So it seems...

So it seems that the only way I am going to graduate with a PhD is if I cut out everything that I was even remotely interested in and focus entirely on bits I specifically did not want to write about.

And for what?

So that people can call me "doctor"?  That's a bit pompous.  Was I going to use it for anything other than slapping it on a business card?  I'm not planning on going into scholarship or academia.  I get physically ill at the thought.  Teaching is great, it's the rest of it I can't stand.  I might get paid a bit more as an archaeologist.  Except that experience is very important when hunting for a job in the field and of course, I can't get any more experience while I'm supposed to be finishing this thing.  (I had to use our extreme poverty as an excuse to go and work in Qatar and I've been going against my advisor for years when it comes to my digging in Israel and Jordan - if I listened to my committee I would never dig until after I got a degree.)   I might have better opportunities for jobs, except that having a PhD is a requirement for the jobs I don't want and not a requirement for the jobs I do.  It might help others get better grants.  And while I do love my colleagues very much, I'm no good to them if I have a complete mental breakdown over this.

I managed to finish a draft after hours of pain - tears, cramps, headaches, nightmares, bit lips, chewed off fingernails, stomach aches, nausea, acid reflux, heart palpitations and sleepless nights.  I shut off the bits of my head that told me what I was doing was pointless and stupid and wrote the biggest piles of poop I've ever written.  I can't actually read those chapters.  I have full on panic attacks when I think too much about them.

Those are the chapters my committee wants me to keep, of course.

The chapters I wrote, that I slaved over, the ones where I worked on the sentences until I can proudly step back and say, yes, I wrote that and I think it's pretty good.  The chapters that I can read without getting that horrible feeling in my chest... those are the ones they want me to throw out.  "Pointless" was one, unforgettable, comment.

I brought this up to my advisor, because I was rather upset about the whole thing and he told me to stop whining and complaining and that he should have thrown the book at me long ago.  Thanks, that was really helpful.  I'm glad you're here to advise me.

Can someone tell me why I'm doing this again?

Oh, yes, I wanted to be an archaeologist.

Wait a minute - I *am* an archaeologist!

I'm a PAID archaeologist!

Why the hell am I turning down opportunities to go do what I love to do so that I can sit at home surrounded by post-it notes, sobbing hysterically and clutching a German-English dictionary?!  Why do I keep having to send apology emails to my advisor because I'm miserable and need help and it's "getting on his nerves"?

What about my nerves?  I'm a wreck when it comes to this thing!  I'm sitting here sobbing NOW and all I'm doing is talking to you lot about it.

I don't need to prove that I'm smart.  I know I'm smart.  I don't need to prove anything.  Especially that I can write hundreds of pages of crap that I cannot defend.

(But it would be a funny defense.  Any question my committee would ask would have to be answered with "because you told me that if I didn't put it in here, I wouldn't graduate.  I personally think it's wrong and stupid, but what do I know?")

There's the usual, oh, but my dear, you've spent the last 10 years of your life working on this!  You can't just walk away now!!

If I'd spent $50,000 trying to get a $2,000 car working, you'd say I was an idiot, right?  And you'd tell me to stop throwing good money after bad, right?

I've got one life to live here, folks.  One life.  Every year I spend doing what I hate, and paying to do it, mind - we've been paying to keep me enrolled for 5 years now - is another year gone.  And I will NEVER get it back.  Money is just money.  This is my life I'm spending.

Instead of sitting in a library, trying to find every last different meaning for representations of fish in the 3rd century CE (there are a lot, and by the way, I think that there is an interesting relationship between images of acquiring food and images of food itself and that someone might make a really interesting dissertation out of it... I'd rather kill myself that write it, but if you are interested I will totally tell you all about it and *you* can write it), I could be out trying to get jobs in the field.  I could be going to conferences and meeting up with people and making contacts and exploring other things I may be interested in.  I could be enjoying life EVERY DAY instead of just the days I decide that I can't possibly be asked to try to work on this horrible horrible pile of crap.

I remember feeling like this before.  It was in my last marriage and every conversation we were having about why I was unhappy had to do with me not trying hard enough and not compromising enough.  All I did when we were together was cry.  And feel stupid and unworthy of his attention.  Leaving him was the best thing I ever did.  I learned that love is about loving the person that you are and the person you are with for who you and they are RIGHT NOW.  Not who you want to be or who you want them to be.

That was sort of a non sequitur, but that was also major depression that resulted in some heavy medication that gave me the courage to just go off and do what I really wanted to do for once... still non sequituring.... but the point being, I don't want to be that depressed again.  It sucked.  And it's starting to feel like that again.  Not the marriage.  The current marriage is great.  Graduate school, folks.  Graduate school is depressing.

If I'm so unhappy in graduate school, working on this dissertation, that all I do when even thinking about it is cry, if working on it makes me feel stupid and unworthy of a degree - WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WASTING MY PRECIOUS TIME ON IT!??

I know I'm not stupid and I'm not unworthy of a degree - but I don't need to get a degree to tell me that!

In many respects, grad school has been great.  I really enjoyed the first few years.  I met people I really needed to meet and without it I wouldn't be here today.

I mean that in every sense, by the way.

But I'd really like to go back to being able to look up stuff I'm interested in, read the things I'm interested in reading, think about the things I'm interested in thinking about without feeling guilty.  I'd like to not feel nauseous in my office.  I'd like to stop having heart palpitations when I check my email.  I'd really like it all to be over.

That's it.

I'm done.

Let me out.
Let me off.
Let me go.

And if I could just get someone in my department to email me back it would be fan-fuckin'-tastic.

Do you think I need a doctor's note?

So I've got this job in Qatar, which will whisk me out of the country on October 31st and keep me gainfully employed until the end of March. I also have a dissertation to complete... which alas, according to my readers is NOWHERE NEAR COMPLETION. Thanks, guys, thanks a lot. I have a chapter for a book due October 1st. I also have Danish class.

I think Danish class is going to have to go. For the time being.

If I'm supposed to spend every waking moment at the library, which SOME people think I ought, then I can't very well spend my mornings in Danish. Especially if I want to spend more than just a few hours in the library, since it closes and they kick people out. Unless I go to the other library, but then I do want to be able to go home and eat and sleep and stuff.

And why do I have to spend all this time in the library anyway? I can't eat in there. I can't talk to myself or print out articles I'm interested in, I can't go on-line because the stupid internets is blocked (gotta talk to the secretary about that), and I get annoyed with other people making noise. I'm the only one allowed to make noise!!

So I have to quit Danish to spend time in a library, which I do not want to do, because it is not as fruitful as some professors imagine in order to finish a dissertation that has quickly spun out of control and is no longer the least bit interesting to me, having veered off into art history which was something I never got a degree in, not liking it all that much and all, and continues to evolve into a larger more horrible beast than ever discussed years ago when I took on this madness.

