Stuff to retrieve

Besides the light box, I want to get the food processor or the blender, maybe both; some blankets for the guest bed, in case anyone comes to stay (it’s currently made up with sheets and spread only, not enough for winter); and the muffin tin. I also want to make sure that the china I’m going to give away is accessible, so that I can get at it when the time comes for a rendezvous with the person who is going to get it.

I thought I was going to do without all these things for a few weeks, maybe a few months at most. It’s interesting to observe what I think I can do without, what I really don’t miss, what I do want back. I miss my books, but that’s a constant ache that I can stand. The food processor and muffin tin are less important to me, but every time I think “I could make soup” or “I could make muffins” and then realize I don’t have them, it’s a sharp annoyance. I packed all the bedding just to make room in the closet, and at present no one is scheduled to stay, but if we’re going to be shifting boxes and retrieving stuff anyway, might as well be prepared.

A nutjob with company

Sir John is also interested in the Burne-Jones exhibit, so we’re going to make it a joint vacation. Yay! It is lovely to be married to someone who is weird the same way I am shares my interests.

And this weekend (well, tomorrow, I guess) we’ll visit the storage unit and dig out my light box.

I expected to be unpacking in a new place by now, but no such luck. Hello housing slump. Hello continued hellish commute (now with extra road work). I shall think about what other packed-away items I’d like to have back, since it looks as if we’ll be in this house for another winter.

SAD nutjob = me?

If you’ve read this blog for awhile, or visited the archives, you’ll know I get very gloomy in winter (which I think of as Iguana Sseason), that I long to spend all of December in Morocco or Mexico, and that it is very good for me to take at least a short domestic break somewhere sunny, as I did in 2015. So why, why am I contemplating a trip to London in January, when it will no doubt rain every day and the days will certainly be even shorter than they are here at home?

Because of the Edward Burne-Jones exhibition at the Tate Britain, which runs 24 October 2018 – 24 February 2019.

I’m not sure that it’s exactly EBJ himself drawing me (if you’d asked me who my favorite nineteenth-century painter was, I probably would have said Rousseau, or possibly Corot), but a combination of his artistic, literary, and historical significance alongside the provenance of many of the exhibited items, on loan from private owners. This is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see paintings whose owners have gone off to their winter homes in Morocco or Ibiza or wherever, before they come home in March and want their stuff back. It’s not as if Andrew Lloyd Webber is ever going to invite me over for a drink and a good ogle at his Burne-Jones collection. We’ve never even met, and I probably would seem like a dodgy, not to mention boring, guest, likely to drone on about owners of medieval manuscripts and the beginnings of the EETS.

Traveling overseas purely to see a museum exhibition seems most extravagant and self-indulgent. If the exhibit ran until summer, I could combine it with the Early Book Society conference or Leeds, but the dates are what they are (and I’m not giving a paper at either conference, it’s just that if I paid my own way to either I’d feel that I had a respectable professional reason to travel, plus I could take some time to look at manuscripts). However, January is the off-season, as well as when I have a little bit of a break from both teaching and family obligations. If I take a not-so-desirable flight, and go for a shortish period of time, I can stay someplace decent and probably pay for the whole thing with my first year’s full-professor salary bump.

I think I’ve talked myself into it, even though I hate traveling in the winter, as a general thing. Does exposure to art counteract SAD as well as actual sunshine does? Perhaps it’s worth running the experiment.

(Self)Promotion

My application has passed another level of inspection, the one after which all the rest is rubber-stamping. So, although I’ll be getting another couple of letters of approval as the process takes its course, I am now certain that as of next spring, I will be a full professor.

It has taken me a long time, and I’m happy to achieve this goal. It might have happened sooner if the MMP had been less recalcitrant, but research takes the time it takes. Anyway: Yay!

All the tea in China

Fortunately, road work is slacking off and I got home in tolerably good time last night.

Unfortunately, I messed around for awhile before feeding the cats and heading to the bathtub.

Fortunately, my lovely husband likes to talk to me when he gets home.

Unfortunately, chatting meant it was very late before I picked up the book I wanted to finish (Foundryside).

Fortunately, I enjoyed it, despite what I thought was a bit of hand-waving at several key points (aka Thing That Has to Happen just Happens, OK?).

Unfortunately, staying up to read meant it was midnight before I went to bed.

Fortunately, I fell asleep quickly.

Unfortunately, when Sir John came to bed, he snored in every position he tried. Also I was hot and a bit congested. Further, Basement Cat thought he should get up around 5:30.

Fortunately, we have a large house and a comfortable couch, so I could try to go back to sleep in a quiet space.

Unfortunately, our new next-door neighbors’ bathroom window faces the window of our quiet-room-with-couch, and they turned on their FIVE THOUSAND WATT bathroom light at 6:20 a.m., at which point I gave up on sleeping any more.

Fortunately, I have my choice of lots of flavors of tea around here, and have now sucked down three cups of Russian Caravan.

Unfortunately, that may interfere with sleep tonight.

Fortunately, I have managed to get at least a few tasks done this morning, and will keep trying to work on the list. If my brain gives out, I can go dig out more oregano roots.