news-y things and holiday snaps
1. Today, I reached the halfway word count mark on the first draft of my thesis. I would feel pleased with myself, if it weren't for the fact that I'm finding it pretty much impossible to feel pleased with anything I do on this thesis at the moment. I am entirely burnt out on it, to the point where I know I'm consistently producing work way below the standard I'm capable of; as a result, every minute I spend working on it, I am miserable, bored, tired, anxious, and angry with myself. The only thing that's motivating me is the fact that I love teaching, I love presenting at conferences, I love writing papers and articles and editing things up to scratch for publication - in other words, I know being a lecturer/professor is the job I want, and I can't follow that path without a PhD. But lengthy research, lonely research, research that gets pitifully little feedback and encouragement, research to produce 100,000 words of writing that only 4 people in the entire world other than me are ever going to read and that is almost certainly never going to get used by anyone - I can't say that's feeling particularly rewarding or enjoyable right now.
But I am, at least, 50,000 words closer to the end than I was when I started.
2. Assuming our tenancy application goes through successfully (touch wood), on September 13th Hazel and I will be relocating to Manchester, so Hazel can start at the uni. The flat we're in the process of applying for is a cosy, quite student-y one right in the city centre, which is both exciting and daunting - I've never actually lived in a proper big city before, but OTOH there's something quite appealing about living somewhere where within a 5-minute walk there is: one fully vegan restaurant, and a basement arts and crafts centre selling vegan sandwiches and soup; an artisan cupcake cafe with a couple of vegan options; an enormous Forbidden Planet and an independent manga and comics retailer; seven billion secondhand vinyl and clothes shops; a small live music venue; Chinatown; Piccadilly Gardens and the main high streets of Manchester.
3. Family holiday this year was a short week with Mum and Rob to Belgium and the edge of Germany, specifically, Brussels, Bruges, and Aachen. Most of it was spent wandering around admiring the really lovely architecture in all three, interspersed with breaks to eat chocolate, waffles (with chocolate, or for Mum and Rob, mit slagroom, which to my utter delight is the word for whipped cream in Flemish), and Haagen Daas, to drink beer, then eat meat cooked in beer, accompanied by lots and lots of frites. I don't think I saw a vegetable the whole time I was there. Mum also managed to get us a few nights in fancy business hotels at hugely discounted rates, so we also had lots of fun bringing the tone (and average salary of the occupants) of some very lovely lounges, pools, and dining rooms very firmly down, not least by unashamedly demolishing vast swathes of the unlimited breakfast buffets. It was a lovely break; the only bad thing (apart from my mother's earth-moving snoring; on the first night we shared a room, I didn't get to sleep until about 4am) about it was how completely at sea I felt in Germany, not being able to speak a shred of the language. I've never been anywhere where I couldn't make a decent stab at one of its languages before, and it surprised me how stressful I found it.
The weather wasn't great, so neither are any of the pictures I took (my little camera Doesn't Do Well with poor light), but here are some of the best/most representative ones:
The Grand Place in Brussels is lovely even in the pissing rain:
(Stereo)typical shop fronts in Brussels. I swear to you, 80% of all shops in the touristy bit of the city centre sell either beer, chocolate, or waffles. And yes, that last one is a window display entirely made up of garish chocolate models of the Manneken Pis.
To give you an idea of the weather we enjoyed:
Come on, you'd have taken a picture of this too:
Worryingly, this isn't the only picture I have that was taken purely because I am immature. See also:
The stately side of Brussels:
And the modern. I got bizarrely excited about seeing the European Parliament, I'm not sure why. Probably because there's always been a little bit of me that wants to work in politics, and international politics especially. I'm well aware I'm not cut out for it, though, so I've always just squashed it.
This is the Atomium, which was apparently built for a World's Fair back in the day, and is now some kind of science museum. If I sound vague about it, it's because me and Mum knew perfectly well that there was no way we were even attempting to get up it with our respective fears of heights and steep staircases/escalators. I will be eternally disappointed that I never managed to get a decent picture of any of us looking like we were cupping the balls.
From Brussels to Aachen, which, if not particularly striking or exciting, was an extremely pleasant city with elegant, pastel-shaded, tree-lined streets and a very handsome main square:
Unfortunately, the weather was sun-showery, meaning that most of my pictures of it came out looking kind of menacing:
The main reason we went to Aachen was to see the cathedral, as Mum is a total geek for cathedrals and the history thereof. I have to admit, though, it was absolutely stunning, inside and out:
We had a ridiculously flash hotel in Aachen for about a third of the price it should have been, so we spent a fair bit of time dossing on its terrace and by its stunning pool and sauna area. In the process, I also discovered that steam rooms are the best things EVER.
We also ate at the loveliest little pub, where I had a soup that was basically giant chunks of smoky sausage floating in a broth and was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten:
Finally, we spent an afternoon in Bruges, where at last the weather decided to perk up. As a result, though, the place was crawling, which took away from the non-more-quaint picturesqueness a little:
Apologies for the rather abbreviated commentary, but lj ate this post halfway through and I didn't have the energy for a full reconstruction.