Yup, I'm miserable and depressed. I think I'm over my cold, for the most part, but the throbbing pain between my shoulder blades refuses to let up. Is that you, Stress? I thought as much.

Anyway, I made my decision to drop Danish AFTER I'd bought plane tickets to see my husband. Vacation was originally planed around my Danish vacation time, which now seems a bit silly. BUT on the other hand, it's also Århus University vacation, so library hours will be shortened and I should be able to get a week away from the library RIGHT?? I'll be taking my crap with me, so it's not like a proper vacation, but I don't have time for that stuff. I'll probably end up in a library in Holland anyway.

I'm so sick and tired of this crap. I've been working for years on this thing and any time I think I get close to being done, there comes an email saying "no, you just need to change ALL OF IT to WHAT I'M INTERESTED IN and THEN it'll be okay."

It's really hard to listen to people saying "stick with it, it'll be done soon" when it won't be soon. No, I'm not stopping and dropping out YET. I've got to see what is wanted NOW for this demonic document first.

Gah, I should have dropped out five years ago when it all started going wrong. I could have learned Danish and been half way to a degree in veterinary medicine by now. Now I don't even have time to learn frekking Danish!!

Updates and things

Boy it's been a while! I managed to post a quiz and I've run around commenting on some blogs, but otherwise it's been all anxiety, highs, and lows in the archaeogoddess universe. I've written about a gazillion blog posts in my head... often at 2 am when I trying to get myself to sleep and I'm too tired to get up and write them down, but it doesn't keep the brain from type type typing away behind my sandpaper eyes.

News:

• I am going to Qatar for 5 months, beginning Oct. 31st for a PAID archaeology gig. This is excellent because I need the money and I need to start building a career, neither of which is happening because I spend all my time researching for a never-ending dissertation. (See below)
• Because I'm going off to work and contribute to the mortgage, my advisors on my dissertation don't think I'll finish any time soon. In fact, they've suggested that I've got so much work to do that I should go live in the library. Somehow I've got to balance Danish class with research. Somethings going to give. I wonder if I can take a break from Danish not just for the time I'll be out of the country, but also now that I need those extra hours every day....
• Suggestions from my advisors have included the following vague and scary bits: "...you may need to change the title of your dissertation and your focus." Since the title is a very exact description of what I am doing, not a nice vague sexy title with jargon, I am very worried. Focus... eh, I knew that was coming. Like I ever had a chance to write an anthropological dissertation when I've got art historians for readers! And they are all asking me to dump the economic section and I want to scream "I TOLD YOU IT WAS F**KING POINTLESS YOU STUPID NAVEL GAZERS! BUT OH NO YOU KEPT QUOTING BILL CLINTON AT ME 'it's the economy, stupid' AND I TOLD YOU IT DIDN'T WORK BUT YOU SAID 'I'M THE PERSON WHO KNOWS THINGS AND I SAY YOU DO THIS' AND SO I DID AND NOW YOU ARE ALL PRETENDING LIKE IT WAS ALL ME WHO'S BEEN FORCING THIS POINTLESS SECTION FORWARD!!" But that's why I blog this stuff. So I don't end up killing little old men.

Things done:

• The laundry.
• The Twilight series from start to finish in a little over two days. Heh.
• A haircut.

Things left undone:

• Knitting. I've got to start knitting while watching tv. I should watch more tv.

Evidence of love in an increasingly cold world:

• My birthday was a few days ago and my husband, who has been in Holland since the last week of August, had bought my birthday present and hid it in his sock drawer before he left. He called and told me where it was so I would have a present from him on my birthday (well, actually a day late since I was out with friends on my birthday and nowhere near the sock drawer). He rocks my world, that man.
• Say what you will about Facebook, getting happy birthday wishes from people you know from all over the world is fan-freakin'-tastic. Having people checking up on you from time to time to make sure you haven't gone crazy or dropped into a spiral of depression = awesome!

Completely random crap from my head:

• I finally figured out how to make pre-made frozen pan-fried spring rolls that don't suck. Fry them in oil. I think my husband burns them in butter. Ugh. I love him dearly, but WTF? Then they are all soft and mushy on the outside, completely lacking in the crunch that one needs. And I bought kick ass sweet chili sauce that I would drink if I could. Instead I'm just putting it on everything. Oh, and if you are going to drop frozen spring rolls into hot oil... hold the lid of the pan like a shield in front of you and have a pair of long handled tongs to reach around to flip them. Because ice meets hot oil is a terrible thing. Why some idiot thought that it would be a good idea to make frozen spring rolls that must be fried is beyond me. Obviously someone who doesn't cook at home.
• Going to Qatar means Projekt Dejlig will require some alterations. No American Thanksgiving at my place. Sorry!! I figured by this late in the year there'd be no way we were going to be leaving before December, but I figured wrong. Well, that frozen pumpkin mash will still be good for a non-Thanksgiving pie, right? Also means severe cuts in Christmassing. I'll get a Christmas vacation, but it's not going to be the overthetop extravaganza I was fantasizing about. But finally, after all these years, I am going to be a real, paid, archaeologist.

[Expletive deleted] Rice!!

Boy is it hard to get back in the cooking saddle. I'd been enjoying not cooking for a month and then suddenly here I am, nothing to do but try to smash 3 chapters of dissertation into one, shorter, streamlined chapter, research iconography of elite art in the 2nd-3rd centuries, see if there is a class distinction between Roman cults (anyone? anyone?), find two German articles I *know* I've translated, translate some other stupid German encyclopedia entries that will only vex, write an intelligent chapter on some Roman coins, and cook. Seriously, I have OODLES of time on my hands. Look, I'm blogging!!

Whipped up a darned good curry last night, having discovered at some point in the past that one can use one's immersion blender as a food processor, even without the special "food processor" attachment. Just remember to wrap plastic wrap around the top of the bowl, 'cause that stuff flies and stings if you get it in your eyes.

And because I am SO used to making rice, I didn't need to look at the package, I just dumped 6 dl rice into 4 dl of boiling water.

Result: not quite cooked rice.

It's 4 dl of rice to 6 dl boiling water.

Oh.... darn! Darnation! Tarnation! Consternation! Antimatterization!!

Undercooked rice is chewy. And not in a good way. The curry helped. It was a little wetter than it should have been. But if the rice had been properly cooked it would have been a brilliant meal. As it was, three stars for effort.

Want to know another brilliant idea that has been less than stellar in it's realization? Changing my name. Last name. Couldn't do it when I got married because I needed a CPR number to officially change my name. And now I do. Sooooo, my passport is expiring and therefore so is my visa. I think to myself, hey, clever idea this, lets do all that paperwork NOW, seeing how you only have to leave the country again in... less than three weeks.

Yeah, I'm a flippin' genius. Husband thinks so too. Full of pride for his brilliant wife.

