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Today was Convocation Day. We have four convocations a year - one in December, for Fall Semester graduates, and three in May, to accommodate the much larger number of Spring graduates. Each of us is expected to attend one convocation per year; I always ask for the Spring 1:00 event, which meshes best with the bus schedules and doesn't interfere with my winter holiday plans.
One good thing about our department's move: the convocations are held in that same building, so we don't have to trot across campus in our robes, risking (variously) snow, rain, or heat stroke. The general tedium remains; it was mitigated, this year, by the number of top-quality students our department was graduating.
Meanwhile, thanks to someone's mention of FeedBooks, I've finally gotten my hands on Stapledon's Sirius and Odd John, which were the others of his works that I hadn't read. (I have a paper copy of Last and First Men / Last Men in London and an electronic copy of Star Maker.) I recently finished William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland; it isn't as good, I don't think, as The Night Land, but it has some Stapledon-before-Stapledon overtones. I also read Chambers' The King in Yellow; the first four stories, in which the imaginary play by that title plays a role, are pretty good horror - kind of Lovecraftean, a generation early and without the purple prose. The rest of the stories are fair-to-middling fantasy.
I'm slowly getting my routines moving again. My financial record-keeping is woefully behind; my attempt to rebalance my checking account ran afoul of a charge at Shop'n'Save for which I couldn't find the receipt. I eventually found it, crumpled in the waste basket; I could swear that I'd already entered that data, but there was no other sign of it. That account, I managed to balance, but my petty cash records are off by about $15, and I have no idea where that money went.
Maybe I'll manage to get some music, math, or book review posts written soon....
One good thing about our department's move: the convocations are held in that same building, so we don't have to trot across campus in our robes, risking (variously) snow, rain, or heat stroke. The general tedium remains; it was mitigated, this year, by the number of top-quality students our department was graduating.
Meanwhile, thanks to someone's mention of FeedBooks, I've finally gotten my hands on Stapledon's Sirius and Odd John, which were the others of his works that I hadn't read. (I have a paper copy of Last and First Men / Last Men in London and an electronic copy of Star Maker.) I recently finished William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland; it isn't as good, I don't think, as The Night Land, but it has some Stapledon-before-Stapledon overtones. I also read Chambers' The King in Yellow; the first four stories, in which the imaginary play by that title plays a role, are pretty good horror - kind of Lovecraftean, a generation early and without the purple prose. The rest of the stories are fair-to-middling fantasy.
I'm slowly getting my routines moving again. My financial record-keeping is woefully behind; my attempt to rebalance my checking account ran afoul of a charge at Shop'n'Save for which I couldn't find the receipt. I eventually found it, crumpled in the waste basket; I could swear that I'd already entered that data, but there was no other sign of it. That account, I managed to balance, but my petty cash records are off by about $15, and I have no idea where that money went.
Maybe I'll manage to get some music, math, or book review posts written soon....
