it's friday i'm in love #4

This week has sort of run the gauntlet from extreme stress and misery to extreme joy and happiness. The extreme stress and misery has largely been caused by my dissertation, which has been going more smoothly than it has in previous weeks, but I managed to shoot myself in the foot somewhat. I overestimated how much I overwrite, so I had to take a day to come up with another chapter for the sake of the word count, but now I'm actually over - typical! During my week of general writer's block and doom, I took to just writing without citations (or even full sentences at various points!) so I was up until 4am last night inserting citations into 10,000 words, along with general formatting and explanation. Thank god for a good memory. It's all come together more than I thought it would, although I've got a few more ideas which need to be inserted/developed, so there's still more work to do. I've got three weeks left before the hand-in, so I can hopefully rewrite/rework it into something stronger.

Tarquin may have been behaving a bit better this week, but various things have conspired to make him even more stressful, even though they are happy things. Firstly, I've been invited to give a talk at Oxford in September, which is really brilliant. It's for AMPAL 2012 (Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in Ancient Literature), and it'll be a wonderful venue for my first official conference as a speaker. Nonetheless, it has resulted in a lot of paperwork to do, so I had one mad dash to the Post Office this morning. Secondly, my funding for my PhD was officially confirmed, but that also means paperwork I needed to do. Thirdly, and entirely out of the blue, my first-choice college emailed me to offer me a place there for my PhD. This is the one which has really thrown me, since I knew the other two were coming (although I didn't anticipate needing to do all the paperwork in such a busy week!), but this was really unexpected. The college I ended up at for my MPhil is fine, but it's a very small college, it's for 'mature women', it's got very little money and it's not very good for my subject. If we're going to have the college system (which I still find rather quaint), I'd prefer to be at a college which can give me some funding for my studies, isn't divided on gender and age lines and has some people who actually do my subject there. I don't wish to be too hard on Lucy Cavendish, since it's perfectly nice, but it's also rather gratifying to go to King's. I'm so looking forward to it.

In some ways though, this is the problem. My whole PhD hinges on my thesis going well, and although I have no reason to think it might not go well, it does make me rather conscious that this needs to be great, and I've been working on it mostly in the middle of the night...Oh well. I've got three weeks to edit! I want this so badly, I'm this close to sacrificing a goat to Zeus. Although, given that my thesis is based on Greco-Roman cultural negotiations in the imperial period, maybe I should sacrifice one to Zeus, one to Jupiter, and one to the Caesars...

At any rate, Tarquin's gone to my supervisor, and after that I bought books, went to the seminar I organise to hear my friend Matt talk about Aeolic dialects, went t'pub to discuss Classical things and HBO shows with the classics peeps (it's so weird knowing I'll be at the same college as some of these people soon!) and thence to a restaurant with my boyfriend. We've barely seen each other this week due to thesis commitments, so going for a meal together was the perfect opportunity to catch up and spend some time together. Not to mention goat's cheese pasta al forno and limoncello make all ills disappear. I'm having a supervision on Monday to discuss my thesis draft, so until then I have, gloriously, nothing to do at all. It's World Baking Day on Sunday, so I imagine I'll take advantage of that to make something tasty, but I'm honestly just looking forward to curling up in bed with A Clash of Kings and some time to do absolutely nothing.

My bookshelf is starting to look pretty impressive now. I have about a thousand books now back home, but since my room's been dismantled for building work, they're in boxes and mostly inaccesible. As such, I'm accumulating lots of new books to decorate my new room, and I'm rather pleased with the results. On the advice of my lovely friend Rachael, I've started reading A Song of Ice and Fire, but I had to buy the second one first (they were all out of the first one at King's Cross), and then I got the first one and the new Jeffrey Eugenides at Cambridge station. Yes, I'm a biblioslut, no you may not judge!

For my last birthday, my friend Helen gave me a gift designed to help me get through the year and give me a giggle...it'a a Stress Paul! The idea is that I take my stress out on the Stress Paul rather than my boyfriend Paul, and he lived by my computer in case I have a sudden urge to crush something. I've needed him rather a lot this week, as you might have guessed. 

 

It's my housemate Anna's birthday today, so we had a small party earlier in the week to celebrate. Anna is obsessed with all things pink, glittery and Disney (at Christmas she demanded a pink hat from the cracker so she could be a princess!), so her boyfriend Matteo created menus for the dinner inviting us to her Disney-style kingdom Annalee. We had lots of Italians cooking the dinner, so the lasagna, tirimisu and cake were all absolutely delicious. I haven't been able to spend lots of time with my housemates at the moment due to the pressures of thesis, so it was really nice to have an opportunity to catch up and relax for an evening.

I've been drowning in paperwork all week due to all the nice things being offered to me. I'm very happy with the offers, but the amount of time I've spent filling out forms is a bit much really! 

I've been searching for coffee chocolate for ages, ever since my boyfriend gave me a book of brownie recipes for Christmas and they recommend it to make mocha brownies. I found some in Selfridges in Birmingham, but it cost £7.50 for 45g - I could buy almost four books with that! This stuff is over twice as large for a fifth of the price. And it's Fairtrade. Couldn't get better than that, really.

To help with my stress levels and the amount of work I've had to do this week, my stepmother bought me some coffee. Although I'm not really much of a Starbucks fan, this fresh coffee was rather lovely, and very very helpful, since last night I was up until 4am. Good grief.

When I was visiting my friend Rachael last weekend, I was introduced to the joys of Lush, since she works there and really likes the products. I've never really been taken by Lush, I associate it with a cacophony of smells, not to mention that it always seemed a bit impractical to me. I'm happy to be utterly wrong - this cleanser is really nice, and it leaves my skin looking great. The lip balm was free, and smells of coffee. Brilliant.

I know, I know, I keep posting about my Graze boxes, but they are very very tasty. This week's felt rather providential, since I got basil and garlic olives (I could happily live off olives), Indian chutney and soya cakes, white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake and chocolate pudding. Very, very tasty. I have a code (7PQK525) if anyone wants to try a free box.

To help me get through the week, I bought some of the only beers I actually like! They're light and fruity cherry and raspberry beers, and taste more like a cider than a beer, so I find them surprosingly pleasant. I might get some more to help me celebrate handing in the first draft of my thesis today...