Happy New Year from Oxford

Welcome to 2011! I'm sure my faithful readership has been heartbroken in my absence, but fear not! I have returned!

I guess Lee is kind of a BA too.

I had an extremely relaxing holiday at home, discounting the day after I finished reading Good Omens, when I read the article about the dead birds and fish in Arkansas and feared that the world was truly ending.  Having recovered from this brief moment of anxiety, much of the rest of my break was constructively employed watching Battlestar Galactica with Drew and catching up on my backlog of Gintama episodes while Drew was busy playing Team Fortress 2.  By the way, did I mention that BSG is frakking (yeah, see what I did there) awesome? I'm still in the second season, so no spoilers guys, but my impression so far can be summarized like this: Blondie Cylon is a man, Gaius is horrible, Apollo is pretty, Starbuck is a total BA, Adama is frickin' Gandalf, also, I was kind of hoping the President would die of cancer. Spaceships! Robots!

My feelings exactly.

Moving on - I have finally arrived back in Oxford after the long Christmas holiday. Luckily I didn't have as much trouble getting into the country as I did getting out. No snow on the ground here anymore, in fact it was positively warm (12°C) when I arrived last Thursday, although now it's gotten colder again. Good thing I got more socks for Christmas! I spent most of the weekend getting over jet-lag (still working on that actually) although that did not stop me from going to the library on Friday to read about sonnets (ugh).  I also managed, however, to see The King's Speech on Saturday, which was amazing. Then I went to sleep again because my brain is still very confused about this whole time zone change thing.

It's Tuesday night here, and believe it or not I've already had both of my new classes for this term. This term I only have a B-Course (bibliography/editing) and a C-Course (elective, kind of)--my A-Course (survey course) ended last term. Yesterday I had my C-Course, "Life and Death of the Sonnet." This one seems like it's going to be interesting, not least because we get to read a lot of sonnets, which I love:

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed;
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got:
I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
I lov'd, but straight did not what Love decreed.
At length to love's decrees I, forc'd, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.

From Sidney's Astrophil and Stella sonnet sequence...lovely, isn't it? Unfortunately we aren't doing much Sidney in this course, but Donne is nice too, though I've always thought Milton's sonnets were a bit stuffy. Also unfortunately, my position paper and presentation for this class are due next Monday, so I am hitting the library hard for the rest of the week so that I can say something about sonnets as monuments next week.

Oriel College quad

This morning I had my B-Course in Oriel College, which I'd never been in, and which I found out is really pretty.  I also enjoyed B-Course way more than I thought I would.  It's more about technical details of editing than literature, so I was kind of nervous for it, especially since my B-Course paper is due at the end of this term and I still don't really know how to do this kind of research, but I actually really enjoyed it.  Today we talked about editing manuscripts and what kind of decisions an editor needs to make when presenting scholarly (or more popular) editions of texts that exist in one or multiple manuscripts, possibly with different readings.  Hopefully I can figure out a way to work on something for the B-Course essay that relates to my dissertation without completely overlapping.  Maybe readership and circulation for Hero and Leander or some such thing? I'm sure I'll figure it out soon; six week terms go by pretty fast.

Level E: Gintama+Hitchhiker's Guide+oldschool bishie=win.

Meanwhile I've been settling back into life here, getting groceries, making my room not smell like cleaning products, going to the library, and of course watching my new favorite show, Level E. I also finally got my ATM card sorted out for my bank here (for some reason this took like 8 weeks and 5 steps to accomplish) so I feel like a real resident of the UK, which is probably a good thing since it looks like I'm gonna be here until the end of June when I hand that dissertation in.  I did manage to bring one box of mac and cheese with me from home, a thing which they apparently don't have here at all, so when I get really homesick for American cuisine I'll bust it out; otherwise it's fish n chips and cottage pie for the rest of the year.

Now that I'm back in the UK, I'll try to update once a week again, so stayed tuned for more of Kelly's Adventures in Oxford next week!

KQ out.

Shout APPRIVOISE!!