couldn’t quite tell, since I could only see his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Anyway, I saw the HMS Victory, which was wonderful! I was a little disappointed that they didn’t let us go up on the poop deck, but we did get to see just about everything else, so that was OK. We even got to see the Grand Magazine and the hold, so that was cool. And they showed us the exact spot where Admiral Nelson was shot, and then where he died.

I then went to see Charles Dickens’s birthplace. His parents lived on the main street in town, though you wouldn’t know that nowadays. It’s tucked away in a little section of the old street that’s been preserved (probably because of Dickens’s home), while the city has grown around and away from there. The house itself wasn’t that great, but it was nice to know that I was in the place where the genius Dickens spent his childhood. While there I bought a Dickens book (they had them for dirt-cheap in the gift shop), and the lady even stamped it for me so that I will know for all eternity that I bought that book at Dickens’s birthplace.

In the afternoon I decided to go see Southsea Castle. It really doesn’t look like much from the outside, and it isn’t much on the inside, either. The former was intentional, though, while I don’t think the latter was. It was purposely built very low to the ground in order to give the enemy a smaller target to shoot at. They are very proud of the fact that Henry VIII (who built the castle) watched his flagship, the Mary Rose, sink from there at the beginning of a big battle. They are also particularly proud of the fact that there has never been a shot “fired in anger” from Southsea Castle during the 400+ years that it served as an active military post. That seems a bit silly to me … I would be more proud of a castle that had actively defended my city than one that had never had reason to shoot at anyone, personally. It seems to me that fact merely serves to point out that Southsea Castle was superfluous. Oh well …

That evening I bought a bag at Debenham’s — which made me very happy, since I’ve been looking for one for a while — and then went to have dinner. I seriously considered having Indian, but I ended up in a pub called — wait for it! — The Hog’s Head! For you HP fans out there, you know how hilarious that is! My British friends, when I got back, told me it was rather a common name for a pub, but I still think it’s awesome.

School

Well, back to the reason why I’m even here, eh? I went to pick up my marked coursework today, and did quite well. I had previously seen my dissertation proposal-thingy and discussed it with my supervisor, so I knew that I had done well on that one. I got 71 for that paper, 68 for sociolinguistics, and 66 for my crap class (also known as CDA). I can’t read most of the comments on my CDA paper, either, since the professor was German (well, Austrian, really), and she has that loopy German writing. I got quite good at reading that writing on my mission, but it’s been way too long, and I don’t care enough to ask her what it means. In any case, I’ve done quite well overall, and that’s really good to know. This means that if I can only get a 70 or higher on my dissertation, I’ll have earned a Distinction, which would be great!

I had a really good discussion with my supervisor today. I’ve been doing some tagging work for him, along with some other stuff, and so I had a few questions about that stuff. He also gave me some more information on this program I’m trying to use to help out with my texts and my computer analysis. And then we ahd a good discussion about the reading I’ve been doing, theoretical problems I have to work with, and some of my concerns about my PhD program. It was very helpful, and I now feel like I can face my dissertation again. Which is good, since I really have to do so, especially tomorrow and Saturday.

Tomorrow, actually, I’m going to Kendal, which is where my mother’s side of the family came from, and I’m meeing a member from the ward up there who’s going to show me around a little. Saturday night is EuroVision (kind of a Europe-wide version of American Idol, or Pop Idol), so I’m planning to watch that with “The Girls.” And then next Tuesday I’ll go up to Harrogate to see “Pirate of Penzance,” which I’m very excited for!

 

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford was really nice! I kept hoping the weather would be good while I was there, and I was not disappointed — otherwise, I would have been really annoyed, since it was such a nice weekend here in Lancaster, from what I gather.

I took Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with me, hoping to make some good progress in my data collection for my dissertation. I planned to get at least through the chapter “Snape’s Worst Memory” and maybe a little past. And that’s just where I did get, by the time I got home. Yay for me!

