A photoless update!

Well then.  It's been two weeks, time for your update on my adventures!

Well, that's what I'd be saying had there been any noteworthy adventures afoot these past two weeks.  Instead, what you get is a tale of new meetings, academic misadventures, and bureaucratic tomfoolery!  Such fun!

First, new meetings!  On Thursday last (that's the 22nd for those of you keeping score), Siobhan, David, and I went whale watching.  We saw no whales.  However, we did meet Jennie, a new Dive Instructor at Dive.is - which is the place where Hana and Siobhan both work - and Fiona, a friend of Siobhan's from England.  Much fun was had, what with me getting thoroughly soaked by the driving rain and spray from the waves hitting the boat.  David and I determined that, should this whole 'academia' thing not pan out for us, we're going to buy a ship and become pirates.  This has been filed away as Plan E in my Multitudinous Collection of Plans.*  After our abortive attempt at finding whales, Jennie headed on home and the remainder of us grabbed some dinner, then David, Siobhan, Fi, Ryder, and I hit the hot tubs, and went to the pub where David and Ryder were playing.  Good times were had by all.

Then, a couple of days later, David and Siobhan broke my bed.**  Fortunately, I managed to fix things fairly easily, in a testament to my ability to jury-rig and perform amateur metal working with next to no equipment!***

And now, Academia, because frankly I'm not good at transitional phrases.

Here's a quick run-down for those of you who are interested in my academic progress:  I'm doing as well as Ryder in Old Norse Religions, and beating him in Paleography.  Old Norse is kicking my ass in new and frightening ways, though.  Fortunately, there's a week off this week, and I'll be hopefully studying myself into premature aging, as in addition to Old Norse, I need to write a 5000ish word paper for the Religions course, and in order to do that I should probably finish the book that forms a central tenet of my thesis.

Or, rather, I would, were it not for the fact that I'm going to the Westfjords with Paul, David, Siobhan, and David's brother to spend the weekend in an abandoned herring canning factory.

No, really.

Also, insofar as acamademia is related, I've still not got an advisor for my thesis,**** but I do have a professor interested in working with me for a PhD in Nottingham next year, so I applied there.  I should hear from them shortly with a yea or nay.

That's a bit of extra stress I probably could live without.

Finally, bureaucratic tomfoolery! 

I'm getting deported!*****

OK, to be both more accurate and less hyperbolic, my residence permit has yet to be renewed.  This is because UTL generally doesn't like Canadians, apparently.  Hopefully, though, this should get sorted and your intrepid narrator will not be cast from the country before he finishes his exams.  The thesis itself I can probably do from Canada fairly easily.

And that about sums it up.  Of course, there are a massive amount of footnotes, but then again, I like footnotes, so it works.

Hopefully, there'll be photos for you all on the next update, and even more hopefully, we won't have wandered into a Saw-like situation with this 'music festival' we're attending.

You know the drill though, Gentle Readers.  If not back, avenge death.


*Contrary to popular belief, I do in fact plan things out, albeit it broad strokes, rather than fine details.  By way of example, plan A involves me getting my PhD and becoming a professor; plan B has me getting my teacher's cert and teaching high school History and English; plan C involves running for Parliament; plan D is getting Richard Branson to fund an airship construction firm; plan E is piracy, of one form or another.

**To elaborate, neither David nor Fiona had seen The Boondock Saints before, and thus Siobhan rectified that by bringing the film over here so we could watch it in my room.  Fiona got the Seat of Honour, as she was visiting, and David, Siobhan, and I were on my bed, while Hayley got the Swank-Ass Leather Desk Chair.  At some point, one of the legs broke on the bed, which resulted in us being spilled onto the floor and me removing the other three legs so that the bed sat on the ground.

***So, the leg is just a piece of 5mm steel bent at a 90 degree angle and then soldered onto a tube of aluminum.  It got bent to around 45 degrees, and so I took a hammer (graciously provided by Myriam) and used a stone as my anvil and hammered that sucker roughly back into shape.  I also managed to snap the thin solder that was holding it to the leg, and as such, I now have a piece of 1x4 as a supplementary leg, and I managed to hammer the steel to such an angle that it (roughly) fits into the aluminum and keeps the bed (mostly) stable.  Go me!

****Which is on spears in the sagas, and how they're not all just spears.  It's a rather esoteric and finicky thing, but basically it amounts to me writing the entry on 'throwing spear,' 'heavy spear,' 'short spear,' and 'thrusting spear' for the Dungeons and Dragons: Medieval Scandinavia source book.

*****Not really.