kareina

I had my first Durham "annual review" today. I am currently at the equivalent of nine months into my degree (compared to a full time student), and they were happy with my progress thus far, and they had two great suggestion for me.

1) they are going to give me access to all of the recorded undergrad lectures that the department has (which are normally only available to students enrolled in the class) so that I can catch up on some of the background info I am missing (Karen feels bad for not having thought of this sooner, and has already sent the list of classes to the person in charge of that, asking to give me access (I got a copy), and

2) I should skype into the "reading group" that meets every so often to discuss recent archaeological papers, so that I can be a more active participant in the department, and get the benefit of reading and disusing papers with colleagues.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/543310.html

I am currently at the conference: Grave Concerns: Death, Landscape and Locality in Medieval Society, in Durham, where I submitted a poster describing my research in progress. They had a poster contest, which I figured I had no chance at, since this is my first ever conference as an Archaeologist. Much to my delight I won second place! They let me choose a book from the sale table, so I selected Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World, which was the one that most closely related to my research project. I am looking forward to reading it.

Somehow I am not as sad about leaving Cudgel War early to attend the conference as I had been. (Cudgel was amazing! I really look forward to typing up a report on that soon, but it is already after midnight and the conference starts again at 09:30, so I had better do my yoga and get to bed...)

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/516077.html

at 21:40 this evening I was feeling tired, but decided to look at the Swedish Historical Museum's database entry for the one province which had only one steatite listing for that province. As expected, that didn't take long, even with stopping to ask on FB how plausible the entry was, since it both claims to be soapstone, and a whetstone for knife sharpening. So I decided to do one of the provinces with only two listing for steatite in the database. The first of those went very quickly. The second turns out to have been a group of 26 spindle whorls. The main database entry had neither photos nor descriptions of these, but the photo of the catalog showed photos of hand-written descriptions for all 26 of them, so I couldn't resist typing up the list so that I could then count how many of them were described as täljsten. Meanwhile, as I worked an interesting conversation developed in the comments under my post (which served to make me more skeptical on the likelihood of that first one actually being made of soapstone if it really is a whetstone).

The next thing I knew my "one quick entry" had turned into around 3.5 hours of work, and it is now 01:25 in the morning. In 25 hours I will need to start driving from Kalix to the airport in Kemi for my trip to Ireland for the SCA event this weekend. In 7.5 hours I have a meeting with colleagues. Perhaps I had better do my yoga and get some sleep...

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/504801.html

The snow that greeted me when I arrived in Durham last Sunday, and the icy walkways that followed it, are both long gone, and my legs have recovered from the shock of tons of walking and ice skating in Edinburgh last weekend so the daily walk to the office is now feeling pretty easy, and has gotten down to only 25 minutes each way. The short version of the walk follows a fairly busy road on one side of the river, then ducks down the hill, over a pedestrian bridge over the river (which is so not frozen), up a foot path, through a tiny gap between some buildings, then along another fairly busy road to the campus. On the days I have walked in with A & G we instead bypass the bridge, walk around a sharp bend in the river and head up the stairs to the heart of the old town (which is built right in the heart of a very tight U in the river), where they go into Gwen's school to drop her off, and I continue through the narrow streets and over another pedestrian bridge, and then double south and back to the University, which is located just below the bottom of that U in the river. Both paths have a fair few stone buildings along it (sandstone). Since there is a tourist side on the far side of town explaining that the area has seen a fair bit of coal mining, except for the seams under the cathedral, I had guessed that both the sandstone and the coal date to the carboniferous period, but looking at the wikipedia page for local geology it is more likely that the sandstone used in the buildings is Permian or Triassic.

After recovering from my digestion issues on Tuesday I have plunged into work--nine hours on Wednesday, and more than 11 each yesterday and today. I do much of those hours in the grad student office at a "hot desk". There are a number of us in the room, and we all work silently. When I went home tonight at 18:30 there were still a number of them there, hard at work. Despite my long hours I have been getting home on time to do acroyoga with Gwen for 10 or 15 minutes before she has to go to bed, which is a nice change from work, and so little effort to hold her weight--the advantage of a six year old flyer, but she is given to suddenly wiggling unexpectedly, so I have to work hard to keep from dropping her.

