Chaos Follows

'Chaos follows.' This warning on the library printer (about the dangers of printing multiple jobs at once) seems applicable to my life at the moment.

The lights have just gone off (and luckily, now back on again) and the sound of power tools is resonating through the library. The joys of working in the university out of term time when it is assumed that library renovations won't inconvience anyone. I'd work from home but I can't face the thought of moving all the accumulated junk (no, research, really) from my carrel. Working at this time of year is difficult - the hot sunny days (and early library closing times) suggest days at the beach and evenings on the balcony with wine and cheese, while a number of accumulating and overrun deadlines (what first two thesis chapters?) mean that this student-free time should really be spend being productive.

At the moment I'm working on papers for two conferences in February. One is for 'Victorians and the Other' (the AVSA conference) which I've called 'The Other Women: Interrogating Sexuality in the Lost Race Romance', and the other for 'Old World, New Worlds' (the ANZAMEMS conference) titled "My brother, my captain, my king': Old Masculinities Meet New Technologies in Lord of the Rings'. Research for this paper involves playing video games, so maybe working over summer won't be quite so bad.

And it is almost Christmas - which makes a Christmas junkie like me rather happy. I've put up my decorations at home (if in a slightly improvised kind of way) and the sisterly decorating of the tree at my parents happened last week. Tomorrow I plan on an exceptional organised present shopping expedition, because the tree really does need the finishing touch of presents underneath it!