the triumphant return of the knitting capricorn

Yes, that's right - the thesis is DONE! 241 pages, 1211 footnotes almost 2MB filesize. I overshot the target of the laser pointed at the moon and built a whole secret moonbase!

There's still a lot of formal stuff to do and of course the exam, but graduation is on the horizon. As is cleaning up my room ... the mountains of clothing, yarn and paper need to be sorted and stored away and there are plenty of other things on my to-do list.

I have been knitting. Sometimes furiously. Sometimes furtively. But I had no time or energy to take pictures, even though there has been a lot of sunlight during this winter. That shall be remedied as soon as possible, seeing how I have a new digital camera now.

Remember this one?

I finally had the chance to make a real one! Very appropriate for the year of the rabbit.

Anime original for comparison:

and it's turned into something entirely different now

Losing my computer seriously threw me off. I had been doing so well, writing at least something every day and then suddenly I couldn't write. Writing a paper by hand only works when you're writing out bits and parts, but not whole paragraphs with citations. I was still reading books on the way to and back from work and at work waiting for library patrons, but then came the lectorship crunch and I only got back into writing when I finally had my new computer in my hands. It's taken me two weeks to get back in the state of mind where I actually have analytical thoughts.

In the meantime, I am sleeping next to piles of paper and about 10 or 12 books that need to be petted and cited and cursed at. The page count is increasing ever so slowly and everything is all over the place. Instead of turning out perfect paragraphs, I'm writing bits and pieces of thoughts and wonder where I can insert them. One procrastination maneuver is of course filling in all the spots marked with red which need more citations and another is checking the citations in the books to see if the pages are correct.

Add to that the beautiful Vienna weather with its nightly thunderstorms and torrential rainfalls. My head hurts almost constantly, even though I really try to get a lot of water and sleep. One success, though: my diet doesn't completely consist of chocolate pudding and coca-cola yet. I'm limiting myself to two puddings and two cokes a day and I'm having plenty of vegetables and some meat to make sure my vitamins stay up-to-date.

On the whole, I feel somewhat strange. My work obligations are almost almost over (three day break while the graphic designer finishes up the catalogue) and I am spending my time in bed with my computer on my lap and the books around me. I haven't talked to some of my friends in ages and feel definitely recluseish.

Somehow my benign little Operation Sonnenstrahl has turned into D-Day (must get inspiration where it lies) and Band of Brothers helps with motivation: Gimme three da-ays and three ni-ights of hard fightin', and you will be relieved! I can't even say at what percentage the laser is, since I haven't done a page count and it would probably be very off with all the bits and pieces.

Monday is the last library visit - there are still citations that need checking! After all, I can't use third-hand citations, it's bad enough that I have plenty of second-hand citations in there already. That's the problem with doing a European topic, the literature is all over Europe and Vienna sadly doesn't have the greatest university library in history.

On the whole, though, I can already see various carrots dangling on the other side of the thesis - the master's degree for one and the prospect of spending my time as I wish without guilty feelings. Movies. Knitting. Books. It will be wonderful.

Gratuitous Scotland pictures all taken while on a weekend trip with the Edinburgh University Folk Society in Inveraray in October 2006.

new laser new luck

Or, how I held the world to ransom over a million billion dollars and bought a new laptop. It is very sleek and shiny and fast and pretty. Have I written anything on it yet? Yes, a little. Tomorrow I shall write more. Actually, I have some handwritten pages which I really should type in, but I need to do a couple of tests first to see how I can use the laptop *and* the mouse in bed first, because the touchpad is annoying me very much. It does do some rather nice tricks such as bluetooth, so I connected it to my cellphone and got three years' worth of pictures off of it. Pictures such as this:

It's the Natural History Museum, some time in early spring, I think, and one of my favorite times of the day. My fun internship is sadly over, but it was a lot of fun and I've returned twice to use their scanner and their airconditioning. I might head over next week to write, but it depends on the weather. The second job is still ticking along somewhat, but finally winding down as well.

That's between the Natural History Museum and the Art History Museum, it's a statue of Empress Maria Theresia, mother of Marie Antoinette. She also birthed 15 or 16 other children. I just liked the sky and the contrast.

That's the back end of the Belvedere with a rather awesome cloud above it, taken two or so weeks ago. Anyway, there has been some knitting going on to relax my head, a summer scarf as a birthday present for my mother and some work on Herzblut, but now work on Herzblut is stalled, because the second ball of yarn is in the other apartment. I shouldn't put too much work into Herzblut right now, anyway, since the paper needs to be done done done.

