leap years

i completely forgot! yesterday  (march 1st) was st david's day. i suppose it's not much of a celebration unless you're welsh, and it's not as ceremonial as eating haggis, but hey, we used to celebrate andrzejki, in fact, my family still does. it's not much of a thing anymore though.

and if the point of a blog is to celebrate the everyday (okay, the point of this blog anyway), why not point out all the mundane and seemingly inconsequential trivialities to bring them out of the mundane and inconsequential? and what is a birthday if not the everyday? so here goes, with the inconsequentiality:

my arms hurt today. this is neither a revelation nor a surprise. but i'm not complaining - i sort of like this feeling.

BUT NONE OF THIS COMPARES to the extraordinariness of the everyday that occurred on the everyday of february 29th (which is not really everyday since it comes once every four years. (all those proto-feminists up there, shut up for a second, this has nothing to do with that).

lookie what came in the post!

a friend of mine very jokingly called it 'a giant wheel of gouda', which wouldn't be a bad name for a bike. though i was contemplating 'bronislaw', though perhaps something less stately and dated (it is my grandfather's name, after all). i will let you know when i think of it.

here was the grand surprise!

and that's me sitting on my newly-unpacked Trek 1.2. it's my first real road bike, so i'm tremendously excited! i was a bit alarmed when it arrived all wrapped up (WITH NO BOX) in bubble wrap and parcel tape, but boy did the chap do a good job! the thing is in mint condition, shiny as silverware. i don't know what it is about animals liking shiny things, but i definitely don't mind being a magpie for a day (apparently they're not very well liked here - you can even destroy their nests!); heck, i'm a magpie every day, picking up shiny things off the road.

SHINY SHINY SHINY!

what a great leap year it was indeed! i also found out that my supervisor's aunt, dorothy robinson, turned 100 (or 25, depending how you look at it) on the 29th as well! she sounds like an absolutely endearing woman! BBC interviewed her on her birthday: you can listen to the little clip here. she is absolutely adorable!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DOROTHY!

what gorgeous spring days are for

i went for a cycle this morning.
that is a bit of a lie, it was more of a commuter cycle, but i enjoyed it tremendously nonetheless. it was one of those intensely foggy mornings (i can never get up without the excitement of a 5-year old on her birthday when it's like this outside! and it always smells so good!) visibility could not have been more than 50m, maybe even less! i wanted to stop to take a picture by thought it was wiser of me to enjoy the ride instead... that'll do.

i attended yet another seminar at the OUCS, this time on choosing the best Referencing software that works for you. as a linux user and a devotee of OpenOffice, as well as being a poor, unfunded student, i found it really hard to find a satisfactory system that doesn't compromise too much. either i must fork up about £100, or switch to Word, or continued referencing by hand.

i managed to get rid of my frustrations however by going to the gym. The had a new machine this time, one of those for those beefy guys who like to pump their arms and then look like little chickens down below. as i have no worries about looking like a little chicken down below, i went away at it. it felt great, until... i got home and had to shower. i could not keep my hands above my head long enough to massage the shampoo in. tomorrow is going to be interesting, that's for sure.

now i'm off to this: http://www.romanticrealignments.blogspot.com/2012/02/double-bill-this-week.html
it's my supervisor giving at a talk at my seminar. well, i co-convene it, but it's becoming a baby of mine. i'm a bit attached...

:D

MOVING SITES (sort of)

in an effort to improve my online existence and cater a more audience-specific program (see entry below), i will be moving to

http://judytafrodyma.wordpress.com/

this blog will still be maintained for the regular useful/less miscellenia and minutiae of my every day life, but the new one, also entitled 'the different mosses' will serve to disseminate my research and academic interests.

see you all there!
jf

lessons in letting go

i thought i'd surprise my boyfriend and actually post something on here again.

contrary to grand original plans, i have abandoned yet another blog...though i learned an important lesson in avoiding the twenty-first century. it doesn't get you places. there is this girl in my department who started the dphil at the same time i did. like me, she was an unfunded student form canada, hoping that somehow, somewhere, someone will take pity on her and help her out. as it turned out, we both applied for the same inter-faculty job. it was a project to get literature into the public sphere - all that stuff about 'impact' that humanities departments are wettting themselves about. it makes sense, in the large scheme of things, especially given when we are (hardly) competing for funding against the sciences, where impact is implied and doesn't need to be explained. they're all out there looking for a cure for cancer or some shit. anyways, i didn't get the position. i was quite eager and hopeful about the job - it consisted of keeping a blog and writing about 'great writers'; maintianing some sort of online presence for the general public that would link them to humanities research. i didn't get it, despite my enthusiasm. i found out the other day that aforementioned girl did.

i feel like i'm playing all my cards wrong. i did this whole rowing thing (stupid, stupid jf!) and because of it was not able to establish myself in the english faculty. i do run the romantic realignments seminar and website and will continue to do so next year, with many plans for it, but it's not enough, i suppose. i should have gotten myself on the EGO committee when i had the chance. i should have become more involved in the english faculty and what the do. i should have gone to lectures and made myself seen and heard. i should have attended more seminars about things that interest me, even if they are not about romantics. but no, i decided to fucking pack my days with rowing. idiot child.

and now i'll i'm left with is all these 'should haves'. i know i only really wasted a term and a half, but it still feels like a monumental amount of time if i only have 9 terms in total to complete the dphil. maybe doing it in 6 years like they do in america (that's canada too, united states of america) is a much better idea. and then i'd have guaranteed teaching. it's such a free for all tackle here. i really feel like it's a game of prey and predator between the post-grads. 

so now here i am, trying to make up some sort of presence. i've signed up for a workshop on how to maintain an online presence, since i figured i have no idea. i don't use social mediums effectively and am generally speaking, opposed to any sort of 21st century communication. i'd write everyone letters if i could. luddite.
it's going to be a long uphaul battle from here. i'm stuck living next to someone who ceaselessly works 10 hours a day like a mule, fuelling all sorts of wonderful anxieties about how much effort i put in and what i'm getting done. i hate it. it's so negative - it just infuses this incredible feeling of envy (what else can it be?) at his discipline and successes and makes me hope he secretly screws up. gawd, i feel like an awful person. but it all boils down to the same thing: letting go. i don't get why i can't just let him do his shit and be good at what he does. it doesn't in any way step on my toes, we're in different departments after all. but no, it's got to bug me.

it's like with the darned rowing. sometimes i truly do feel that if you're not going to be the best at something there's no point in doing it at all. so i wonder what the fuck i'm still doing here.


umm.


i walked into an at studio today and offered myself up as a life drawing model. the artist and owner said he's booked up full but would love to have me near the end of march. i'm a bit nervous, but this is soething i've always wanted to do, and all i can think about is whether or not i can be 'natural'. perhaps this will be a way in to a new way of thinking about  myself in the world.

SEE THIS IS WHY I HATE BLOGGING BECUASE I'M SO EFFING GAY AT IT.

fail.