12.03.2005
end of term
Today marks the official end of the Oxford full term. Actually, yesterday did. And the end of the Cambridge full term. The actual Oxford term doesn't end for another week, though. I guess there's some difference between "full term" and "term". Probably administrative.
It occurs to me that I've not been blogging as much this term than I did in a comparable amount of time last year. First off, yes. That's correct. I went through and counted the term timeposts to discover that this term, I have posted 18 times in 2 months. Last year, I posted 45 times. I think there are two reasons for this.
a) I'm not new to this anymore. I had a lot more of a sense of wonder when I was brand new to Oxford. Now that I've been here a year, there might not be as many things to gripe about.
b) that first reason is complete hogwash. While I was writing it, I remembered just in between my last post and this one, I've had two concerts, gone to London to see my family, had about 3 days of work negated, been mentioned by name in an Oxford lecture, been to two carols services, and had Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Oh, and I finished my thesis.
Which might actually allow me to tack on the actual second reason for why I've not been posting so much.
b.2) I'VE HAD A THESIS TO WRITE!!!! Seriously, I've been working like a dog. A very hardworking dog. Who has a thesis to write. It's not very poetic, but it's an explanation. I've been doing a chapter each week, either writing or revising. As well as turning in an outline of the next week's chapter. Without the bibliography, title page, table of contents, etc., this first draft comes to exactly 70 pages. If I include the footnotes (which my advisor tells me to do), it's 29,039 words. If not, then it's 24,853. The thesis is supposed to be 25,000 words, and my advisor keeps telling me it still feels kind of thin in areas. ARGH! But it's done. I don't really have a definitive count of how many books I've used or checked out of the library for this: I think it numbers in the 50's. I can't really look at the bibliography, since that's only the books I've actively used. There were a lot more that I checked out, looked at, and realized would be useless.
So by way of that very long-winded explanation I hope to have explained at least a part of why I haven't posted so much.
Now, on to the good stuff.
When we last left our hero (me), We'd just gotten done with the godawful Magdala service. And it was indeed awful. Not just awful: legendary-awful. Ugh. Painful.
On Wednesday, I made myself a nice pan-fried steak with port wine and shallot sauce for lunch (I've been making that sauce a lot: it's yummy). This involves swirling massive amounts of butter and shallot and minced mushroom stems around in the pan that I just cooked the steak in, then adding two cubes of frozen homemade chicken stock, and then a good amount of low-quality ruby port. Finish with black pepper and we're good to go. I've been using this homemade chicken stock since the beginning of term, when I made it in a giant pot that I actually had to go out to buy. Evidently, the people who stock the college kitchens don't think we're going to be doing anything sophisticated enough as making stock. Anyway, on Thursday, I went to the kitchen and was reaching into the freezer for my lovely stock cubes, and they were gone. Those took me 4.5 hours to simmer, another half hour to strain into pots, a day to chill and de-fat, then 3 days to spoon into ice cube trays. I left a very annoyed note on the door to the refrigerator which was probably a little angrier than I meant it to be. But they got the message - boy was I steamed. As it turned out, one of my neighbors thought it had been there since last year and decided to throw it out. Though I think she actually assumed that someone had taken the time to freeze their urine or something. Gross. We're definitely going to have a freezer-clearing day next week. And I'm also going to make more stock. I haven't decided if I'll do another thing of chicken stock, or whether I'll go all out for some veal stock. The difference, says the Gourmet cookbook, is about 10 hours (much of this is chilling time, though).
I was in a lovely concert on Thursday at Queen's. The Queen's Concert is always on the Thursday of 7th week, which is almost always American Thanksgiving Day. Family was in town again, and I had two nice solos which my friends tell me were very good. Great time. Then we went to the Old Parsonage Hotel for dinner. This was magnificent, and they do amazing food. No time really to list everything, except to say that the guinea fowl was exceedingly succulent.
Friday, by contrast, was an awful concert. Let's not talk about Friday.
I went to London to visit my parents and brothers on Saturday and much of Sunday. It was especially great to see Andrew who, owing to the fact that he's in medical school, has very little time to come up for air. You know all that whining I do about my thesis? I think it's safe to say that he does about 5 times the work that I do. On a side note, I've never really liked London. There are some nice places, but it all feels too much like a city. Like New York. Paris, on the other hand, is like a lot of really nice little neighborhoods strung together without much 'city' feel. Boston is much like that too (though there are some majorly urban areas of Boston as well). I think I like Boston and Paris much more than I like New York or London. Wow did that sound snooty.
This week launched into the last push for my thesis - an introduction and conclusion. The conclusion wasn't that hard to write, though I'm sure I have a few continuity issues throughout the thesis itself. The introduction, on the other hand, took me a long time to hammer through. Thank goodness my advisor liked both of them. On a side note to this, I think I might have hit upon a nice research proposal for a DPhil. I really hope so...
Thursday was the Carols Service at Queen's - I was disappointed not to have so many actually Christmas-y songs to sing. Lots of nice carols though, but in forms that were a bit foreign to me. Apparently, when we declared independence, the Americans also decided to write new tunes to a lot of the Christmas carols.
Before that, though, I had the pleasure of finishing out John Ma's lectures on 4th century Greek History. He mentioned the three phalanxes that he helped to reconstruct at Princeton his 2nd through 4th years at the university. I happened to have been in the first one, and he mentioned me by name in the lecture. He also cited that my shield had been a rather sharp stop sign, much to the disappointment and anger of my fellow phalanx fighters. Maybe, but it made for a very memorable afternoon. :)
Anyway, I will be fully done with Michelmas Term as of 1pm today, when I finish my last seminar with Prof. David Ibbetson. I'll go to Eton to see Matt and Mom before Mom has to leave next Wednesday.