Anyway, you know in America, when we get married, that little piece of paper is all we need to show to change our names? (If you didn't, now you do.) Not so in Denmark. I have to fill out forms and bring 440 kr to some biddy in a church office down the road, a church mind you that I was NOT married in and do not pay taxes for and apart from one evening sneaking in to see what it looked like have never been to... Hold it, I've lost my train of thought.

Okay... blah blah blah... and take these papers there along with my money... and see if she'll let me change my name so that I can take another piece of paper and send it to the Embassy so that they can finish my passport with correct name.

And with a kick ass photo, by the way. Ought to be, I paid a fortune for it, just to make sure it was done right and I didn't have to have a discussion about it. American passport photos are different from Danish ones making life a bit more difficult when trying to find someone who can do it without making a huge issue out of it. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules. Please don't trim the photo for me. You gotta step closer, I need to be bigger that that. No, it must be in color. No, I have to face forward. No I am NOT tucking my hair behind my ears, it's a stupid thing to ask people to do, honestly, EARS? And, yes, I am going to gently smile with no teeth because this is not a mug shot, people, I have not broken any laws that you know of.

Have you seen the new American passports? Blah! Lame-o! And they feel cheap. My freedom was paid for with the blood of patriots and that guy who stood up too fast to ask his general "is it over?" I expect a little more of my official documentation. Some gravitas. And better lamination.

If you happen to be wondering why on god's green earth am I changing my name... well, I've googled myself and did you know I am also an OB/GYN, a photographer, a softball player, and married to a bald guy named Ryan? I've become an Episcopal deacon too... but that might conflict with the Ugandan mission I am on for the Mormon's. Makes sense I am a Mormon, seeing how my other husband Ed is with me in Africa. Wonder where I left Ryan?

When I google my soon to be new name... I discover I'm already mentioned in my own grandfather's obituary. Odd. Way to go Mom and Dad!

But other than that, there isn't anyone by that name. I'll be unique!!

There were other considerations, my heritage, my utter lack of publications, my evolving views of feminism, blah blah blah. But being the only person on the world wide web with my name was pretty much the kicker.

Tonight, when you are NOT BURNING YOUR RICE because you have now LEARNED FROM MY ERRORS, google yourself and see who else you are.

It's WAAAAY too much fun.

What a mad 24 hours!

In the last 24 hours I have:

- read 3 books in Danish, preparing for a test that, as it turns out, isn't until the 24th of April

- turned in the polished draft of my dissertation to my advisor, for further polishing (YES, THAT MEANS I AM NO LONGER DISSERTATING, I AM NOW REVISING!) (don't get out the champagne yet, my advisor may suggest I write a whole 'nother chapter or rewrite a chapter or something horrible - we'll party once he gives me the 'all clear' to proceed to sending my disastertation to my readers)

- presented my dissertation research to reputable scholars who didn't laugh of disagree, but did suggest that 350 years of scholarship on one particular plate was wrong and it was not 4th century but 6th century. I looked at the evidence they suggested, my god they're right, I changed it and if I can whip it into a paper I can actually do something meaningful in my field!

Right. So what do I do now?? Oh, wait, I have a bibliography to check, plates of images to prepare, a list of illustrations and plates to put together and corrections to make once my advisor gets back to me on that THING.

No rest for the wicked they say. But what do they know? They got the dates wrong! They assume Julian was responsible for the "classical renaissance" that didn't happen (there was a rise in classicism in the 4th century, but we can't really attribute it to one unpopular emperor who only reigned unopposed for 18 months). They are idiots!! Screw them! I'm taking the night off.

BTW, since it was such a small select group at my presentation, we had more of a round table chat. I spoke and answered questions for 2 hours. TWO HOURS!! But I answered every question. I sounded intelligent. I got people excited about what I was doing. And I made people laugh at my jokes. I rock.

Double shot of whiskey for me!! Although... I think I have vodka and tonic and a lemon around here somewhere...

Unforeseen consequences

One of the unforeseen consequences of taking Danish is that you start to speak English in short easy sentences. I go home. I eat lunch. I go to do shopping. I sound like an idiot.

Okay, that last one I actually can't say in Danish.

Anyway, I have to go up to the university in a few hours and say, among other things, the following sentence: Individuals, in their process of comparing themselves to members of their own group or members of other groups, rely heavily on symbols that communicate social and physical similarities and differences.

And: The envaluation of items with socially imbued meaning is a social strategy to further communicate social distinction.

It's all well and good, because at least all this is written down in a crazy long text for me to read. 15 pages = aprox. one hour speaking. With a power point presentation.

But what if they start asking questions? IN ENGLISH!!??

I have ideas. They are good ideas. Silver is very pretty. It is for rich men. There are many rich men. Sorry, I can not understand you. See you later! Goodbye!!

Maybe if I keep reading what I've written my English will come back! I hope so, otherwise I'm going to be left with very poor English AND Danish and no hope to ever communicate on an intelligent level ever again! ACK!!

Massive Shrinkage!

So I'm presenting my dissertation (no it's NOT DONE, I finished my rough draft, sorta, and I'm proof-reading before I send it off to my advisor, but that doesn't stop interested people from inviting me to speak about the random crap that I've been working on) to the Classical Archaeology department at Århus University. I'm told I have an hour to an hour and a half, but that I should plan on leaving some time for questions.

Oh, I only have to talk for an hour? How kind.

I can babble at people for an hour.

I can give a darned good explanation of stratigraphy, complete with white-board stick figures in an hour.

And if you stop me in Tel Aviv airport and give me a a security test in which you ask me about stratigraphical analysis using pottery sherds, I can go on for even longer. True story. I was still talking about seriation and typology when they took me to the back room to check my bra for explosives.

But my dissertation? You want me to speak intelligently, right? Maybe even, you know, use some big words.

Bloody hell.

I gave a 20 minute presentation about 2 years ago. I read through it again today. HAHAHAHAHA! That must have been someone else's dissertation, because it certainly isn't mine. It's missing all the good stuff I've written in the last year. Oh.

Damn good power point though.

A 20 minute presentation took up about 8 single-spaced pages of text with spaces for "[SLIDE 4]". So... an hour or so would be, like 20 single-spaced pages of text. Okay, all I have to do is smash a 250 page dissertation down to 20 single-spaced pages.

EDIT!!!

I've chopped down the first half of my dissertation, which is all theory and prolegomena (what you need to know or might like to know or I might like you to know before I let you loose on the rest of this dissertation) (see why we use the word "prolegomena"?) and it comes to: 11 and a half pages.

My god, I might just be able to do this.

And it's going to totally suck when I have to read it to myself in order to time myself.

An hour?

Christ on a candlestick.

Another bloody dissertation post...

