The Lair

Thank Gawd It’s Offal? Ornamental? Probably. But no, I meant Over.Except it’s not, really.

It only took 4 years, 1 month and 4 days. Ugh. And yet, although I say it’s over - it really isn’t. There is possibly another six months of life left in the carcass. Members of family and random onlookers are confused when I point this out - but the thing is that submitting the hefty document just starts the examination process.

But soul searching and searching for employment or chasing down seed money for a startup, as someone is hilariously suggesting to me, is for the morrow. Today I am off to … err .. have a massive hot shower, kick feet up and loll around in front of the TV. Hell yes. All I need is a pipe, comfy bedroom slippers and a tartan robe and I can be that grumpy old man.

And if the planets align tomorrow (and less likely, if GNER still functions); Ed should be visiting. So we can wander around York, get beaten up by the local BNP thuggies and otherwise have a merry old time. There is also a forecast of gale force winds for this weekend, which should enliven proceedings.

I’ve alluded several times before to how large a job can feel when it’s viewed from the outside. I tend to do this a lot. So, this weekend - I stayed at home (a flu break of sorts). That provided enough impetus for a bit of housecleaning.

I finally stopped sitting on sundry papers submitted and pieces of research scribbled and half-done over the years; started on the great merge of 2007. Essentially putting everything into some sort of cohesion and texifying the stuff that I had written in Word and other weird formats ages ago. Because if I don’t fricking submit by summer, I’m going to be missing out.

The theory is that there are many many different forms of writing. The dribble on this blog notwithstanding, I flatter myself that I am a reasonably coherent academic writer. I suck at the informal stuff and even the formal writer-writer stuff. But I can generally put down my reasoning on a page of text - which is basically what academic writing requires. Unfortunately, my style appears to have evolved (a kind word, that) and things I wrote (and were even accepted) ages ago seem horribly contorted and awful now.

Must.resist.temptation.to.rewrite.reams.of.old.material. Just not worth it. But even with that said, it’s going to be sad to have to ruthlessly trim down my 100+ page count at present into a more realistic and much much smaller number. Boo.

Yeah and random bugs with my chosen Tex environment are annoying too. There is too much voodoo in a standard MikTex environment for my comfort. I also made the (possibly fatal) error of upgrading from my venerable (and working!) 2.4 to the not-so-new 2.5. Forgetting the old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it” and promptly breaking everything. Gah.

Oh and over the weekend, Chelsea won the match, but Arsenal threw the better punches. Encouraging from Arsenal, but not enough. Also, they weren’t in Fight Club but apparently a few of their team forgot that. Now if only the Carling cup were being awarded for being a better team of amateur pugilists, Arsenal would have been all over it like a liquored up dirty flyweight over the canvas. As it was - two red cards. And to conclude on a footy note, amazing how much better the Chelsea back four look when Terry is there. Diaby clearly failed at the kick to the head ploy.

And I updated this post to remind myself (it was only Saturday! It seems so long ago!!) that Italy sliced and diced the Scots in the Six Nations and the French grandslam hopes are still alive. Barely. They have a couple of tough games to go, though.