That's Schwarzenbergplatz, which I used to go by with the D tram every morning, but this picture is actually three years old. Finally, I found what I want to write on the Moon. It is a quote from Dorothy L. Sayers' novel Gaudy Night and I think it should be quoted to every female scholar. Harriet Vane, the protagonist in this novel (usually the main protagonist is Lord Peter Wimsey) is anxious about meeting all her old university friends again, because a lot of things happened in the books before this one and calms herself by thinking about her achievements. "They can't take this away, at any rate. Whatever I may have done since, this remains. Scholar; Master of Arts; Domina; Senior Member of this University (statutum est quod Juniores Senioribus debitam et congruam reverentiam tum in privato tum in publico exhibeant); a place achieved, inalienable, worthy of reverence. " The Latin bit says: "It is decreed that Juniors will show to Seniors appropriate and fitting respect both in public and private." (not my translation).

It's long, but it will fit on the moon, I'm sure. Otherwise I'll just write the citation and people will have to look it up.

Bond has destroyed the laser

It is a sad fact that supervillains are never safe from heroes. Heroes (and heroines) come and blow up the stuff we lovingly build, expensive stuff, I might add, and things that might be useful or fun. Then they come, destroy it all and then the world wonders why we hold it to ransom for a million billion dollars.

My laptop's harddrive has given up the ghost in this wretched heat and decided to contract a case of surface and reader head damage. Thankfully I listened to the internets and did not attempt to save it with the help of my computer wiz friend, but delivered it to a data recovery service the next day and the day after that they had already been able to save all the data. All that remains is a very expensive lesson about backing up your data - if I had made a backup of the thesis and the most important other data (like my pictures from Scotland), I would have simply bought a new computer, but as the half-written thesis was on it and only some parts of it at my professor's, I had to save it all.

Why not simply write it again? Because I am working two jobs at the same time and trying to finish the thesis, too. I only have time to do dishes on the weekends. The red nailpolish on my toenails is growing out naturally, because I don't have time to remove it. My fingernails need to be cut. And even though the main job will be finished by the end of July - which I'm rather sad about, because it's basically paid fun - that's when the thesis should also be finished. So I just don't have time to write 20 pages again (my professor has about 30).

A few things have gone well, though. The university has accepted all the paperwork I could give to it before actually handing in my thesis, so now I am just waiting for the mills to spit it out again. My internship at the library is the best ever and today I shushed a patron - for the first time I had the right and the duty to do so :D I'm CRAZY with the power (as befits a villainness).

In the meantime, I haven't given up on Operation Sonnenstrahl. Currently I'm working on the beginning of it all, which is fun, because it doesn't need as many citations and I can just let the words flow freely and I'm writing on paper, because my mother's mac has the world's worst keyboard and I dislike macs. AKA, I still have the plans for the laser and I am making sure that it's being rebuilt, while I hold the world to ransom for a million billion dollars and chocolate pudding.

Operation Sonnenstrahl

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? A friend told me that a friend of hers had christened her thesis "Project Sunshine" instead of calling it "the damn thesis". But my thesis needs a much more nefarious name. After all, it is a laser that will be directed at the moon ...

Right now it is at 25.5% of its operational power, i.e., some of the structures needed have been built. At 50% I think we can start warming up the generators which power the laser. At 75%, the laser will be programmed and adjusted with the correct coordinates. At 100% the laser will write something pretentious in Latin, Greek or Japanese on the moon. Yes. *evil cackling*

So right now it's a little like this weather below, since I received so much praise from my professor that my insecurities have been dampened down quite a bit.

I guess I need to produce more pages (and sleep more, lack of sleep is really not helping). That's why I'm once again repairing to the country to cut myself off from the internet for a little while.

Meanwhile, as I may have already mentioned, Herzblut is my only allowed knitting project. Funnily enough, its original name Lehtivihreä means chlorophyll in Finnish, but mine is blood red.

I'm using the Schoppel Zauberball Laceweight in Cranberry for this. My favorite yarn store got in a shipping of lace Zauberbälle in winter and I snagged up two, thinking they'd be sold out in a rush. No such thing! Even though I posted about their availability on Ravelry. Maybe there is a secret source for laceweight yarn in Austria that I haven't discovered yet.

Speaking of my favorite yarn store and yarn - I already got to see some of the winter yarn and it's gorgeous! Another reason to finish the thesis - unlimited knitting time! And the time and qualifications to look for a paid dissertation post or a proper job, which lead to more yarn money. The colors were simply incredible. And there is no on the other hand here. I might have a large stash (by non-knitter standards), but there are some yarn opportunities that just won't come again.

We'll see at what operational evel the laser is when I get back from the country.