After she goes to bed I usually do a bit more work before I do my normal yoga and then go to bed. Tonight's extra work was getting to a grant application that should have been written by now, since the application deadline is the 31st, and it would be nice if I can get some feedback from Karen on it before I submit. Luckily, it is just a little grant, asking for money to attend a conference this summer, so doesn't need so much. All that I have left on it is the 750 words saying " the aims and context of your research, the significance of your project, and previous results that are of relevance to this application". I hope to get that done tomorrow and send it to her, so that she sees it when she comes in on Monday (unless she checks mail over the weekend, which I doubt).

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/499416.html

While poking around in the archaeology department wiki today I saw a tab for "working with long documents", and within it was a recommendation for Scrivener, with a comment that there are often student discounts. I remembered hearing writer friends referring to using a program of this name before, so I clicked on the link provided and did some reading. What I read made me think that it might be rather useful for someone starting a new PhD project, but I couldn't find anything on their pages that mention citation management. Therefore I filled in their form asking about using EndNote with Scrivener, and went on with other tasks. Much to my surprise and delight, they replied to me very promptly, with a link to instructions on how to use EndNote with Scrivener. Since their advice boils down to what I tended to do in Word (leave the citations as code for where they will be inserted till ready to print), with only the details differing, this sounded quite reasonable to me. Therefore I sent a quick thank you note to them, and went and downloaded the trial version to see what I think.

I totally approve of their trial policy--it is a 30 day trial. That means thirty days of using the program, not 30 calendar days. Today all I did was go through the full tutorial (which took around 3 hours to try all of their suggested tasks, and quite a few variations besides). I am convinced that this will be a useful tool. Tomorrow I will try creating the project that will, ultimately, become my thesis. I fully intend to do a thesis by publication this time (since I didn't last time I did a PhD), which means that I will publish four or five papers over the next few years, and use them as the main body of the thesis, adding an intro and conclusion section. This will be easy to manage in Scrivener, which will let me have as may sub documents as I want, and give me the option of labeling them with their status (e.g: to write, early draft, final draft, submitted manuscript, published version).

I have only barely scratched the surface of this new research project I am undertaking, however, since deciding to become a PhD student again I have started adding more and new tools to my repertoire, and I think that this will be a much higher quality project than my first PhD was (not that there was anything wrong with it).

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/499053.html

Yesterday my digestive tract wasn't 100% happy with me, but it was ignore-able, and I managed to finish my meetings without an issue (though it did contribute to my eagerness to head back to the apartment), and I was very happy to go to bed before 22:00. I woke up at 03:00, inspired to work, compiling data from a museum database into a spreadsheet that I can sort or filter by time period, type of object, location, etc., and managed to get all 330 entries into the sheet in about two hours, after which I went back to sleep for a few more hours.

I woke up inspired to work more, and ate breakfast, but as the morning progressed I started feeling worse. Finally, but 11:00, I realized that my digestion issue meant that I was in no shape to do the 30 minute walk over to St. Mary's nor to meet their vice-principal for lunch, which I was in no shape to be eating, anyway. So I emailed them an apology for canceling due to illness on short notice, and went to sleep for another couple of hours. When I woke up I had, just, enough energy to finish reading a book I had first checked out through inter-library loan, but had to return before flying south, with 1.5 chapters to go, and then borrowed my advisor's copy yesterday. By then I had recovered enough to face walking to the neighbourhood store and buying what I needed to make a small pot of simple soup (canned tomato, corn, frozen spinach, home made egg noodles, butter, and a bit of pepper). I had one half bowl of soup as soon as it was done, and then, when A & G got home I had another 1/4 bowl with them, followed by a carrot with peanut butter--the fact that I was interested in food again seemed like a very good sign.