So, I dragged myself through this French article and all I gotta say is, sometimes scholars really just phone it in. And then other scholars obviously don't read all the articles they cite. So while I'm trying to discover what fish mean in Roman art right before they tip over into Late Antiquity, I certainly did not find the answer where *someone* said it would be. The article I read was a collection of other similar pieces of art that had fishing and still-life as a motif. Oh well, I'm not going to now spend the next two months researching xenia for one lousy sentence suggesting how fish might be related to life, the universe, and everything. I'd really like to stop writing now, thank you very much.

I did find a new silver treasure in it though. Much to my dismay. But the transliteration from Georgian to French meant that google gave me nothing. Ever entered something into google and gotten NOTHING?? Madness!! So I emailed a scholar at my husband's urging (he's like that, telling me not be scared of scholars with jobs and just ask them what I need to know) and found out what I needed. And now I gotta let that guy know when I finish, because he's interested in what I'm doing. Sigh.

The German article surprised me. It was easily read and VERY useful. It was well organized and thought out and the scholar actually said "we can never know for sure what these symbols mean" which comes a shock. Scholars never admit they don't know. If all else fails, they cite some really early random German article from some feschrift or another. I pondered the wonder of it all and then noticed something rather important. The article was published in 1946. Um, who the hell was in Germany publishing articles in '46? OH! It's SWISS!!

Dear Swiss scholars, THANK YOU for not out-Germaning the Germans and keeping your German as non-German as German can be. Keep up the good work! Oh and thanks for the chocolate and the funny clocks.

Finished all that off and a crazy section on the Scriptores Historiae Augustae in which I got to cite "America (The Book)" and use the word "maleficent." Not to mention "apotropaic." Apotropaic is NOT in my real-world dictionary, as I discovered when I wanted to use "apotropaism," but is in my computer dictionary. "Apotropaism" is in the dictionary on line, but by then I'd lost my excitement over the word and went with "apotropaic ritual."  "Tyche" on the other hand isn't in my computer dictionary at all. One of the things I lost in the computer disaster of '08 was the Word dictionary I had carefully created after adding numerous Greek and Latin thingys. I have to do it again and every time I panic right before I push "add." What if I've spelled it wrong??

So one last time through this chapter and POOF, there it is, another highlighted note to myself (this is WHY I highlight notes to myself, I'll never find them again unless they're bright yellow), "get this book for the description of this plate, no it is NOT in the catalogue you think it is, you damn fool!" Is what I should have written, seeing how I spent the rest of the day trying to
A) find the damn catalogue and
B) prove to myself that it was in there and
C) kick myself a lot before ordering the damn book it IS in
Thankfully I had at some point already found the citation and put it for myself in the dissertation.

Sometimes rereading notes to myself is like that scene in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where Bill decides that what he'll do is steal his dad's keys in the future and leave them for himself in the past and then BANG, the keys are there. Only in reverse.

I spend too much time indoors, don't I?

Right, so ordered book, hasn't come yet. Gotta check on that. Meanwhile... I'm sort of out of things to do other than that conclusion. So I need to read a bunch of conclusions and see what I can come up with. I hate writing conclusions. Usually my conclusion becomes my introduction, with the tenses changed. That's already happened and now I have a lovely introduction. So... in conclusion... I need to learn how to conclude.

Can I write: "I hear the creature creeping towards me. I don't know how much time I have left. If you find this, know that I tried to do my best and give my love to AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHH...."

I feel his pain

There is something very similar between PhD students and bestselling novelists working on the next volume of their bestselling series.

Douglas Adams once said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

There are two things that can stop me in my tracks as far as working is concerned: writer's block and life.

Writer's block is sent by the devil and is my very own proof that there is a malevolent force in the universe. The benign force lives in my shower. So much for omnipresence.

Life is a giant conspiracy created just to try to tempt me to live it rather than waste it sitting here slaving over articles that do not prove what they say they will prove and then get used as proof in other articles thus setting up a situation in which all of the proof rests on hot air. Which is known to be stable only in a closed academic environment.

I have four doors to paint today. I need to move my bedroom to the back room so we can prime and paint the window, but we can't do that until the radiators are painted and last night my husband accidently put too much paint on one so it wrinkled and now we have to sand and do it again. We have to be out by Monday morning so that the floors in the rest of the apartment can be done. I can't move any furniture into the rooms that have had the floors done, because the radiators need to be painted. But the furniture needs to be moved or the rest of the floors cannot be done.

You know those plastic square games where the picture is all jumbled up and you need to rearrange the pieces by sliding them up/down and side/side, but you can only move one at a time, so you have to plan all of your moves well in advance? I HATE that game. I'm living that game.

On a happy note, I met the folks at JobCenter again.... and it went very well. Had the husband there, which was a good thing since her English wasn't so hot, but she was very nice and emphasized the things I could do rather than the things that I can't. She also apologized for all the stupid hoops I had to jump through. And unlike a lot of people, like the immigration lawyer who filed our paperwork, she never said that I didn't have to worry because I was an American WASP. I get that I am more likely to be "accepted" by the Danish system because I'm white, educated, with a Danish maiden name... but it bothers me. And it bothers me when people point it out as if it was acceptable for immigration to behave this way.

I then made my visit to the Sprogcenter (language school) for my interview and figured out that while my Danish is by no means stellar, I don't need to start again from day one. But I need the review. So the very friendly lady there figures it will be best to drop me in the middle of a Danish one class. So I'm waiting on that. I bit the bullet and signed up for a morning class. Why? So that I am forced to get up and get a move on rather than rolling out of bed, taking my sweet ass time, going to afternoon class and then finding myself out of time to do anything else. Until Denmark realizes the brilliance of midnight banking and grocery shopping, I am going to have to be a day person. (Note: I've never found a land that believes in midnight banking, any ideas?)

One day I'm going to wake up and my dissertation will be done and I won't have anything to paint and I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. It's on my To-Do List.

Lost in translation: a comedy of errors

Disclosure: This photo may be photoshopped... there is great debate regarding it's veracity. But it doesn't matter all that much because it fits my post for today. Yes, *themed* post! And *yay* photo! (So little to look at on my blog! So many words, not enough pictures!!)

Ahem. Anywho...

I use on-line translators. Especially babelfish. I find that it's faster for me to type a sentence into babelfish than it is for me to look up the words I'm not sure about in my dictionary. I am just not that good at the fiddly page turning and the alphabet. (Yes, let's not talk about that shall we?) I highly recommend on-line translations provided that you have a pretty darn good knowledge of the language already and can read MOST of what you are translating without assistance. German translations are often downright hilarious and I've been collecting my favorites for a while now. I plan on someday turning it into poetry, of a sort. There is just something so delightfully Jabberwocky about it. "Siebenbürgen" literally translated means "seven mountains" but really means "Transylvania" and completely overloads babelfish so I get "filter deficiency guarantee." Dude, I don't even *know* what that means.

Also, "Probleme besonderer Art werfen schliesslich die sog." Turns into "Problems of special kind throw finally sucked." Really ought to be "Problems of specially cast forms will be drawn in conclusion." Er, yes, that is an awkward translation - sometimes German just doesn't translate well. As long as I know what it *means*, I just roll with it.

