What have I been up to?
Today was an SCA demo at a Scout Camp. The entire camp has a Medieval theme, so we fit right in. Some of the leaders of the Scout group have participated with Frostheim before, and they really appreciated the fact that we could come out. We had the whole afternoon available, so the plan had been to do perhaps half an hour of intro, then a good 40 minutes each of dancing, fencing, and heavy fighting. I liked that plan as I would have time to change out of dancing clothes and into armour while the fencers played. However, plans don't always go according to schedule. My first clue was the morning phone call from the guy who organized the day--he couldn't make it, he needed to take his kid to the doc (it turns out to be Scarlet Fever), but he assured me that the local Count and Countess would still be coming. My first thought was "great--that was our one native Swedish speaker", since my Swedish is still poor, and he comes from England and she is from Finland. However, despite not being a native Swedish speaker, she is fluent in Swedish.
Therefore she did the intro talk, and then I started the kids dancing. We had time to do a farandole and I started to teach them the Maltese Bransle before the rain started. Since it was a decently heavy rain we decided to take a break, and the kids scattered to various places under cover. We stood on the porch for a bit, chatting with some of the Scout leaders, and then decided that since it didn't look like it was going to stop raining anytime soon, perhaps we could move the dancing into the hall. It was a bit crowded, but by having an inner and an outer ring for the bransle we were able to make us all fit. We did several more dances before switching to showing the kids the armour and talking about what we do.
With the organizer of the demo out that left only one person who could have done fencing, so we skipped that part, and instead the knight did a talk (in English, translated by one of the Scout leaders, which I appreciated, as it helped reinforce my slowly growing vocabulary) about fighting, passed around his armour to look at, and then put it on and let me hit him a bit. We decided not to fight in the rain--not only is it not so pleasant for the audience, slippery grass increases the odds of injury, especially for knees and ankles. The room's ceiling was far too low to consider actual combat inside, so we didn't bother to put me in armour at all. After showing them the basic blows the rain stopped, so he took the kids outside and let them take turns hitting him. Everyone seemed to enjoy the day.
This week's two biggest work accomplishments have been filling in paperwork to apply for a visa to visit Russia and resubmitting a paper. The visa paperwork took a while. They wanted to know every country I have visited in the last decade (I opted to list only the most recent visit to countries I have visited more than once), every university I have attended, and all civil, professional, and/or charitable organizations I have ever been a member of. These questions did not exist on the form for my collegues, who have Swedish passports. It was because I am using an Australian passport that I had the extra questions. I am curious as to if I would have had even more questions had I used my US passport, but not curious enough as to actually try it.
Resubmitting the paper was nice and easy. Both reviewers suggested that it be accepted, with minor revisions, and I was able to do most of the revisions on my own (I am extremely grateful for the reviewer who took the time to go through the text and highlight typos--no matter what I typed the first time, rocks are not "wildly" distributed across Tasmania!). There were only four points which I felt necessary to consult with my PhD supervisor, so I emailed him straight away, and the next morning I had a reply. His reply included an offer to write a tricky paragraph if I wanted. My first impulse was to say "yes, please", but then I realized that given the time change and the fact that he would be asleep by the time I saw his message, I had plenty of time to try to write that bit myself and then ask him what he thinks--he would still be free to write it himself if my version didn't make him happy. So I did, and he approved, so I submitted the paper in less than 50 hours from first seeing the letter from the editor giving me the reviewer's comments. With luck the editor will be happy, and I am finally well and truly done with my PhD project, and it (or, rather, a short, sweet, distillation from it) will soon be published.
Last week, and the first part of this week, we had a house guest, which was much fun. She joined me for yoga daily, and we got out and practiced silly people tricks. She didn't make it this far north all that often, but I will still miss her when she moves to France to start her PhD.
Speaking of house guests, we have done some major preparation for my mother's visit next month. Mom won't be able to sleep on a mattress on the floor when she is here, so we have created a space in the office to set up the massage table (legs lowered to the lowest setting) to give her a bed. In order to do this it was necessary to take the project off of the big floor loom which had dominated the office floor and take the loom apart. In order to have someplace to store the loom bits it was necessary to block off the corner of the room that lead to our walk-in closet. However that meant we needed to move the furniture in the hallway which had been blocking off the other entrance to that closet. It took all evening, but we managed to do the moving, and now we have many of the boxes and set of drawers that had been in the hallway stacked (in a very different configuration) in the corner of the office, and the hallway is much emptier, with only the treadle sewing machine and a single chest of drawers (upon which now sits the electric keyboard) flanking the newly unburied door to the closet.
I know that other people think I am mad for it, but that that was a truly fun evening. I really do love rearranging furniture, finding a new, improved, place for everything, and cleaning underneath and behind stuff in the process.
In other news, summer has progressed to the state of fireweed being in flower--a very pretty time of the year, but, to my mind, even better because once the fireweed blooms winter can't be so very far off, and winter is even prettier.
Next week I need to make more progress with my data (see last week's entry for how that is going) in hopes of having something to say when I start to put together a talk about my research for the upcoming departmental "kick off" retreat. We should also hear if our visa is approved, and if all of the ore deposit folk in our department are heading to Russia to see some of the geology of the
Kola Peninsula the following week.
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