Well, I'm in Little Rock now, as thanks to the loans (and a few gifts from people -- I also accept paypal donations, but I don't know how to tell you that yet (grin)) I can now afford to have the truck repaired. I won't be in the city for too long, though - with or without that truck, I'll still need to tie up loose ends in F'ville before it's on to Glorious England.

Classe(s) are done; the hole in my ceiling has widened; I bought a new fan (with its own mind, now, so it can turn itself on WHENEVER IT FEELS LIKE IT) and a new CD Burner (it made an audio cd in FIVE minutes. I wept openly.)

My mother will drag me to church, because she's like that, but it's only church, and I can put up with it for a little while. Besides, it's interesting.

I received my British Harry Potter on Thursday at 1632, and finished it Friday at 1327, with six hours of sleep and a little bit of work thrown in there, too. I'll have to read it again, since the hype made me fast forward through it.

I saw the property my folks are buying yesterday, and aside from its tick-infested nature and the fact that Mother Green has seen fit to make a new form of insect-slug-minnow hybrid grow in the ichor that used to be the pool, it looks all right. In another month, the fruit trees will be in bloom, and their blackberries will be doing nice indeed.

Off now. Shoo!

Well, the asceticism didn't go too well, the nearest desert being about a thousand miles away, and perhaps human beings aren't so bad anyway. Aside from that, well, Cambridge took their d**d money, and I talked to the loans people and found out that they're a bunch of clueless gits, but they have accepted this and are easily corrected, so that's all right. Following the news that I would get (insane amount of money deleted), I went off and -- hedonistic me -- ordered the two books I'll absolutly need for Cambridge.

Old English is still, well, old and not really English. I have a work-around, but it bugs me that I can't construct things in the language, such as sentences and complex thoughts (not too bad, though, as a truly complex thought beyond 'Hurr... Hrotwulf thrash with mighty, jewel-encrusted, sweet-killing sword, forged of blood and iron, with a sharp edge, how daddy loves his sword, yes he does (direct quote from Beowulf) -- anything beyond that would require, well, words such as 'complex' and 'thought'; I do, however, like their literal-mindedness sometimes: 'And Grendel, with his hate-thinkings, busted the door in two.' And besides, how many pices of authentic literature can start with the sentence fragment, 'was busted'?).

Mad as it may seem, I've decided to live in this flat for another year -- hence I sent off the signed lease on Saturday, along with a cheque for this month's rent, and a little note saying 'Please send someone round to fix the holes in the celings in my kitchend and living room', with judicious use of underline.

God, what a shitty week this has been. I've spent most of it in Old-English limbo, flailing about and not doing a bit of decent work; Quinn seems to think I'm doing well, but I know that I don't have the grammar down, and it's starting to show. I've begun working on Beowulf, and it's not going well at all.

I've also spent most of the week loosing sleep and having my insides liquidated over the fact that Cambridge, an otherwise noble and respected institution, has yet to debit my account the £975. It was supposed to be on the 6th -- and all of their literature stated explicitly that they would do so ON the sixth. I haven't seen the transaction, I haven't heard anything from them, just dead silence and me worried that I won't get in. If that happens, I don't know what the next step is.

I also said something really stupid and vaguly sexual (and clumsy) to an otherwise lovely and wonderful person, and, after heavy drinking (or rather before, since that's what brought it on), have decided to become a desert ascetic, because this whole living-among-human-beings thing just really isn't working out. Jesus Christ.

*blows dust off of blog*

There. Geez, it's been a month. I suppose I haven't written in a while as there's not much to say. The thesis is coming along slowly, but it *is* coming along; I've decided to rewrite the opening significantly. As I said to Quinn, 'I'd like to build a bridge from Classical Antiquity to Late Antiquity by demonstrating what has changed and what hasn't. I will then examine the gender roles of men in Late Antiquity and compare them to CA -- pointing out that, again, little *has* changed, save that the return to an oligarchy heralds a return to the Late Republic and Early Empire.' Later papers, like Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations, will build on this, and, if I'm lucky, eventually grant me tenure. As Terry Pratchett says, 'There is always a spare study somewhere, and a seat in the Great Hall (though to bring one's own napkin and utensils is a mark of wisdom).'

I have decided to -- once and for all -- give up on searching for keen, awakened women. There are too many failures, and outright blind alleys, dead ends, and dangerous pitfalls involved in the quest, and it's not fun anymore. I'm getting old, after all (I was tweleve when I was six, and twenty when I was twelve; at that rate, I am now approximately 47.398199e6), and you only live thrice. I'll just go on being myself, and let HER find me.

Other than that, not much news. I'm waiting on loans, and Cambridge to debit my account, which they said they were going to do yesterday but apparantly didn't get around to doing, because for all my duck-and-cover, end-of-the-world gloom, there's still (censored) dollars in there, so I'm safe. I may even buy groceries (mwahahah!).

Also, I discovered that reality is merely a fiction wrapped around an even scarier hollow shell, which is just the other side of this wall. Weird, no? I'm shocked.

The fundamental things apply early.
-- Frances Synotre, Things You Should Have Learned in School.