Oh, and a quick note - I installed Mac OS 10.4 this week. I like it.
It occurs to me that I've not been blogging as much this term than I did in a comparable amount of time last year. First off, yes. That's correct. I went through and counted the term timeposts to discover that this term, I have posted 18 times in 2 months. Last year, I posted 45 times. I think there are two reasons for this.
a) I'm not new to this anymore. I had a lot more of a sense of wonder when I was brand new to Oxford. Now that I've been here a year, there might not be as many things to gripe about.
b) that first reason is complete hogwash. While I was writing it, I remembered just in between my last post and this one, I've had two concerts, gone to London to see my family, had about 3 days of work negated, been mentioned by name in an Oxford lecture, been to two carols services, and had Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Oh, and I finished my thesis.
Which might actually allow me to tack on the actual second reason for why I've not been posting so much.
b.2) I'VE HAD A THESIS TO WRITE!!!! Seriously, I've been working like a dog. A very hardworking dog. Who has a thesis to write. It's not very poetic, but it's an explanation. I've been doing a chapter each week, either writing or revising. As well as turning in an outline of the next week's chapter. Without the bibliography, title page, table of contents, etc., this first draft comes to exactly 70 pages. If I include the footnotes (which my advisor tells me to do), it's 29,039 words. If not, then it's 24,853. The thesis is supposed to be 25,000 words, and my advisor keeps telling me it still feels kind of thin in areas. ARGH! But it's done. I don't really have a definitive count of how many books I've used or checked out of the library for this: I think it numbers in the 50's. I can't really look at the bibliography, since that's only the books I've actively used. There were a lot more that I checked out, looked at, and realized would be useless.
So by way of that very long-winded explanation I hope to have explained at least a part of why I haven't posted so much.
Now, on to the good stuff.
When we last left our hero (me), We'd just gotten done with the godawful Magdala service. And it was indeed awful. Not just awful: legendary-awful. Ugh. Painful.
On Wednesday, I made myself a nice pan-fried steak with port wine and shallot sauce for lunch (I've been making that sauce a lot: it's yummy). This involves swirling massive amounts of butter and shallot and minced mushroom stems around in the pan that I just cooked the steak in, then adding two cubes of frozen homemade chicken stock, and then a good amount of low-quality ruby port. Finish with black pepper and we're good to go. I've been using this homemade chicken stock since the beginning of term, when I made it in a giant pot that I actually had to go out to buy. Evidently, the people who stock the college kitchens don't think we're going to be doing anything sophisticated enough as making stock. Anyway, on Thursday, I went to the kitchen and was reaching into the freezer for my lovely stock cubes, and they were gone. Those took me 4.5 hours to simmer, another half hour to strain into pots, a day to chill and de-fat, then 3 days to spoon into ice cube trays. I left a very annoyed note on the door to the refrigerator which was probably a little angrier than I meant it to be. But they got the message - boy was I steamed. As it turned out, one of my neighbors thought it had been there since last year and decided to throw it out. Though I think she actually assumed that someone had taken the time to freeze their urine or something. Gross. We're definitely going to have a freezer-clearing day next week. And I'm also going to make more stock. I haven't decided if I'll do another thing of chicken stock, or whether I'll go all out for some veal stock. The difference, says the Gourmet cookbook, is about 10 hours (much of this is chilling time, though).
I was in a lovely concert on Thursday at Queen's. The Queen's Concert is always on the Thursday of 7th week, which is almost always American Thanksgiving Day. Family was in town again, and I had two nice solos which my friends tell me were very good. Great time. Then we went to the Old Parsonage Hotel for dinner. This was magnificent, and they do amazing food. No time really to list everything, except to say that the guinea fowl was exceedingly succulent.
Friday, by contrast, was an awful concert. Let's not talk about Friday.
I went to London to visit my parents and brothers on Saturday and much of Sunday. It was especially great to see Andrew who, owing to the fact that he's in medical school, has very little time to come up for air. You know all that whining I do about my thesis? I think it's safe to say that he does about 5 times the work that I do. On a side note, I've never really liked London. There are some nice places, but it all feels too much like a city. Like New York. Paris, on the other hand, is like a lot of really nice little neighborhoods strung together without much 'city' feel. Boston is much like that too (though there are some majorly urban areas of Boston as well). I think I like Boston and Paris much more than I like New York or London. Wow did that sound snooty.
This week launched into the last push for my thesis - an introduction and conclusion. The conclusion wasn't that hard to write, though I'm sure I have a few continuity issues throughout the thesis itself. The introduction, on the other hand, took me a long time to hammer through. Thank goodness my advisor liked both of them. On a side note to this, I think I might have hit upon a nice research proposal for a DPhil. I really hope so...
Thursday was the Carols Service at Queen's - I was disappointed not to have so many actually Christmas-y songs to sing. Lots of nice carols though, but in forms that were a bit foreign to me. Apparently, when we declared independence, the Americans also decided to write new tunes to a lot of the Christmas carols.
Before that, though, I had the pleasure of finishing out John Ma's lectures on 4th century Greek History. He mentioned the three phalanxes that he helped to reconstruct at Princeton his 2nd through 4th years at the university. I happened to have been in the first one, and he mentioned me by name in the lecture. He also cited that my shield had been a rather sharp stop sign, much to the disappointment and anger of my fellow phalanx fighters. Maybe, but it made for a very memorable afternoon. :)
Anyway, I will be fully done with Michelmas Term as of 1pm today, when I finish my last seminar with Prof. David Ibbetson. I'll go to Eton to see Matt and Mom before Mom has to leave next Wednesday.
Oh, and a quick note - I installed Mac OS 10.4 this week. I like it.
