stoutfellow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoutfellow) wrote2016-04-24 01:26 pm
stoutfellow) wrote2016-04-24 01:26 pm
Miscellany
1. I haven't been posting much lately, I see; it's the tail end of the semester, and things have been busy. (I've been on several committees which have chewed up a good deal of time as well.) Next week - the beginning of May - is finals week. After that I'm free for the summer. (Well, "free" in the sense that I won't be teaching, but I've still got a lot to do. The taxonomy papers are continuing to reshape themselves.)
2. For last week's dinners, I made a batch of Cajun-style pork ribs. A b-i-i-i-g batch; I've already had today's dinner, and there's still one more helping left. So, no real cooking this week; I'll pick up a few frozen dinners when I need them.
3. In addition to After London, which I mentioned before, I'm currently reading William Morris' The House of the Wolfings. It's sent in the Germanic lands at about the time of their first collision with the Romans, and has only a light touch of fantasy - unless you count his romanticized view of Germanic life as fantasy! It's interesting to compare the two books. Both describe similar societies, though one is post-apocalyptic and the other pre-modern. Jefferies' narrator recognizes that things are worse than they were, where Morris' feels that things will be worse than they are....
4. On a more nonfictional note, I'm also reading Fustel de Coulanges "La Cité Antique", which was, I think, one of the first major works of cultural history, showing how different aspects of Greek and Roman history developed, step by step, from the domestic religion, with its lares and penates. Fascinating stuff, although I'm sure later researchers have poked a hole or two in it. Also on the nonfictional front, I've started reading Charles Lyell's classic Principles of Geology. I've just barely begun it, and it's very long, so I can't offer any comments on it yet.
5. The department is undergoing a program review over the next year, and I need to update my vita for it. I don't recall this being necessary in earlier reviews, and I don't think I've updated my vita since I was hired. Ugh.
I have lots to do, and no energy to do it with. Two more weeks....
2. For last week's dinners, I made a batch of Cajun-style pork ribs. A b-i-i-i-g batch; I've already had today's dinner, and there's still one more helping left. So, no real cooking this week; I'll pick up a few frozen dinners when I need them.
3. In addition to After London, which I mentioned before, I'm currently reading William Morris' The House of the Wolfings. It's sent in the Germanic lands at about the time of their first collision with the Romans, and has only a light touch of fantasy - unless you count his romanticized view of Germanic life as fantasy! It's interesting to compare the two books. Both describe similar societies, though one is post-apocalyptic and the other pre-modern. Jefferies' narrator recognizes that things are worse than they were, where Morris' feels that things will be worse than they are....
4. On a more nonfictional note, I'm also reading Fustel de Coulanges "La Cité Antique", which was, I think, one of the first major works of cultural history, showing how different aspects of Greek and Roman history developed, step by step, from the domestic religion, with its lares and penates. Fascinating stuff, although I'm sure later researchers have poked a hole or two in it. Also on the nonfictional front, I've started reading Charles Lyell's classic Principles of Geology. I've just barely begun it, and it's very long, so I can't offer any comments on it yet.
5. The department is undergoing a program review over the next year, and I need to update my vita for it. I don't recall this being necessary in earlier reviews, and I don't think I've updated my vita since I was hired. Ugh.
I have lots to do, and no energy to do it with. Two more weeks....