Friday night, I arrived and found my B&B, then went out for a little walk. I thought I would go find Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, just to see what it looked like and decide whether to go back in the morning to go inside. Halfway to the cottage, though, I found a lovely park, strewn with people walking their dogs, children playing football (that’s soccer, for most of you), and clumps of summer-scented, recently-mown grass. It was just such a perfect scene, and I couldn’t stand to walk through that park without stopping, so I plopped down on the grass and read for a while, then just lay in the sun, enjoying life to the utmost. I got to know a few lovely dogs this way, who were all quite happy to walking and frolicking in the sunny grass. Finally, I moved on to complete my walk to the Cottage. Just outside the park, though, I had to stop again, as I then came upon a little triangular field with a horse grazing in it. I clucked at the horse, and he came over, and then I felt bad that I didn’t have anything to give him. As soon as he realized that, he went happily back to munching the grass by my feet. Continuing on, I came across a black cat, which was absolutely beautiful and let me pet it, though not too pleased about it (I could see his tail swishing). After making it to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage and peeking in the garden, I decided I would have to come back in the morning and take a look inside.

The next morning I went back to the Cottage and had a nice look around, and then strolled through the gardens. I walked the labyrinth (which, to my utter annoyance, they insisted on calling a “maze”), which was rather fun, even though the yew trees outlining the path were no higher than 3 feet, so you never really felt lost or overwhelmed at all. I suppose that’s just as well, since that’s really not the point of a labyrinth. I finally walked back into town then, vaguely thinking that I might stop at the Shakespeare Birthplace House. By the time I got to town, the sun had come back out (she’d been hiding in the morning), and the town was filled with people eating ice cream and enjoying the sunshine. I walked down to the river, got a little something to eat, and then sat and did some more reading. Then I got my theater tickets, but discovered that I had another hour before the doors opened. So, I walked around by the Swan Theatre and found a nice spot in the grass to read some more, intermittently watching the family picnicking nearby, whose kids were playing tag with each other.

Finally, I went in to the theater. My seat was right at the very back of the theater, and I mean the back. However, there wasn’t anyone directly next to me, and I found it easy to stretch out and enjoy my comfort. The play, Twelfth Night was definitely worth it. I love Shakespeare’s sense of comedy, and this performance did not disappoint on that front — Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Feste the fool, Malvolio the steward, and Maria the maid were all marvelous. The others, though, left a little to be desired, particularly Viola, which is just a shame. Sebastian (Viola’s twin brother … in the play, not in real life) was only slightly better, Olivia was rather too emotional, and Orsino — apart from being really good looking, which is definitely a necessity — played the tragic lover just a little too strongly. But it was still worth seeing.

I often think that Shakespeare is highly over-done, but then I watch something else of his, or I read a few sonnets, and I think, “He may be over-done, but he probably deserves to be.” And there are plenty of other over-done things I can think of that I still really enjoy (Harry Potter, for example, and Orson Welles). And I often remember a student in high school claiming that Shakespeare was nothing but a bawdy old man, and then I think, “Maybe he was, but he sure could write!” For that matter, I know plenty of other artists who were little more than bawdy old (or young) men, or even women — except for the fact that they were blessed with a great talent, which they chose to share with the world.

The journey home was probably the worst part. I had to walk from one Birmingham station to another, which was a little annoying, even though short. And then, I had to take a coach from Crewe from Preston and another from Preston to Lancaster — the trains are still terrible on the weekends right now, even though they were supposed to be done with their work by March or April.

I kept my journal for the trip in my copy of OotP — and every time I wrote something, it made me first think of JoAnna, and then of how apalled Dad would be if he knew what I was doing.

“Words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.” (13 points)

 

just a note

Well, I’m really off to Stratford now. I’m writing this from an Internet Cafe in Lancaster, en route to the train station. I had to check my email about something important before I left, and I forgot to do it at the university before I left. And I still have 12 minutes of ‘net time left, so I thought I’d make the most of them.

I also (finally) updated my website today on the Lancaster server (see link in the sidebar). I’ve added some pictures, and taken some out (since they were taking up so much space, and most of them weren’t that great, and most of you probably don’t care about them that much), and I also added a section with some of my academic writings in pdf format, so that you can see what I’ve been working on this past year.

I’m getting excited about my dissertation. I need to speak to my supervisor a bit more for some direction/instruction in the computer-analysis part. There are some important things I need to use the computer for, and I’ve asked him to introduce me to some programs I haven’t used before. But other than that, I’m mostly reading right now, both Harry Potter (I’m about halfway through the last book) for data analysis and other stuff for background reading. I hope it goes well.

Well, I’d better get going now. I’ll write again later when I have been to Stratford and have more interesting things to talk about. Until then!