4. Apart from one WIP on the PWKM which I'm loving, I've been really struggling to find good fic recently, and that makes me sad. If anyone has any recs for fic in any fandom where I've ever expressed any degree of love for the source material, they would be much welcomed. Just nothing hosted on AO3 plz; I'm far from one of the OTW haters, it's just that for some reason the site crashes my computer entirely.
But I am, at least, 50,000 words closer to the end than I was when I started.
2. Assuming our tenancy application goes through successfully (touch wood), on September 13th Hazel and I will be relocating to Manchester, so Hazel can start at the uni. The flat we're in the process of applying for is a cosy, quite student-y one right in the city centre, which is both exciting and daunting - I've never actually lived in a proper big city before, but OTOH there's something quite appealing about living somewhere where within a 5-minute walk there is: one fully vegan restaurant, and a basement arts and crafts centre selling vegan sandwiches and soup; an artisan cupcake cafe with a couple of vegan options; an enormous Forbidden Planet and an independent manga and comics retailer; seven billion secondhand vinyl and clothes shops; a small live music venue; Chinatown; Piccadilly Gardens and the main high streets of Manchester.
3. Family holiday this year was a short week with Mum and Rob to Belgium and the edge of Germany, specifically, Brussels, Bruges, and Aachen. Most of it was spent wandering around admiring the really lovely architecture in all three, interspersed with breaks to eat chocolate, waffles (with chocolate, or for Mum and Rob, mit slagroom, which to my utter delight is the word for whipped cream in Flemish), and Haagen Daas, to drink beer, then eat meat cooked in beer, accompanied by lots and lots of frites. I don't think I saw a vegetable the whole time I was there. Mum also managed to get us a few nights in fancy business hotels at hugely discounted rates, so we also had lots of fun bringing the tone (and average salary of the occupants) of some very lovely lounges, pools, and dining rooms very firmly down, not least by unashamedly demolishing vast swathes of the unlimited breakfast buffets. It was a lovely break; the only bad thing (apart from my mother's earth-moving snoring; on the first night we shared a room, I didn't get to sleep until about 4am) about it was how completely at sea I felt in Germany, not being able to speak a shred of the language. I've never been anywhere where I couldn't make a decent stab at one of its languages before, and it surprised me how stressful I found it.
The weather wasn't great, so neither are any of the pictures I took (my little camera Doesn't Do Well with poor light), but here are some of the best/most representative ones:
The Grand Place in Brussels is lovely even in the pissing rain:
(Stereo)typical shop fronts in Brussels. I swear to you, 80% of all shops in the touristy bit of the city centre sell either beer, chocolate, or waffles. And yes, that last one is a window display entirely made up of garish chocolate models of the Manneken Pis.
To give you an idea of the weather we enjoyed:
Come on, you'd have taken a picture of this too:
Worryingly, this isn't the only picture I have that was taken purely because I am immature. See also:
The stately side of Brussels:
And the modern. I got bizarrely excited about seeing the European Parliament, I'm not sure why. Probably because there's always been a little bit of me that wants to work in politics, and international politics especially. I'm well aware I'm not cut out for it, though, so I've always just squashed it.
This is the Atomium, which was apparently built for a World's Fair back in the day, and is now some kind of science museum. If I sound vague about it, it's because me and Mum knew perfectly well that there was no way we were even attempting to get up it with our respective fears of heights and steep staircases/escalators. I will be eternally disappointed that I never managed to get a decent picture of any of us looking like we were cupping the balls.
From Brussels to Aachen, which, if not particularly striking or exciting, was an extremely pleasant city with elegant, pastel-shaded, tree-lined streets and a very handsome main square:
Unfortunately, the weather was sun-showery, meaning that most of my pictures of it came out looking kind of menacing:
The main reason we went to Aachen was to see the cathedral, as Mum is a total geek for cathedrals and the history thereof. I have to admit, though, it was absolutely stunning, inside and out:
We had a ridiculously flash hotel in Aachen for about a third of the price it should have been, so we spent a fair bit of time dossing on its terrace and by its stunning pool and sauna area. In the process, I also discovered that steam rooms are the best things EVER.
We also ate at the loveliest little pub, where I had a soup that was basically giant chunks of smoky sausage floating in a broth and was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten:
Finally, we spent an afternoon in Bruges, where at last the weather decided to perk up. As a result, though, the place was crawling, which took away from the non-more-quaint picturesqueness a little:
Apologies for the rather abbreviated commentary, but lj ate this post halfway through and I didn't have the energy for a full reconstruction.
4. Apart from one WIP on the PWKM which I'm loving, I've been really struggling to find good fic recently, and that makes me sad. If anyone has any recs for fic in any fandom where I've ever expressed any degree of love for the source material, they would be much welcomed. Just nothing hosted on AO3 plz; I'm far from one of the OTW haters, it's just that for some reason the site crashes my computer entirely.