The Book of Na'Lon

Well, there I was, doctoring an image for my sister when out went the electricity. So the_marquis and I went and found candles and made dinner. :-)

Berry brought over her banana cake from next door to finish cooking. Her cooker (though gas powered) is so smart, it can't cook without electricity. Ours can be tricked into compliance.

Powercuts are very humbling. I think I'll find out about donating some more money to the Pakistan Earthquake aide... :-(

I am so tired after the first two teaching session of 05-06. I hope that I can manage to stave of the dreaded lurgi that my colleagues have been sharing around. Teaching is hard enough work without feeling ill.

Waking the Dead was grim. But somehow still less disturbing than Evangelion. Spent much of last night dreaming about Rei and Misato with a bit of Ritsuko in there, I think. Odd dreams - it's the emotional cruelty that laces through Evangelion that I find really challenging: the way that people - especially Misato and the children - are used is something my softy squishy inner being finds hard to take. I need to take a bit of a break from Eva... Three more episodes to go - including the one with Kaworu, who I found really intriguing as a character from my first viewing of Death & Rebirth. That'll be another toughy, I shouldn't wonder. One day, I'll probably try to put some more of my toughts about this show into words. It's been a very interesting and challenging experience so far, watching Eva.

While the Marquis was making dinner, I went to call my mother but ended up talking to Na'Kim for a good long time. It was so nice to speak to her. The Marquis called her 'Ritsuko' - I can see what he means, too...

Tomorrow I am doing the first repeat of the session I did this morning with the second group. It's always very interesting to see how the same teaching session pans out with different people. I hope it goes well. I also hope that I won't be bored to tears by the time I get to Friday's repeat.

I hope I get a chance to look up some stuff for Meglorien tomorrow - she wants to know about how use of language might reflect personality. I don't know if I'll be able to suggest anything useful for her to read, but it sounds like an interesting idea that she is on to: in LoTR the book, Gollum's use of English is pretty childish, and Smeagol's near perfect. In PJ's movies, it's pretty much the other way around. Meglorien is interested in a psychological interpretation of these concepts... I'll see what I can rustle up, between writing next week's sessions.

Enough for now... I need sleep.

Every year I rant about the commercialisation of the institution – see Polly’s (jane_somebody) entry on VD for a précis of my usual ravings… And then I make sure I have a little something for the Marquis anyway.

So instead of buying a card this year, I decided that the only way of letting my little romantic know that I just don’t like the pressure VD puts on people, and that I am quite happy to do something special for him, was to make my own card for him and think of a prezzie of something he’d really like: I think he like the card, and the prezzie (model ships :-)).

He gave me a beautiful card with the watercolour of a curled up cat and a box of chocolates. And he went patiently around many shoe shops with me in Newcastle as I looked for the pair I’d seen yesterday in Carlisle, but which they hadn’t had in my size. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is! (Well, I do, but it sounds dramatic.)

Anyway, the shoes weren’t the only reason for the Newcastle trip: I felt desperate to get away from Carlisle for a day, and Newcastle is the nearest Big City. I liked what I saw and it felt very good to be in a big place with many different people and new buildings and shops and all sorts. Amongst other things, we popped into Forbidding Prices, too, and looked at some LotR merchandise (what tack!!! In some cases…).

Since we were unsuccessful in finding my shoes in Newcastle, we stopped at the Metrocentre (a strange, strange place) on the way home. I found my shoes, and we found the model shop, where the Marquis picked his models (see above) and bought me a tiny, tiny tri-plane (Fokker DR 1).

Anyway, it’s been a good day, mainly, because it has been so different. And I don’t have to work tomorrow. Yay!

Happy Valentine’s Day all!

For reasons I can't fathom, I feel really crap today. Maybe part of it is due to being tired and overworked. Maybe it's because I don't feel like I have a hope of getting out of here this year after all. It feels like my life is on hold again on a number of levels, and when I try to get back on track, something else comes up to throw me off... Like the bit where I have to prepare for peer observation on Tuesday pm, but the Accred. Bollox Visit is on Wednesday. Or the bit where I don't even have the time to do any of the reading I need to do for the course I am taking because I am constantly having to read stuff for the courses I am teaching. I had all these plans for creative things: got new art materials for my birthday and all, want to get on with my story and want to get back to the gym... I need a holiday! And it's only week two of the semester.

Thanks to Polly, I now know that two people I've been woefully out of touch with are actually out there with their own ljs... As usual I am gonna keep the waffling in a cut...

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Well, there you are. That was going to be the title of what I typed up over the last half hour, and then I bloody went and lost it, didn't I? Sometimes I hate computers! With pen and paper you can usually still find the stuff. Not so if you stupidly get distracted because you are too tired to think.

Originally I wrote a fairly long bit about the essay I just finished and how I'd enjoyed it but wished I'd had more time to do reading for it, and how that made me slightly more sympathetic towards my students' dilemmas.

I also wrote up some of my thoughts about slash, sparked off by the discussion on the Soapy Place, where I didn't feel like commenting.

Anyway. Now I have restored a bit of what I originally typed, at least I might get round to editing this with a bit more detail when I feel more human...

I resent having to work at the weekends, I really do. I want to get on with things I want to do. But because I tend to feel guilty about the requirement to do work, I usually end up doing nothing worthwhile at all. And the next thing I know is, it's Sunday night and I am intensely dissatisfied.

So this weekend, I have work to do. This damned assignment for the teaching and learning course, and when I realised yesterday that I hadn't really done the right thing with my drafting so far, I became very unmotivated indeed. Which is a farce, really, giving that part of my assignment is about helping student's find motivation and some form of enthusiasm for research methodology. Grrr.

I tried to break the cycle described in the first paragraph today. I will do some of the things I want to do instead, so that at least I enjoy my weekend as a break from the week. And maybe once I have done some of the things I enjoy, I can get down to work feeling less deprived of my fun.

As a result of my reasoning, I have already reedited chapter one of my Story and sent it to my Evil Twin (jane_somebody) and I have finished and posted off my bi-monthly column for the magazine of a society I belong to. I have also sweated over the current emither with pellegrina which is very enjoyable, but hard, hard work as it's plumbing some psychological depths that are hard to put into words. But very useful exercise nevertheless.

Yesterday, I finally spoke on the phone to my aunt Yo'Quith to thank her for her Christmas parcel. She sent me a couple of video tapes of a puppet show that I used to love as a child, because she saw it and was reminded of one of my "phases" (or "thuses" as eudesia might call it). It's about a ghost that lives in a castle. I don't remember this at all, apart from remembering that I liked ghosts and puppet-shows by this particular group of puppeteers.

Hm... while I think of it, a note for any one who recognises some of the names, such as Na'Lon or Yo'Quith, from my fiction writing and role-playing: I am borrowing these names for various people, including 'Na'Lon' for myself, but here they are only used as descriptors, and no similarity between character and RL person I refer to is intended. There are some similarities between character's family structures and my own family structure: e.g. The Marquis is also Na'Lon's mate in the Game, and Na'Kat really is Na'Lon's mother in Game and fiction. However, that is as far as the similarity goes...