However, I haven't accomplished much more work tonight, I instead read much of their copy of Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought). It is now nearly 22:00 (Gewen and I did yoga before her bedtime), and I think I will get to sleep, and hope that I can make it to St. Mary's tomorrow, to take care of the last step of my enrollment (showing them my passport in person). I also have a fair few other things I would like to accomplish before my meeting with my advisors on Thursday.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/498819.html

I left Sweden on the first flight out of Luleå on Friday morning. I got to the airport early enough to do a yoga session while waiting to board the plane, and had enough time in Stockholm to both spend much too much money on a sweater and do more yoga before flying on to Edinburgh.

sismith42.livejournal.com met me at the airport and we took the buss into town to pick up her daughter, Emily, from school, after which we three had a late lunch at a cafe and then went to their home, where we had just enough time for me to eat another quick snack and them to pack a snack for later before we went right back out the door to head to ice skating. Sadly, while we were within 3 meters of the buss stop when the buss drove past, the driver refused to stop, so, undaunted, we walked 30 minutes to the rink, and then skated for an hour 20 minutes. After skating her friend Paul and his two kids, who go to school with Emily, drove us over to the neighbourhood where Gaita live. First we popped into the youth hostel on the corner so that everyone else could eat a late dinner, and then we went up to the Medieval Dance practice, where we had time to do a few dances before it was really too late to keep the kids out any longer, and we returned home. I had the option of staying later and making my own way back to the apartment, but, since I had gotten up at 04:30 that morning, I decided that sleep mattered more than more dancing.

The next morning I walked with Stephanie to work and admired the fabric store (and bought a feather pillow to use while I am in the UK, and leave with Stephanie afterwards--her "birthday present" (because she is precious). Then my friend Julian met me at the store and we walked 20 minutes to a bus stop (by which point my shins were already wondering about all of skating the day before and the various hills I had been subjecting them too), which we took up to Lauriston Castle and wandered around the grounds a bit, then walked on to the village of Cramond, where we had lunch in the pub (and I had a much needed rest from walking, since we did 1 hr 20 minutes of walking around the "castle" gardens and to the pub).

Then Julian helped me get back to Stephanies, and I had just time to bake her some birthday cupcakes and make a beetloaf before she got home from work and another of her friends, and her son, arrived to help celebrate her birthday. After I ate dinner I made up a ( birthday ice cream recipe )

Sunday morning we returned to the ice rink for yet more skating, before she drove me to the train station for my trip to Durham. It was snowing when I arrived, so

aryanhwy and Gwen, who met me at the station, suggested that we take a cab back to their place. Given how slushy and icy the sidewalks were, I was delighted to agree to the suggestion. We had a lovely time visiting, and looking up various queens of Germany for Gwen's school report, and I baked a Swedish style oven pancake for dinner and to have food to pack for lunches. This was a big hit with Gwen, who helped me lick the batter from the mixing bowl with great entusiasm, and asked for thirds of the pancake after it was baked. (She actually asked for fourths, but was told that if she was still hungry she could have a carrot.)

Gwen joined me in yoga before she had to go to bed, and I didn't stay up talking with her parents very much later, since my weekend's adventures had pretty much worn me out. Therefore I woke up nice and early this morning and had time to get everything I needed for today ready, and had just finished microwaving myself some museli as hot porridge when Gwen came down stairs and asked for help making her morning oatmeal. This meant that she was nearly done eating before her mom came downstairs for her own breakfast, and we were soon out the door. I walked with them as far as Gwen's school (right by the cathedral) and then continued on to the Post Graduate Induction session. The walkways were somewhat slippery, as yesterday's slush had re-frozen in the night, and was starting to melt again, but I got to the induction on time anyway. The morning was full of info-dump "everything you need to know to survive being a post-grad student at Durham", and I made good progress on my nålbinding project as I listened. The session ended with free lunch (sandwichs and wraps with fresh fruit and potato chips), and the vegetarian options were edible, as was the fruit.

