Thought I’d fire off an update real quick.
Yesterday I had my official Last Day in the Lab. Which means that now I am officially Thesis-bound. After talking things over with my supervisor, it looks like I’ll have to submit my Thesis in the next 4-6 weeks (sounds like an Amazon delivery) and wait to be examined by mid-September.
Why am I telling you this? ‘Cause it’s a blog. That’s what you do with a blog. The Dream has come true.
In the unlikely event that I’ve been missed, I felt that I should fire off a quick blognote (yes, that’s a word) to tell you that I am currently buried under tons of material that is supposed to go into a nice neat thesis that is in turn supposed to help me get a PhD.
Current plans tell me to submit the first draft by the end of May. That sounds like “the end of me”. Well, don’t hold your breath, but I am actually trying to pull that stunt off, although I must admit that I’ve never seen anything develop so slowly.
And that, friends, is where I am.
Please keep me in your prayers.
Things have changed slightly since I last wrote something that didn’t include my nephew, “funny” answers or mutant ducklings.
Remember how I wrote about that excellent experiment on February 8th? Well, it is March 1st today, and we have been completely unable to repeat it. It looks like some technical issue that we can’t just put our collective lab finger on… so we’re doing what good researchers do in these cases: Buy new stuff.
In other news, I’m still waiting to hear from the agency. Not unexpected really, since the last two agencies that reviewed the novel took 6-8 weeks to come up with a decision, and it’s only been three weeks with this one. Every day I check my pigeonhole to see if there is a big brown envelope with my 216 pages in it (return and possible rejection), but I find nothing. So I wait, work and write; this is my current labour. Oh, and I got a haircut.
That’s it for now. I’ll let you know when things change.
For those of you who may have not noticed, the UK is a bit windy today. You know, people lifting off their feet, cars moving from their parking lots, rooftops falling etc. Of course, in Bradford people are so used to the gales that it’s business as usual. When buildings start falling, we might call it a day.
Nine people have already diedand shipping companies are telling their boats to stay put, while Scotland has apparently seen its first bad snow this winter. And it looks like it’ll get worse – “cold snap” they call it, as in “snap-freeze”. Anyone seen The day after tomorrow?
Anyway, I thought I’d be a good blogger and blog some news. If the Isles are wiped off the map tomorrow, it was not Bin Laden. Probably.
Greece was great. That’s how I’d summarise our two-week holiday that finished last Friday. Me and my lovely lady really roamed the land; we went everywhere our legs, buses, trams, taxis and subways could take us, we ate as much as we could of my mother’s divine cuisine, slept like logs and generally left bleak black Bradford behind us for a while. It was good, and I think we both needed it – it’s when you don’t think that you need a rest that you REALLY need it.
It was vastly therapeutic – I’m glad she convinced me to take the time off. I came back rested, relaxed and considerably less stressed than when I left. Not to mention a few pounds heavier and slightly tanned, but a long-overdue diet will take care of the former and Ol’ Blighty will handle the latter. So’ed.
One of the best things of course was meeting up with friends, old and new. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed some people, and I will publicly admit that I went pretty soft more than once. Especially in one case, I felt a friendship rekindled, for which I am very thankful.
Anyway, I know what you logged on to see. Photos. Well, here is a very small selection of the 500+ shots that we took.
First to dazzle you with some classic Athenean scenery: The Acropolis, as seen from the Ancient Agora (the Forum, so to speak)
... followed by a view of northwest Athens, as seen from Lykabettus...
... and we finish off with a serene shot of the eastern coast.
The Theater of Herod Atticus. Also known as The Place Where Yanni Did That Concert
The Karyatids. These are copies of the six original statues, five of which are in the Acropolis museum and one is, um, in the British Museum. Must've gotten lost in the post, like those marbles... Did anyone say "theft"? As in "blatant, flagrant THEFT"?
Alexander the Super-Awesome. And I don’t wanna hear nothing from dem Persians…
The Upturned Microscope 
