In a fit of Olympic withdrawal, Elio and I spent much of the evening downloading videos (from this place, for example, and from here) of favourite figure skating routines from previous Olympics & Worlds. I just love it all—the music, the costumes, the drama and, of course, the guys. ;) I firmly believe that more sports need to feature guys with nice (long, that is) hair, earrings and ... interesting outfits.
In the even of future onset of sudden urges to watch figure skating, I think I will try to build up a library of great performances and burn them to a CD or DVD. I’ve been a figure skating addict for a fair while now, an its even more fun now that I get Elio to watch it with me. Of course, I am slightly suspicious of his reasons for doing so. It may have something to do with the fact that he’s a great fan of classical music whereas I am not ... unless said music is accompanied by an interesting figure skating routine. ;)
Its funny about the Olympics. You end up all excited about things you’d normally care very little about. Such as women’s hockey. I mean, I’m a woman, but women’s hockey and women’s football (soccer, that is) don’t really tend to thrill me. Tonight, however, I found myself more than a little nervous when watching Sweden take on the US in the semi-final of the women’s hockey, and the conclusion of the match was genuinely exciting. It is always great fun when ‘we’ (that being the sports-we, applied when an athlete or a team of athletes representing one’s country does well) manage to secure another Olympic medal. And who knows, maybe the women’s fine performance can rub off on the guys, who really need all the help they can get at the moment. ;)
So, I have one day left before I need to send in my classical & medieval literature exam. Two essay questions out of three down, but the last one’s a bit of a bitch. This has been a very strange class. For the first section, we had a teacher who provided miles upon miles of secondary sources to read, and commented on everything you wrote, and then some. A little overwhelming at times, but useful. For this second section, we have had an incredibly hands-off teacher. Minimal secondary sources provided, just some very general stuff on the period(s), and extremely general and not very useful comments after each batch of assignments. Hence, I really don’t know what he’s looking for in this exam. Which means I am doing what I usually do in those situations; I give them everything. If I get a well-phrased question and a strictly limited word count, I can usually manage to stick to it (though it takes some work, to put it mildly), but open-ended questions and rough suggestions for word counts tend to result in very, very long answers from me.
I am hoping this particular teacher will learn his lesson and be a little more hands-on for the next section of the class, but I rather doubt it. Going back to the first teacher for the fourth and final section late this spring will no doubt be a rather shocking experience. Still, I already find myself wishing the second literature class wasn’t focused entirely on modern stuff, as I wouldn’t have minded continuing on for another year. Its been quite useful for my translation work, and it has even prompted me to do some very small, tentative bits of writing on the side. But alas, since my interest in modern literature is strictly confined to the fantasy genre, I doubt I’d survive a year of what would be on offer in that class.
Kalle Anka has been watched, tons of delicious food (pickled herring, salmon, ham, meatballs, sausages, ribs, cheeses, etc, etc, etc) has been consumed, a fair amount of candy (chocolate, marzipan, ginger candies, etc) has been gobbled up and there’s still dessert, presents, another round of eating and lots of snacking on candy to go.
For now, however, we’ll settle down for a bit to watch The Fellowship of the Ring as “The Lord of the Rings” movies have become something of a new Christmas tradition for us. God jul (Merry Christmas - yes, we celebrate on the 24th) from Sweden!
The Music Genome Project has created Pandora, an on-line radio which’ll play the music you want to hear.
Enter the name of a musician or band, or the title of a song, and Pandora will present full-audio tracks of music which is similar not only in terms of tempo and rhythm, but things like syncopation, antiphony, synth or electronica influences, and more. It’s completely free (although a paid subscription version is available) and extremely interesting—if you find a new piece of music you like, you can purchase the song via iTunes or even get the whole album.
Once again, I have ended up neglecting my posting duties. Possibly it wasn’t such a good idea to split things off into so many different blogs, since I have managed to keep up with some of the more ‘specialized’ ones while failing completely to write down much in the way of general ramblings. Of course, those sections are far more interesting than me just talking about myself. Still, since I am feeling like doing just that today, here’s an earful (or eyeful, rather).
A Feast for Crows, that is.