Anyway, I thought French would be slightly different. I don't know why, but maybe it's because I can read French with greater accuracy. But some of the things that the translator throws up are just down right hilarious. "Motif" becomes "motive" even though it is obvious that motif = motif. So my plates have a lot of fish motives. I love it. What do you suppose motivates fish? Worms? I'm pretty sure it's NOT silver plate. "Scène" becomes "place" although it seems pretty obvious to me that scène means scene in this context. So I have a lot of "places of fish motives."

Then there is the truly bizarre. At the end of a very long sentence that was describing places of fish motives (heh) in nature death (still-life) on a mosaic floor in Africa, suddenly, this appeared: "there is no mosaic." Whut? I felt like I was in some sort of Matrix-blooper reel. Delving into my dictionary I figured it out. "Pas" can be part of a negation, you know ne...pas, but it can also mean "threshold." "Pas mosaic" does not mean "there is no mosaic" but "threshold mosaic." Heh.

But funny translations and incorrect English is not limited to babelfish. (Yes, I already know about engrish.com and failblog, they kill me.) My husband, whose English is normally stellar, can sometimes throw out the most hilarious things when he gets tired. Yesterday, it seems, we were both "sleep depraved." And then a few nights ago (must be that sleep depravity), while we were discussing how funny it was that we know exactly when we first met and how at that time we had no idea that we'd be married five years later, he says "yes, I didn't know at that time that you would be the wife of my life." You know, versus all those other wives he had that didn't last. We were rolling around with laughter.

Yeah, you say, but you shouldn't make fun, I bet your Danish isn't so hot!

Uh, duh, no kidding. My personal best was when, while on excavation with a bunch of very messy Danes, I made some signs - VERY LARGE SIGNS - to post around the kitchen areas. I wanted to write, "your mother doesn't live here" (i.e. clean up after yourself) and wrote "Din mor ikke bor here!" This caused great hilarity among the Danes. It's "din mor bor ikke here" in case you were wondering. You probably weren't, but feel I must educate you. Also, "your mother doesn't live here" is not a particularly Danish saying, or so I was told. I've since seen it in kitchens, with the "ikke" in the right place, so obviously I'm not singlehandedly bringing English idioms to Denmark.

My husband has picked up quite a few Americanisms that he quite likes and uses with abandon. He really likes "it doesn't ring a bell." I don't know why, but that seems to be his favorite. So much so that he often forgets and says it to Danes in DANISH. "Der ikke ringe klokken" or something. There is always this long pause while the person he just said it to tries to figure out what bells have to do with whatever it was that they were talking about.

To finish off this post - which is shockingly thematic, way to go AG! - I must tell you a story that brings us back, full circle, to the photo at the beginning. One of the Americans on the excavation in Israel is from Chicago and thus has a distinct accent. One day, while sitting on the porch of our dig house, he was sipping his drink and then suddenly exclaimed: "Ugh, this juice! I *hate* pulp in my juice!" One of the other archaeologists, who is from Poland, whipped his head around and said "WHAT?! You hate the Pope and the Jews?!" It's been two years and we are STILL laughing about it.

What HAVE I been doing for four years??

It's a dissertation post. If you don't want to hear about my dissertation, I don't blame you. I don't want to hear about it either.

Right, so I've been dissertating for 4 years. Well, writing for only 3 since I did spend one year researching trying to find a subject and then learn enough about the subject to see if there is anything that can be said about the subject that hasn't already been said and then searching through this really random journal that proposes to be filled with a list of everything that graduate students are working on (although I am not really sure how that works... but I was told to do it and one thing you learn quickly is that you can't convince your advisor of anything). This means I have several article ideas and a rather large file on Roman Britain and on Roman hoards. Alas, Roman Britain is being worked on by Brits and Roman hoards is too large of a subject. Richard Hobbs did a very good dissertation and publication of hoards from 200-700 that was published in 2006, so BOY am I glad I didn't start working on that.

Anyway, I started writing in... well, my abstract dates to February 2005 and it's freakin' hilarious because it SO is not what I'm doing. Reading it I can see why my advisor keeps trying to make me write about myth and allegory. But I was in a rush to get something turned into the graduate school because my department was going through... lets call them "growing pains" and there was the worry that some graduate students would get lost in the mishmash. It took another two years for that to happen, but it did eventually happen. I am graduate student road-kill. So it looks as if I started doing some preliminary writing in the fall of 05 but most of my docs date to 2006. It's now 2009 and what have I got to show for myself?

By chapter -
Introduction: 5 pages, 2 footnotes
History of Research: 9 pages, 13 footnotes
Theory: 14 pages, 59 footnotes
Prolegomena: 24 pages, 94 footnotes
BC silver: 8 pages, 22 footnotes
Social setting 1st c: 5 pages, 17 footnotes
1st c silver: 29 pages, 56 footnotes
Social setting 2-3rd c:7 pages, 13 footnotes
2-3c silver:16 pages, 23 footnotes (this is the chapter I'm working on, it'll get longer)
Social setting 4th c: 8 pages, 7 footnotes
4th c silver: 56 pages, 158 footnotes (yup, it's a doozy - this is the chapter I threatened to turn into a master's thesis, now you see why)
Conclusion: yeah, I gotta rewrite that, probably from scratch...
Catalogue: 56 pages, bibliographic references in text, not footnotes
Bibliographic sources: 332 listed, probably more, I'll have to go through every single file to make sure they're all there.

Not including possible appendices (I really don't see the point of adding them, but it depends on how my advisor feels about it)... Total pages: 237
Total footnotes: 464

This also doesn't include any images. I haven't put any into the text yet as this would make the documents VERY unwieldy.

So there you go. You now know what I've been doing with myself and what all I've done.

To do:
Finish 2-3rd c. silver - talk about fish and death imagery, decide on whether or not to include Wettingen treasure (looking at the engravings, I'm thinking there's not really so much of what I'd call "figural decoration" on the plates...) but I need to make sure, whip up a nice bit on the Historia Augusta and the evidence we can glean from it (insert Jon Stewart "America: the book" as a footnote).
Write conclusion.

I think I'm down to reading my last four articles. One french, two german, one english.

Normal people would say, oh, you'll be done in a week. I'm not normal people and I do not want to raise anyone's hopes. Especially since there are TWO german articles to read. I have to take two days off to paint trim and I am not going to be able to do much in the way of dissertating when I'm responsible for taping floors, making dinner, painting trim and moving furniture around the apartment. My dear husband however has reached the end of his rope and can't do any more on his own.

No excuses

Sometimes I am just lazy. L-A-Z-Y. Today is one of those days. I just really do not feel like translating French to English even though the article is actually getting exciting.

By exciting I mean that having spent several pages describing fish imagery on several silver plates using increasingly long sentences, he may actually be getting to the part where he links fish and death in second-third century Roman iconography.

