last two papers of the month!

As the subject line suggests, I'm working on my last two papers for this month -- well, the last two due this month, but still, that's something! I'm not counting my final counselling project (even though it's due 11/28), because it doesn't have to have a thesis.

Why, then, am I posting here? Because, gentle reader, my earlier theory (from the days of the Lamentable Midterm) has proven to be true; when I am attempting to compose my thoughts to write about my personal life, suddenly the logic necessary to compare Jane Austen novels comes easily to my fingertips and I find myself writing paragraphs of academic prose without a hitch, while here I struggle for half an hour to find the proper description for how I'm writing over there. I'd rather have a writing muse that didn't require these bait-and-switch techniques to get going on the necessary work, but for the moment I am going to take what I can get.

While not bewailing the difficulty of enticing my muse to apply herself, things here have been quite pleasant. I had a lovely birthday, a few weeks back, with chocolate mousse and other wonderful things to eat, and just this past weekend I went for tapas with some friends and consumed (amongst many other things still delicious but not quite as memorable):

• vast quantities of devilled dates, which are dates stuffed with mild chorizo, then wrapped in bacon -- sweet and savory all in one bite


• vinegared smelt filets, clean in flavour and pleasantly chewy


• little pieces of octopus, covered in paprika and eaten on top of slices of boiled potato


• tiny meat balls in a sweet, slightly thick sauce of saffron and onions and perhaps sherry


• meltingly soft scallop sashimi in a squid ink vinegarette


• tiny half-bites of crab mixed with something velvety and then breaded and fried; I had been going to call them crab cakes, but that conjures up entirely the wrong impression, although I do love traditional crab cakes as well.

I also had a lovely, lovely dessert of figs stuffed with chocolate and nuts, drizzled with a port wine reduction, as well as bites of the amazing chocolate-studded bread pudding my husband got. All in all, a very successful visit; as this was the 2nd year that C. and I held a mutual birthday dinner there it's well on its way to becoming a tradition, and I certainly intend to arrange for us to go back next year.

Aside from that brief excursion into the realm of gastronomy, life has really been 95% composed of papers -- the writing of them, the waiting to receive grades, and the constant low-level anxiety of knowing that more papers are imminent. I do manage moments -- even entire days -- of non-paper related activities, usually after having just turned one in, but they're constrained by my post-writing exhaustion and the haunting knowledge that I really ought to get to work on the next one.

Does this make me sound miserable? Am I miserable? I don't think so, really. When the writing is going well (as it still is in the other window, knock on wood) I enjoy it immensely. I love learning, real learning, the sudden realisation that I know something that I didn't know before, the chance to take my own ideas and check them against the texts and then put them through the slow process of detailed development and revision until I have an argument that stands up to examination. What I'm finding so painful is the need to do it constantly; I am such a slow writer, and I need so much time to accrete my ideas, and with so many deadlines in rapid succession I'm not always happy with the work I'm turning in. But deadlines must be met, so the papers are turned in even if I know that I could have done more, and only time will tell how they've been received.

Wonderful smells are coming from the other end of the apartment, so I will break here to go have dinner, and doubtless return afterwards to confuse my muse once again so that I can finish the Austen paper tonight.