just words

there are no pix today because 'somebody else' has taken the camera to work to take pix of his little coffee shop for the other blog. they were just going to be works-in-progress pix anyway, the waratah practise-picot sock is about halfway down the foot and the band for the wrap is at about 120 rows out of the required 170. i am going to have to get someone to explain the next part of the pattern on that one to me, there are stitch markers involved. hmmm.

anyway im completely exhausted today and i missed snb last night because i was driving back from the 'gong. i left at 6am yesterday and had a two hour meeting at 9 about the book im co-editting, including going through a chapter with a contributor. some contributors have not taken kindly to some of the editorial advice they have been given (academics can be precious little things sometimes!) but this contributor was very open so that was nice. and then one of my supervisors (the good one. the other one is on study leave) took me out for lunch and we had a two and a half hour conversation about the rotting corpse that is australian labour history, how my thesis is going to revive it (ha!) and about the future of research in arts faculties including some loose hints about my own future, and some not-so-idle chitchat about the advantages and disadvantages of trying to write a phd on your own in a room in The Can. in other words, it was an extremely positive meeting. not once did he tell me i was wrong about something. he said one chapter was nearly perfect, the theory chapter needed some development but i could come back to it and the chapter i just wrote needed a shift in focus which i knew anyway but his ideas were extremely helpful. i felt like asking him 'who are you and what have you done with my supervisor'. so it was very inspiring and uplifting. its a shame i had to have a meltdown and throw a hissy fit to get taken seriously but anyway, its all good. today. touch wood.

then i went to the first lecture of the third year cultural history/theory subject im co-teaching and a student interrupted the lecture to ask were we trying to say that theres a difference between the past and history and did history, as we meant it, have an impact on the future, and this sparked a discussion in the middle of the lecture that made the lecturer and i look in wonderment at each other (again with the who are you and what have you done with the usual undergrads?). so now i am feeling all inspired about teaching again too!

it was great to be on campus again and to sit in my little office even tho the IT guys had wiped my profile off the server (nice one lads, thank god for flash drives), and i left about 630 and got home at 930 and i dont think ive really woken up yet!

tomorrow we head up to bathurst for possum and my yard dog trial debut at the bathurst show and im half terrified half excited. fingers crossed we dont stuff it up completely!

thats enough words for one day.

have a good weekend.
k xx