I know, how can I HANDLE the excitement?

No, really, I do want to find out what happens and how it's all going to play out. Does he make assumptions that I find untenable? Is he going to send me off on a wild footnote goose chase that leads in ever constricting circles until I find the source of all our hopes and dreams in a German article from 1865 that was obviously written in a haze of Jägermeister?

Here's another good question: will I be so impressed with myself for pulling "untenable" out of my ass that I decide that this was the peak in my creativity for the day and spend the rest of the day watching TV?

The problem is I just don't want to put the effort into finding out the answers to any of these questions. Including the TV one.

Part of the problem may be that last night, after drinking half a bottle of wine, I flew through more French in three hours than I have in three days and it's a far better translation than it has any right to be. This then reinforces the horrible truth:

I need to become a functional alcoholic in order to finish this dissertation.

Oh my ears and whiskers...

No, I'm not late for anything, but that is the refrain bouncing around inside my head. I have the most outrageous headache. If I had whiskers, they'd be hurtin'.

I take this as a sign that my head is full.

Anyway, despite the pounding (I'm starting to wonder if my left cerebrum is about to invade the right and what I feel are the war drums) I had an epiphany in the shower this morning.

Showers always lead to epiphanies. I would love to stay in the shower until the solutions for every problem I have presented themselves, but I worry that I'd never get out of the shower. The writers block that has prevented me from making any real progress in my dissertation lasted for DAYS. Talk about prune hands! I had the FSO test to study for, which thankfully led to a good excuse from not working on the THING for longer than an hour or so from time to time, but I still felt like I was running head first into a large plate glass window every time I even thought about IT. (Test is tomorrow... no, I am done studying, I'll only freak out if I try to pack anything else in my head. Rest and headache removal are the goals of today.)

So the problem remained. One section of one chapter was just NOT working. I approached the whole dissertation as a series of questions: the who, what, where, when, why, and how. The theory chapter deals specifically with the why, why something happened in a particular way and the rest of the dissertation is supposed to illustrate HOW. Question: Answer. Easy. Then there is the chapter I've been revising that includes the basic whats, wheres, whens and some of the hows, that the reader needs to have in order to get the major HOWS being shown in the rest of the work. But this one section would just not fit. I moved sentences around, wrote a bit of this and a bit of that. Moved it around. Deleted. I had sentences hanging out in a holding patter and paragraphs waiting to leave the gate. I think the section was a lot like Heathrow earlier this week.

And it hit me as I was in the shower, I was asking the wrong question. I was asking how silver functioned in society. Which I'd already answered in the theory chapter and was the basis for building my argument. And here I was asking it again. What the hell? So it's not the answer that is at fault, it is the question... what was I really trying to ask? After drying off and dressing myself, I rushed to the computer. (Water still in ears and no coffee, that's how crazy I've become!) Read what I'd written and realized I was trying to talk about how silver was displayed. In fact, by simply changing the word "function" to "display" in several sentences, suddenly the whole thing started to slide together. Paragraphs and sentences that would not align began to form coherent thought (unlike many of my blog posts).

By golly I think I've solved it!!

I may have also solved this headache thing... while I've been writing, I keep wandering into the kitchen and filching salami from the package. I have also developed this MAD hankering for brie. Salami and brie are very fatty and salty. I am obviously experiencing a lack in salt and fat (this is what happens when your last meal was muesli and yogurt, way too healthy), because every slice of salami I eat, the better my head feels.

At least that is the excuse I'm going to give my husband when he comes home to find me stuffing my face with salami wrapped brie slices, a bowl of popcorn and a coke.

*stunned silence*

Wow - a moment of metaphysical wowness. I have a comment on the previous post from someone I've never met and therefore have never pushed my blog upon! When I read it I had this moment of profound shock and awe. There is always in the back of your mind, as you blog, that the blogosphere is open and free to the millions of people who have internet access and that there is the probability that someone somewhere will read what you've written. But to have actual proof of this is something completely mind boggling. I know I have about four readers who may be reading my posts. Four people I have shoved this blog at and have some evidence that they do, in fact, read it.

But there are also the unknown people who lurk and read. Who are they? How many do I have?

I have got to figure out how to put some sort of counter on the blog. Or maybe not. I'd hate the counter to get to six and then stop. That would blow my temporary high regarding my famousness and popularity.

No, I didn't start blogging to become famous and get a book deal and live the rest of my life in comfort and joy. Not that this would have been a bad thing... But I was quite content with my four readers (all friends, because really, who else would read my drivel). I still am content with that number of people.

The book deal, comfort and joy does sound nice, yes?

Anyway, apart from the stunning revelation that there are other people out there on the internet, I have decided that I really must stay away from knives. Especially when it is cold. I blame the coldness of the kitchen for the slight slip yesterday that took off a small chunk of my nail on my right middle finger. No blood though, I brilliantly sliced only the top half of part of my nail off. How talented is that?!

There was the mincing of garlic one moment (and this is why I am desperate to move and be done moving every three months, because then I could get to my garlic mincer and be done with this fine knife work using a chef's knife) and then next holding my finger under water waiting for the blood to begin gushing. I've sliced off my fingernails before. Both with an automatic cheese grinder (oh yes, I stuck my finger in an automatic cheese grinder, completely by accident, about 12 years ago - I also stuck my finger in an automatic typewriter when I was about 5 and my mom hit "return" not seeing I was helping her push the rolly bit along) and with knives and it's always resulted in a lot of blood. The running down your arm kind of bleeding experience. So I expected blood. I waited and waited and nothing happened. I taped my finger and finished cooking. Later I examined the nail and discovered my own little miracle. There is just enough nail left on that part of my finger to protect it. And it'll grow out in probably a week. I didn't cut THAT much off. I thought I had originally, but that was the shock seeing my finger, not the cold rational of the Archaeogoddess a few hours later.

On a more positive note, I took the Foreign Service practice test yesterday. You have to time yourself, which turned out to be difficult. I have never quite learned that function on my watch and there were some incidents where I thought I had paused it but had not so I gave myself an extra two minutes to finish, but then I finished under time anyway. I like tests. I really like multiple choice tests.

I didn't do so well on the general knowledge part. I did okay, but I know very little about labor laws or management skills. I got all the math questions correct, which was shocking, but then they didn't ask the train question (two trains are traveling towards each other blah blah blah). I did really well on the English part of the exam. This was a bit of a shock, because English was always one of my worst classes. I seem to have picked up the important bits though. I can tell their, there, and they're apart. I can apparently recognize a dangling modifier, even if I can't define the term or even point to one. I did get a little distracted by the articles that I had to read for reading comprehension. They were interesting and I wanted to google them to read more.

I ought to do some reading to prepare. Unfortunately the books suggested are not in any of the libraries in Denmark. Go figure. So I will have to get creative.

