Congratulations!

Thanks!

Thanks!

I just got home from a massage therapy appointment. No chatty receptionist this time, but I can feel my RIGHT HIP'S MOVING! I didn't think that was POSSIBLE! My right arm's down, my right hand's open, my shoulders are straight--that all started happening by May, if thing's weren't finished yet. But the hiked hip might be coming down!!!! Vicky says if we succeed in this and my leg comes down fully again, I might have a bit of trouble walking for a few days after, but I'm fine with a couple of days in bed if this works. (For those who don't know: Head injury, age 3, lost the function of right arm and my right knee was too weak for me to walk normally, so hip took over, giving me a limp. Almost everything came back, but a lot of it came back too late for it to take full control again, and so permanently hiked hip and my right arm shriveled up. Started seeing massage therapist in March for tendonitis, she looked everywhere else too, and SOOO MUCH has come back!!!) YEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks! And I wouldn't say I'm a wooer, but I'm fine with talking. (I'm also a bit jubilant right now, if you check out the "Today I" thread where I'm writing madly.)

You spend days correcting those footnotes, lost in trying to pick out Latin quotes in gigantic Latin letters that have no semblance of word order and so you consider it a puzzle first, language second. You have quibbles with your advisor as he picks out a dubious footnote of a medieval source, and say "Careful, if this was in another work you've got to cite it as well, citing it on its own is academically dishonest," and you say, "But I didn't get it from anywhere else, I found it on my own!" And then he nods and says "Okay," and you decide you need to double check it. And those frustrating footnotes--you've got to keep them neat--find one system to do it and then stick with it! There are benefits, though, especially if you love telling stories. Last week, I was leaving a massage therapy appointment, my cab was twenty minutes late, and I fell into a conversation with the receptionist there for all of those twenty minutes. She looked to be in her late thirties. There are a MILLION different ways to analyse history you'd never think of until you got deep into it, and so I ended up discussing a specific chapter I wrote on word origins and what they can tell us. I told her I'm fairly sure the reason a "valid" argument can't be argued with is because whenever a word beginning with "valid" appears in the Latin Bible describing strength, it's the strength of God's right hand, and you can't argue with God. The woman drunk it all in, eyes wide. She left before my cab arrived, but she seemed to be exceedingly happy. I don't want to draw too many conclusions from all that, but it was unusual, to say the least.

Thanks! I just posted a topic over in the Warder's Yard you haven't heard about from me in a while. I thought it might be good to post it as its own topic this time round--I took over the Blade's End Tavern last time.

I've been meaning to post this topic for a while now--so, dissertation, with Vikings and natural disasters: Vikings exploited them for a military advantage in the ninth century in at least the Netherlands: (It gets a lot narrower--I've written before how incredibly specific PhDs are. My title will be a sentence long at the end of it as I try to eliminate questions. And "disasters" are a late medieval concept invented in Italy c. AD 1300 based in astrology. .) So, I had a meeting with my main advisor today. After our meeting, I went to a nearby Starbucks, where just about everyone recognizes me. I fell in a conversation with the girl making my coffee, Alex. She asked me what's up, and I told her that I'd just had a meeting and these were my final months: that 29 February I'm turning everything in. Alex smiled, asked me to tell her more, and so I told her that in the last few days I've been perfecting my footnotes in Chapter 2. (And I can date my old footnotes fairly accurately now). I asked her whether she'd seen the movie, 'A Christmas Story." She hadn't, but I gave her the Randy quote, "Meatloaf, smeatloaf, double-beatloaf. I hate meatloaf." I didn't remember the middle of the quote, but I'd been thinking over the past few days, "Footnotes, footnotes...[don't remember], I hate footnotes." She laughed, handed me my coffee, and before walking away, I smiled and told her this is the time for the meticulous detail. This time I'm making sure my translations are the best I can find and that I have all the Latin behind them so I can put it all in. I'm trying to find some Old English, too, although there's no chance I could read it. My outline is decent, now, and so I'm taping it up somewhere in my flat so I can see it always. This isn't particularly hard to do and I'm finding everything I need, but it takes time and is hard work. I'm checking--right now my rough draft is 339 pages and 101,600 words. I have a working bibliography, of course, and that's doesn't have everything, because I've added things even as I've been correcting my footnotes in the last few days. The bibliography is 18 pages at the moment and might have twice as many words as the Masters thesis I wrote five years ago. *Grins.* But, even as you find another frustrating footnote you need to correct or find that you need to put another one in, there's just something in knowing you're winning it.

Well, welcome!

Thanks! But wait a sec., Mummy. You need to knight me, and then we can start celebrating for real. Thanks, James. So Mummy, here's my sword... Now you can knight me, go on: Now let's start dancing!

That'd be cool if we could work something out! Chapters are veery different, so the work depends on what I'm doing. I haven't finished rewriting Chapter 1, but what I've done to it in the past week or so hasn't been hard. Today I've begun to map out the terrain of Chapter 2, though, beginning to place the acronyms and terms I invented while I was writing the rough draft within it, Latin where it's needed, trying to get things consistent. Finding, replacing, changing--nothing major yet, but I only managed to get through a third of the chapter. How's the weekend been, and how's teaching?

Thanks, everyone! I stand ready.

Thanks! Post a few sentences to a paragraph about who you are. Why did you start reading WoT? How did you find DM? Feel free to add anything you think will be interesting or meaningful. Well, I'm haycraftd, and I started reading the WoT when I was 14. I was gobbling up fantasy at the time, found WoT, and couldn't get away from it. I only joined DM a little more than year ago, while listening to the WoT this go round, through many Google searches and a former friend on Facebook liked it, she was RJ's niece. So I decided to join up and see how everything works. Now, I'm a PhD candidate in my final year here at the University of Edinburgh. Some of you all might have seen me write about it. It's been a strange journey, but it all works. Post a few sentences to a paragraph about your time as a Algai. What projects have you done? Have you made any friends? Please share with us your memorable moments. This has been a journey too, and it's been fun. I think I've made a few friends here. But I've been involved in several projects--I especially remember dancing in the Whites' ball--(that was fun)--and posting the Tale Behind Mardi Gras. I was having sooo much trouble before I posted it. I couldn't delete one of the pictures underneath--one of Chewbaccus's parades--but I think that worked out alright. Thanks for reading it! And thanks for reading my case study, especially Mother! @Elgee Post a few sentences to a paragraph about what your plans are as a Manshima and Der’manshima. What projects are you planning to do? Have you gotten involved with a Community Discipline? Please share with us your future goals and plans. As far as it goes, I'm happy to help. I know you all are having a difficult time remodeling the Tower, and so I'm not exactly sure what to say because I'm not sure of the Tower's plans yet. But I plan on sticking around, helping out, and rising. I haven't decided what discipline yet, but I'm thinking.

That sounds awesome! Good luck in everything this coming year. I flew back to Edinburgh last week and started writing again Monday. It's the final months, now, and I'll power them through.

Congratulations!