Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sickness and Delays

Okay, so I haven't updated in a whole week. So sue me.

Yes, a full-on cold developed just as I got home from Oxford. I was in bed all day Monday and much of Tuesday - seriously, I didn't know it was possible to simply lie still in bed for hours and hours on end like that. It was a good thing though, because for the most part it's over, except that I kept myself awake coughing last night, and I still feel a bit run-down. At least I wasn't sick in Oxford. THAT would have been a tragedy.

Tomorrow I'm going to Galway for the weekend with one of my roommates. It should be fun: we're catching the bus very early tomorrow and getting to Galway around 10:30am. We'll probably spend Friday walking around the city, then Saturday, if the weather is nice, we can go to the Cliffs of Mohor, which are supposed to be absolutely stunning. That will depend on the weather, though. Then Sunday we'll do whatever we didn't do on Friday and Saturday, then catch the 7:30pm bus back home, and get in nice and late. Neither of us knew that Monday is in fact a Bank Holiday (socialist jargon for "we want at least one vacation day a month but we're too lazy to think up an excuse"), otherwise we would have just come back on Monday. But that's fine with me. I fell rather behind on work while I was sick, and it'll be nice to have an extra day to take it easy after what I expect will be a packed (with fun) weekend.

In other news, as a result of my time in Oxford, I have changed thesis topics again. Well, I've actually gone back to my original idea that had just never really taken off. So instead of covering one debate over the state of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, I'll be covering a broader time period and more sources on the question of whether the Pope is Antichrist. Anyone want to take a crack at this one? Maybe your insights will end up enshrined in my thesis! You know you want it!

I feel good about the shift though. It essentially negates the work I was doing for the last 6 weeks, but it was hardly a waste because I did get a lot of contextual information from it, plus it was just plain interesting. But my new topic is more focused, narrower (the Eucharist one was so large as to be quite unwieldy), and it allows me to cover a longer time period and more sources, which means that over the next several months it will hopefully be more interesting to analyze than simply sticking to one text and trying to beat the truth out of it. Or something. Is thesis writing supposed to be this violent?

And finally, I'm considering spending a week in Pairs and a week in Vienna in December, to look at Christmas lights and go to Christmas markets and visit museums and just generally be cultured. Suggestions welcome; updates to come.

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