For now it is back to dissertating. The other day I ended up making additions to four chapters based on three pages of someone else's dissertation. Mostly with footnotes. I had an epigram from Martial that I had quoted from one source but I didn't like the translation, this dissertation gave me another source for the same epigram and I prefer that translation - it is much closer to what I understand the Latin to be. Oooh, that is an awkward sentence. I found the correct citation of Livy so I could go and find the information I knew was there, but not exactly where. There is nothing like trying to remember where you saw a passage in a large text. You can skim for days and never find it. With other books it's not a problem, you don't have to site the chapter and verse, but with ancient texts you do.

Right, enough talking about dissertating, it's time to do it!

Disaster

Last night my Mac, my beautiful, wonderful, trusty Mac, which has had horrible things done to it, survived and continued to march along side me, died.

Some sort of catastrophic failure of the hard drive. The guy at the Mac store could see the hard drive when he tried running my Mac through another Mac, but couldn't access the data. Or the drive, for that matter.

I've sent it off to try to recover the data, because that's about all that can be done with it. It would require too much work to repair and replace all the bits that might need to be replaced, since it's not particularly clear what all happened for this failure to occur.

I'd really like the data... my last two weeks of work on my dissertation wasn't backed up. Stupid, I know. Back in the days when I used floppies, I always kept my papers on disks, not the hard drive, but lap tops lack disk drives these days, you have to keep things on data sticks and I haven't become used to saving data to these devices. At least the rest of my dissertation is backed up, not only on my husband's PC (which I'm currently using, sigh), but on a data stick and a hard copy (print out).

So it's time for a new mac. I probably won't be able to get a MacBookPro, like I'd love, but I don't really need all that extra power and bells and whistles and... oh, I wish I could have one!!

Change is good for the something something.

The time is once again to change the format of the blog. Why? I mean, I just changed it. What's with all this CHANGE anyway? Isn't anything sacred anymore? Why does everything have to change!!?!!

Because otherwise things would be boring.

Learning, for instance, is part of change. Everything we learn changes us in a way, either a small way or a great way. So even if we could freeze ourselves at this very moment, never to age, and freeze the seasons so that nothing would grow, nothing would die, and nothing would change... it still would change the very second someone learned something new.

It was a crazy thought I had. And unlike my dear husband, the philosophy nut, I have steered clear of the very people who have probably pondered this particular thought before me and thus have articulated it better. Screw them, the ponces.

(Here's something for you to learn that will change you in a little way: ponce is a man who lives off of the earnings of prostitutes. Like "pimp" only with a much more negative connotation, since rap has glorified the P-I-M-P.)

Meanwhile, the season changes from summer to winter. The Danish Boy says "This is the season we call 'fall.' It happens between summer and winter," in response to my declaration of seasonal changes.

But this is not fall. Fall is a lovely few weeks were the days get shorter and the weather gets crisp and cool. Frost may appear on the ground in the morning, but is burnt away by the sun in the afternoon. The leaves change color, slowly, and gently drop, one by one to the ground. Fall is not a horrible few weeks in which it suddenly begins to hail, the leaves change colors overnight and are summarily bashed to the ground by the ensuing downpour and hurricane force wind that comes out of nowhere to freeze your butt cheeks off if you lean against the wrong thing. Denmark has no fall. It goes straight to winter from summer, without a by-your-leave.

It's freezing cold. We tuck ourselves under our winter duvet (heavy, stuffed with down) and I still have to keep the heat on in our little room because my nose runs and my eyeballs feel like snowballs stuck in my skull. And in typical Danish fashion, my dear husband is so hot, he's on top of the covers while I shiver in my flannel pjs curled up into a ball. Thankfully we know that if I am cold, no one sleeps, whereas if he's just slightly too warm, but I am just fine, everyone sleeps a full 8 hours.

No one else in the apartment seems to agree with my temperature requirements, so I go from room to room turning up the heat when I am there and down again when I leave. I spend most of my time in my office since I am dissertating (at the moment, reading this horrible article that I am sure will be very important for me, I have taken lots of notes, but it is written in such horrific classical scholarshipness, with quotes in other languages and WAY too many words that I despair), so it is not so bad.

So with change in the air (along with the cold) and a horrible confrontation with my worst fears (no, not spiders... academic writing... it makes me feel so dumb) I needed to do something to take my mind off it all. Enter my new banner. I made it myself, you know. I discovered I had an old version of Photoshop hiding in my Mac OS 9, which is part of my partitioned hard drive. I was actually contemplating getting rid of OS 9 and the partition to make room on this side of the computer, which runs on OS 10.4 and is simply running out of room, when I read that this would reformat my drive. Since that sounds like it would erase my computer entirely, I decided ehhhh, no, I would not worry about OS 9, it could just sit there and rot.

Thank the computer gods I did, because that is where I had put Photoshop, way back when I first got the computer and all the programs were still running on 9 because 10 was still just too new. For the Mac people of the world, this was a dreadful time of change and adaptation. But I digress. The partition in my computer has been put up in such a way that I can actually run OS 9 programs in OS 10.4. It looks a little weird, but it works marvelously.

Have I mentioned how much I love my computer? I love it.

So it is due to the brilliance of my Mac (and associated Adobe programs) that I could create a brand new banner for my blog. And upload it.

Change is good. Learning computery stuff to make change - html, photoshop, partitioned hard drives... very cool.

Dissertating once again...

There's nothing like writing a dissertation to make you doubt your intelligence. My theory chapter is starting to look like it could be a chapter in the next Ian Hodder book, which means I'm either a genius or rambling insensible jargon in increasingly complicated clauses.

The Danish Boy says it makes sense to him and it reads well. This is the joy of being married to a former archaeologist who has read a lot of theory. I am, however, wondering if he is a bit biased. Or perhaps he's simply wise enough to know that he should be nice to the woman who makes his food. It's not supposed to read well anyway, it's supposed to be academic, which is latin for "impenetrable use of jargon in complex sentences containing multiple clauses." Or maybe that's the German definition of "academic," I can never remember.

Anyway, without counting catalogue and appendices (I am really not sure if I want to include all of them, it seems a bit over the top if you ask me) I had 80 pages single spaced.

Whoopee! I exclaimed. Until I discovered that when I made it double spaced, as I need to for final publication, I did NOT have 160 pages. I had 149. Grumble grumble.

So... so far I have used 149 pages to answer the question I posed in the beginning of my dissertation. I could probably answer that question in 3 pages, but brevity is the soul of wit, not dissertations, which are not in the least bit funny.

The trouble with research.

The trouble with research is that it piles up. There is the stuff you need to research and thus goes on a to-do list and takes up valuable thought processes and then there is the physical research debris that you cannot get rid of, because you never know when you might write that article or thesis or need to start a bonfire.

The result is that you have potential research piling up metaphysically, current research piling up on your desk, and previous research piling up on your bookshelves.