Then I wandered over to my advisor's office and we had a good chat about what I will be doing and what I need to do in the next few weeks, followed by a tour of the building. By that time it was almost 16:00, so I called it good for the day and went back to the apartment, where I got a nap till Aryanhwy and Gwen got home, then I joined them for dinner, after which I had time to catch up on LTU email and answering questions of one of our PhD students before it was time for Gwen and I to do yoga before she went to bed. Now It isn't even 21:00 yet, and I am seriously considering going to sleep myself, even though I haven't yet opened the books my advisor lent me.

Tomorrow my first time commitment is lunch with the vice-president of my College, and I will decide in the morning if I will work from home in the morning, or go use one of the department "hot desks" before my lunch date.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/498437.html

I spent more than two hours after work today just doing admin sorts of tasks as a new PhD student at Durham. The department secretary sent me the "Post Graduate Research Handbook", and I have gone through there, took care of the quick and easy tasks that it assigned (like putting my "annual progress review" on the calendar for September), and starting on more complicated tasks (like filling in my profile for the department web page). That last task turns out to be harder than I would have expected, since one can only log in and access that server from an on-campus computer. Therefore I checked the Durham IT page to find what VPN they recommend, and found out that, unlike LTU, where any staff or post grad student may download and install a VPN connection to permit them to work remotely, at Durham one must fill in a form explaining to IT exactly why you need VPN, and one must supply the name of a "sponsor". So I sent my supervisor a note warning her I would list her as a sponsor, and explained to IT that as a long distance student who is required to access the department server to create and maintain my profile, and as a research student who needs access to library databases and publications, that I actually do need that VPN connection. I further explained that I have used them before, that I have spent eight years in academia between my first PhD and enrolling for this one.

Now, I just need to put in the hours doing the research, too. I often find it easier to focus on these sorts of admin tasks, as they tend to be smaller, easier to define, and often kinda fun.

I met Ellinor after work today for acroyoga. First we discussed a dream we have to find more people to do acroyoga with. We are going to approach the uni gym about getting regular sessions going there, with us as the leaders. Perhaps every other Thursday evening. If all goes well we will find plenty more people who want to play, and we won't always be dependent on the other having free time and energy and good health at the same time as we have. Then we went to the gym to do "20 or 30 minutes" of acroyoga. 53 very enjoyable minutes later she went off to Phire training, and I went home to get some dinner and empty my Durham in-box. I had been half expecting today's acroyoga to be difficult, since I did no exercise all weekend (other than very short yoga sessions each day), since I had come home from Umeå with a runny nose. But by Monday evening I was feeling good enough that I did a quick 15 minute workout before yoga, and today our session just felt easy.

I love how solid of a base she has become. When I am in that airplane pose, supported only by her feet under my hips I feel as comfortable as if I were laying on the floor. These days the "spiny thingie" (as we call it), where I go from hanging upside from her feet like a bat, to being balanced in a backwards airplane, with my hips on her feet and my feet in the air over her head, then back around to hanging like a bat again, feels easy. I remember how difficult it was when first we tried it, and now I never feel like she could drop me.

Work today was doing sphalerite analyses with one of our PhD students. She will be in the lab again tomorrow, but I have that doc appointment at 08:30, so am not certain what time I will make it. Therefore she will try turning on the machine on her own (I let her drive today). With luck the written instructions I have prepared (long since), plus having seen me do it both yesterday and a few times since Christmas will be enough. I think I may be more nervous about someone else using my lab when I am not there than I am what the doc will say. That said, I did ask Ellinor to come with me to the appointment, for moral support, and on the off chance that it would be useful to have a native Swedish speaker along. Of course, it will be fine, there will be no problems, and I will be able to head off to Durham on Friday with no complications.

Crossposts: https://kareina.livejournal.com/498032.html

first Annual Review

a quick bit of bragging

oops

five days is long enough to feel like I've settled into a pattern

Scrivener sounds like a good tool to adopt

inconvienent timing

has it really only been a few days?

it begins to feel real

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July 2025

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