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The past few days have been lovely. I've slept in with no alarms, gotten a lot of work done, almost finished the epic game of Civ 4 Fall from Heaven my brother and I started a few weeks ago, bought a lot of the things I need for the next few weeks and the coming semester, and generally relaxed and read to my heart's content. I have unfortunately finished reading all The Hobbit fic the new movie has generated which leaves me living on new chapters (which are coming out at a prodigious rate all things considered *L*) So instead, I have been indulging in a reread of the longest LOTR fic you'll probably ever see - Boromir's Return by Osheen Nevoy which is nearly 523,000 words, so a bit like rereading the last two LOTR books only with more feels. In case you missed it on my tumblr, I found a great piece of production art of young!Thorin yesterday *G*
The work I was doing all week was writing the essays/research proposals for the three scholarships I have due by late Jan/mid Feb. I finished them yesterday, and most of my recommendation letters are already in, so today will be devoted to filling in the actual forms online and tripling checking them before submission. If I get all that done, then tomorrow I will treat myself to a matinee of The Hobbit. I've also been organizing all my reading for my qualifying exams which will be in a few months. A lot of these articles I've already read or are easy to skim if you're just taking small points from them in order to answer larger questions, so the key for me will be organizing them all into easily remembered groupings of names and topics related to the actual exam questions, plus writing the first paragraph and outline of the rest of the essay for every question that might possibly come up. I also have to start doing research for the two conference presentations I've committed to give this spring, along with revising my dissertation proposal so I can submit it as an NSF proposal in a few months. I'm still waiting on feedback from two people though. So basically, I'm going to be ridiculously busy again, though I can't bring myself to feel as stressed as I did last semester until quals are much closer.
I think I forgot to mention it, but I headed into the city in January to visit some of my Japanese friends and watch the new Battleship Yamato with them in their NYC apartment. It's not my favourite type of anime, but it was fun to use my Japanese language skills (since there were no subtitles). However, it started to snow while I was heading for the city, and I ended up slipping on those damn grates they embed in the sidewalks in the city, smashing my right knee directly into one of them. It was immensely painful, but the swelling and limping went down after a few days though it took over two weeks for the bruises to disappear. However, there was one spot on the knee which was immensely painful to press on, and is still quite tender now so I headed to the doctor a few days ago to get it x-rayed to check that I hadn't cracked a bone or something. I hadn't, but I was diagnosed with prepatellar bursitis which basically means I damaged the fluid filled sac above my kneecap. I've been told not to go back to bujinkan until it's no longer tender to the touch and I can kneel on it. I knew I should probably have skipped bujinkan while I was in NJ as well, but I also trusted that since everyone there was black belt or above, I could tell them my knee was injured and they'd avoid hitting it (I didn't want to miss training with Jack to be honest). Here in Madison, I've trained with injuries before and the majority of the people training don't have the skill to avoid reinjuring me so it's best if I stay away until it's fully healed.
Yesterday, I realized I hadn't left the apartment in a few days so I headed to Barnes and nNoble to pick up a new book which I will read once the fervor for LOTR/Hobbit leave me, Teavana so I could use a christmas giftcard, and then over to panera bread where I had a nice lunch while reading Boromir's Return. I then headed home to watch Leverage with a friend and spent the rest of the evening watching the Hobbit production videos (which are pretty damn long if you watch them all at once), and working on applications. Today, I headed over to Daisy's Cafe and Cupcakery where I had a lovely brunch of an egg casserole with mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and pesto bread crumbs with roasted potatoes and fresh fruit on the side, followed by a desert of the Wakey-Bakey cupcake which is a bacon-maple-chocolate cupcake seen whose picture I have immortalized here. Delicious. I read more of Boromir's return then stopped at the botanical gardens on the way home to see how the Thai pavilion looked in snow. I also ventured over to Monona lake to do something I had never done before - namely, step out on a frozen lake. They never freeze solid enough for it to be safe in NJ after all. A very weird feeling to be standing over deep, frozen water.
And now I must go back to working on applications. Ja ne!
The work I was doing all week was writing the essays/research proposals for the three scholarships I have due by late Jan/mid Feb. I finished them yesterday, and most of my recommendation letters are already in, so today will be devoted to filling in the actual forms online and tripling checking them before submission. If I get all that done, then tomorrow I will treat myself to a matinee of The Hobbit. I've also been organizing all my reading for my qualifying exams which will be in a few months. A lot of these articles I've already read or are easy to skim if you're just taking small points from them in order to answer larger questions, so the key for me will be organizing them all into easily remembered groupings of names and topics related to the actual exam questions, plus writing the first paragraph and outline of the rest of the essay for every question that might possibly come up. I also have to start doing research for the two conference presentations I've committed to give this spring, along with revising my dissertation proposal so I can submit it as an NSF proposal in a few months. I'm still waiting on feedback from two people though. So basically, I'm going to be ridiculously busy again, though I can't bring myself to feel as stressed as I did last semester until quals are much closer.
I think I forgot to mention it, but I headed into the city in January to visit some of my Japanese friends and watch the new Battleship Yamato with them in their NYC apartment. It's not my favourite type of anime, but it was fun to use my Japanese language skills (since there were no subtitles). However, it started to snow while I was heading for the city, and I ended up slipping on those damn grates they embed in the sidewalks in the city, smashing my right knee directly into one of them. It was immensely painful, but the swelling and limping went down after a few days though it took over two weeks for the bruises to disappear. However, there was one spot on the knee which was immensely painful to press on, and is still quite tender now so I headed to the doctor a few days ago to get it x-rayed to check that I hadn't cracked a bone or something. I hadn't, but I was diagnosed with prepatellar bursitis which basically means I damaged the fluid filled sac above my kneecap. I've been told not to go back to bujinkan until it's no longer tender to the touch and I can kneel on it. I knew I should probably have skipped bujinkan while I was in NJ as well, but I also trusted that since everyone there was black belt or above, I could tell them my knee was injured and they'd avoid hitting it (I didn't want to miss training with Jack to be honest). Here in Madison, I've trained with injuries before and the majority of the people training don't have the skill to avoid reinjuring me so it's best if I stay away until it's fully healed.
Yesterday, I realized I hadn't left the apartment in a few days so I headed to Barnes and nNoble to pick up a new book which I will read once the fervor for LOTR/Hobbit leave me, Teavana so I could use a christmas giftcard, and then over to panera bread where I had a nice lunch while reading Boromir's Return. I then headed home to watch Leverage with a friend and spent the rest of the evening watching the Hobbit production videos (which are pretty damn long if you watch them all at once), and working on applications. Today, I headed over to Daisy's Cafe and Cupcakery where I had a lovely brunch of an egg casserole with mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and pesto bread crumbs with roasted potatoes and fresh fruit on the side, followed by a desert of the Wakey-Bakey cupcake which is a bacon-maple-chocolate cupcake seen whose picture I have immortalized here. Delicious. I read more of Boromir's return then stopped at the botanical gardens on the way home to see how the Thai pavilion looked in snow. I also ventured over to Monona lake to do something I had never done before - namely, step out on a frozen lake. They never freeze solid enough for it to be safe in NJ after all. A very weird feeling to be standing over deep, frozen water.
And now I must go back to working on applications. Ja ne!