I have research coming out of my ears. And most of it, tragically is not my own.

No, I'm not stealing other people's research, I am talking about the Danish Boy's research.

If we were to measure book shelf space and use that to judge quantity of research the numbers would go:
9 feet of research space for the archaeogoddess
16 for the Danish Boy - and that's only archaeological research, there's about another 2 feet of philosophy, 1 foot for journalism, and 2 feet that I'll be generous and say we share since they are encyclopedias (of ancient Egypt and the Near East, which I am not currently working on, but hey).

The most frustrating thing of all, at least to me, is that he's not even doing archaeology any more!! That's valuable space that is being taken up with large binders labeled "Akkadian" and "MB tombs: method and theory". Some of these binders are thicker than the binder I have for one chapter of my dissertation. (Space taken up by all dissertation chapter research: 1.5 feet.)

This is because we have very different ways of doing research. I tend to read something, take a page or two of notes and then if I need to see the book or article again, I check it out of the library, again. I deal with finite quantities of data at a time, chapter by chapter and so apart from the huge stack of library books I may have circulating around on the floor, my research space remains small. Lifetime of sharing bedroom and/or office space teaches you to minimize. The DB, on the other hand, has no problem collecting EVERYTHING he may ever need in perpetuity, because he's always had lots of space.

Now, you may be thinking, why, since you've moved and all, don't you just pack it all up and put it away in storage.

Because, dear reader, while the research may not be so useful for me or him, it is useful to the rest of mankind. Also known as those other archaeology student friends of mine.

I have become the one stop shop for research. Need to know something fast? Ask the AG, if she doesn't know it off hand, she can look up the right reference. Got a large topic and don't know where to start? Ask the AG and she'll put you on the right track and possibly even set you up with a preliminary bibliography. And get this: she can even do it for archaeological subjects she knows NOTHING about!

I am... the Archaeogoddess!

I am remiss.

I am completely remiss in writing. It's just been a bit busy these last few weeks. I'll give you a taste now and hopefully (cross your fingers, but for the love of god don't hold your breath) I'll write an extended post on some of these subjects later.

First to happen was a lightning weekend trip to London. I have gotten my passport stamped and I am visa-ed up for another three months. I finally got to see the Tower of London and the Museum of London, meaning that I am extraordinarily happy and also mad, since now I need to think of something else I need to see in order to have a good excuse to go back ASAP. I love London.

Dissertation update: It will not be done this spring. I'm going to try to have it done in November, when I have to go to Boston for ASOR. Maybe I can combine the trip with defending and filing. I'll walk next spring.

I did just turn in a chapter and while I'm waiting for feedback I took some time off to get some other things done around the house that I've been putting off. Like folding clothes and some cleaning. I am pleased to see that the Danish boy is not just wearing the same three tee shirts again and again and I now have a full complement of socks. We also can now see the living room table, I can see parts of my desk and you can almost walk through the office. This is an improvement, you used to not be able to walk through the office at all. You had to hop, duck and weave.

I wrote up some scholarship applications and sent them off. Not much to say about that but I hope I get them. I am not known for my grant procuring abilities and it'd be nice to get awarded for an application I actually did instead of the kind the schools give out because they know you need it. Although, any money of any kind from anyone would be appreciated.

I have finally finished making what seems to be the final proof of my wedding invitation. I printed it out and glued one up for my dad, who needs a copy to give to his boss in order to get the time off (yes, he might have to provide his own death certificate if he dies so that he can get the day off to go to his own funeral). I was admiring my handiwork when I discovered I'd misspelled my own last name. Curses. Peeling paper that you have just glued is a pain in the butt, peeling paper that you have let the glue dry on is a pain beyond words. Spelling fixed, it may be possible that I will print and assemble invitations this week, before my chapter revisions come in and I am driven back to work.

Meanwhile the newest and happiest news is:

The Danish boy and I have bought a new car! "New" being relative, since it's a 1988 Volvo. I love it. It makes me happy. I am again driving a tank (the worlds safest tank) and swear the car is happy too. It's a family car, which means that when we do have a family to put in it, we'll be ready! Actually, since we'll have to put my family in it in July, it's not an obscene purchase. We'll be selling the other Volvo, which is a total pain in my ass, ASAP. We may actually make money on this trade, because the Volvo we're selling is worth more than the one we bought. But since the one we bought is what we need in a car and the other one is NOT, it makes lovely sense, really.

"Maybe if you give them some petty cash they won't notice the recession!"

Well, I was wrong about the rates. But anyone who is still thinking that we aren't in a recession already is an idiot. Why do I keep seeing all these reports: are you ready for a recession, is a recession inevitable, will we end up in a recession? The answers are: no, because if we were ready, it wouldn't be a recession, would it? Yup. And we're already in a recession, dumba$$.

And would people stop blaming the various government parties for the recession? It was the bad loans that tipped us all in. There could have been more oversight, or the banks could have stopped giving money away so easily. It's like the dot-com crash, not government induced, idiot induced!

Meanwhile, I had the stomach flu, which was awful in all kinds of ways. The Danish boy was phenomenal, making up batches of re-hydration fluid, peeling apples and boiling up cups of beef bouillon - while still working +12 hour shifts driving the taxi at night.

We then had to shift from the night schedule we have been on to the day shift. This was very painful, as I'm getting over the flu, I have a hard time determining when I'm going to sleep and when I'm not. However, it looks as if we may have succeeded. Alas, here I am at 7 am (I've been up for several hours now) and the sun hasn't risen, the wind may blow down the house and the day is not looking so hot. The weather here has been atrocious. Wind wind and more wind. No snow. Two winters ago we got blanketed and I don't remember so much wind. I guess global warming has robbed me of my snowy winter, this weather feels more like California in February than what one expects from northern Europe. However, it is getting noticeably lighter earlier and staying light for later. This is wonderful. Now if we only would have less cloud cover and less wind, people may actually have a chance at getting some vitamin D.

The dissertation continues and we aren't going to talk about it any more. Because we hates it. It is not precious.

The wedding plans also continue... at a snails pace. There are some rather large financial concerns that must be squared away before we proceed. At this point I am in no hurry. It's not going to be a fancy affair, there will be no frills or favors, and I will probably wear a nice sun dress and flip-flops, so the amazing pressure that normally surrounds a wedding is lacking. Etiquette is out the window - it's not so much a wedding as a casual party. Thankfully!

And on a completely random note - why do none of my cookbooks include a PLAIN oatmeal cookie recipe? I hate dates (unless they are stuffed with cheese and baked) and I don't have chocolate chips. Yes, I am sure somewhere in this god-forsaken country there are chocolate chips, but seeing how it's taken me five years to find the one store that sometimes sells ricotta cheese, I may never find chocolate chips. I also don't want to put all kinds of spices into them. I just want some nice, plain, oatmeal cookies. Is it so much to ask?