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gillpolack's journal
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Even in a little thing  My eyes are being pesky today and I'm not even at the hospital yet! Also, my fingers won't type what I've told them to. Despite this, I only have 160 words (plus much revision) on one of the three logjam pieces. If I can send it tomorrow, that will be one burden I do not carry. I'll have run out of excuses not to do the other two logjammed bits of prose, mind you... My BiblioBuffet column is already up: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bookish-dre It's Monday morning and already I have a scholarly quibble to make. This means I'm off to a good start this week. It's all a matter of whether the work of Pirenne counts. The author I'm reading argues that looking at the slow and long patterns is postmodern, from the Annales School (especially Fernand Braudel). But Pirenne ought to be credited for that, surely, and, even more surely, he was writing earlier? This means that any notion of flow change or a different length dynamic or even no change at all over a certain period predates the second half of the twentieth century? What this means to me is that the author with whom I quibble is creating false "There was and then there was." History in binary - with simple choices - seldom works, but this time it woks even less seldom simply because the writer in question is basing a part of his/her case on Pirenne's ideas not being around until a half century later. Unfortunately, this is a review volume and I need to think of a polite way of explaining that it undermines the argument when one tangles the historiography. This is what I've been putting off doing. It's not a bad book, but it really does have a couple of rather big flaws. More procrastination today. This is because I have a hefty week ahead and I need to stop being ill. Eurovision helps, I must admit. I couldn't not work (it's a personality flaw) so I used my have-to-be-quiet-or-pay-for-it time to read from my must-read-or-else pile. I'm two books down and have paid most of my bills and now I'm doing bits and pieces of things while singing along at home. It wasn't precisely a big day's anything, but it was worthwhile. I'm shaking off the foul lurgie (without even having to say "Begone foul lurgie!") and haven't entirely lost a whole weekend. I still feel bad about it. I was going to do a big catchup and be on top of most things by Tuesday, and life keeps interfering. I possibly need a 'reset' button. I have finally, finally worked out why the burglar unstrung my violin bow. When I was sorting my scarves this week, I noted them all and decided which to keep. It was only today, when I took out the violin, that I realised that its protective scarf was one of the ones that had been flung around the floor ie that I had sorted it along with the others. He must've thought I was hiding money in my violin case and been frustrated. I didn't realise how much that floating horsehair had worried me until now. I was feeling a bit overworked and fatigued last week, as you know, for I complained about it. I was feeling more and more tired and my legs kept saying to me, "Give me some rest!" On Friday the symptoms became just a bit grander than feeling run over by a truck and now I know what' wrong. The latest virus. Which is a gastro. I'm taking travel sickness pills and sleeping a lot and doing work (like yesterday) in the interstices. This is a seasonal thing (at least half of Canberra has some sort of virus) and I'll be through it soon. Like yesterday and Friday, I plan to get one big block of work done and to watch Eurovision. Everything else can wait. The last two days I didn't plan to spend the day like this but today I'm heading towards recovery and things look clearer. And now it's nap-time! I've spent the afternoon in the Middle Ages and so am all caught up with that side of things until...(wait for it)...Tuesday. Or maybe next weekend. It depends. All of this was stuff I should have done weeks ago, but life intervened and my partner-in-deadlines cut me some slack. The rest of the day is one of the articles that have now become a bit worrying. I still have time to do them, but it's cutting it tighter than I normally would. Once they're done, though, I'll be much less fretted. Each time something else went wrong, I put off working on one of them. I've done most of the research for two and about 1/3 of the research for the third, but they were caught up in the emotions of the last two months and in the fatigue of the last two months and so they have the flavour of the last two months, as well. When these three are done to the satisfaction of editors, I shall be on the home stretch for the doctorate, too. They're the only things between me and that last few months. This, too, worries me. What I really need is a writing buddy. Someone with lots of deadlines over the next two weeks. Someone who needs nagging and is willing to nag, from now until 7 June. Any volunteers? I've given up on trying to be terribly literary today. If I must work and I must hurt and I must do both at once, then I am going to my happy place to work. Medieval literature and language and legends, FTW. Not the work I had planned to do today, but the important thing is that I get a full day's work done and don't fall further behind, isn't it? And the Beast has to get finished, doesn't it? And maybe I get to make jokes about Mr Soup (should he really be Sir Soup?). I can't make my Star Trek joke - I've made it three times this week, which is (as I told my poor students) a record. It's not a good enough joke to make four times, or, alas, a bad enough joke to make four times. I probably should have stopped at two... I have proof positive of procrastination. My last task for this morning is to enter examples from one particular book into one particualr essay. Maybe 45 minutes work all up. Except that I worried about where the book was and didn't start. The book was hiding in plain sight on my desk. I had thoughtfully prepared for this morning before the high pain days and before the form from hell intervened. Now all I need to do is to find my reading glasses... Today is Sorry Day. It's also a day when many friends are hurting. I wanted to post about one and about the other but, just as on Yom HaShoah, it all become too much for me. I'm thinking of all of you. |
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