Elio’s got first reader rights, though, since I go riding in an hour and have work to do when I get back home. He has just had to promise not to exclaim “Oh My God!” (or gasp, squeal, squeak or whimper) while I am in his presence; I am nervous enough about the fates of the characters I like without having him make it worse. Although I love the setting, love the backstory and love much of the writing, I keep wishing that GRRM was a bit more like Guy Gavriel Kay when it comes to killing off characters: that is, deaths should be heroic, significant and poignant.
Even so, I am really looking forward to my turn with the book, and I know I will squeal excitedly about numerous revelations. Oh, and guess who’s in the acknowledgements? Whee!
Today is the 17th of October. Today should have been spent reading A Feast for Crows, or at the very least watchingElio read it.
Not so. We didn’t order from Amazon.co.uk because at first we expected to have an ARC by now, and when both Bantam and Voyager let us down in regards to that we at least expected SF Bokhandeln to have it in today. But no, they didn’t get their books on time from Voyager.
Argh, and argh again. On top of losing our MUSH host over the weekend, and having to read fricking Strindberg for this week’s assignment, these last few days have been pretty sucky indeed. I am expecting some karmic compensation in the near future.
Every year in september Gothenburg hosts Bok- & Biblioteksmässan, a book fair/trade show. I used to attend pretty much every year, because it was the best way to get all the information I could ever want about upcoming books. These days, of course, the Internet supplies that, and I get most of my books from on-line bookstores, so chasing bargains at the book fair is less of a draw. As a result, it has been some years since I attended, but today we decided that it could be worth a few hours of browsing. Initially, I had planned to go in on Friday, to leave today free for seeing off Ostindiefararen G
Yesterday, I finally got a chance to talk to my supervisor about my paper. She’s the head of the faculty, so its taken her some time to go through it and find an hour free in which to speak with me about it. Naturally, this has lead to much worrying on my part; when I hand something in, I really want to know as soon as possible how I did. Fortunately, she had reassuring things to say. The overall quality was very good, with good ideas and good reasoning, and the stuff that needed fixing was primarily structural formalities. The only issues she had with the actual paper as such was my usage of one article that she felt had too many problems, but as it was the only article focusing on that particular aspect, she could see why I had ended up using it. She also wanted me to work in something more about the nature of the relief plaques in terms of what kind of occasions they probably depict; I do have quite a bit about this in the paper, but spread over several sections rather than presented as a cohesive thought.
So ... the end result is that it shouldn’t take me long at all to get it read to be presented. Of course, I have my Literature class to deal with at the same time (this and next semester I am taking a part-time Literature course), but so far it hasn’t been too labour-intensive. Spring will be worse, though. Oh, and of course, it has to be mentioned that just as I thought I was done with the Classical Archaeology & Ancient History (barring the miracle needed to get me into the post-graduate program, that is), they’ve decided to add two more years for a ‘real’, EU-compatible Master’s, and my supervisor asked if I was interested. Which, of course, I am. Especially as the second year of it would actually count towards the post-graduate program, reducing it to three years and hopefully increasing one’s chances to actually get in. But for now, its back to Ibsen (ugh) and polishing up the current paper.
This is incredibly amusing , at least if you grew up watching He-Man. Combining one-hit-wonders 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Going On?” with the old He-Man cartoon is simply off wall, and it works.
I promised that I was going to use this spot for discussing my Master’s thesis. My original idea was going to involve an examination of differing presentations of Faerie as they are used in Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword and Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. That didn’t quite work out, however.
Opera, on the heels of its registration give away to celebrate the 10th years of the browser’s existence, has now made the program free from here on out. its a fine, small, fast browser which users looking to try something new, or those saddled with older, slower computers, should consider taking a look at.
Today, the harness racing track near Gothenburg was holding on of its big yearly races (Åby’s Stora Pris), and as the weather was quite nice, my father and I decided it would be fun to lose some money that way.
For those looking out to try a different browser, the friendly Norwegians behind Opera are now giving away registration codes for the software as part of a celebration of their 10th anniversary. I used to use Opera back in the day, and as far as I know it has remained a fairly small, fast, and feature-filled browser particularly well-suited to those with older, slower computers.