--> 2 months of wonderful visitors = fitting a years' worth of closeness and excitement around 2 months of WORK
--> month of exams, marking, meetings, etc
--> finding out gerald didn't get her grant and thus we will have £14,000 less next year than we were hoping (SADFACE)
--> week of mopping-up and tedious little jobs in state of extreme premenstrualness involving three consecutive nights of insomnia (presumably some sleep was had at some point because I didn't start hallucinating, but I wasn't really aware of it)

--> 2 NIGHTS IN FIVE-STAR SPA HOTEL IN SPAIN

--> feeling much better now.

Valencia was pretty much like being in the L-Word: eight glamorous lesbians plus a couple of glamorous women of unknown (to me) sexuality plus a straight male Disney executive to provide diversity, living the lifestyle of the rich and powerful. Most hilarious/sympomatic moment: everyone being really pissed off about the loud military-band style music, with occasional explosions/fireworks/cannons firing, coming in off the street and competing with the tinkly-whale-music of the hotel (What is it? What's going on?), and then finding out it was Gay Pride.

THANK YOU all for the squee and good wishes and ect. I think it went pretty well but we shall see - she left clutching a copy of the proposal for Teh Book, anyway, and saying it sounded like their kind of thing. So I am crossing my fingers and holding my thumbs and breath.

And now, off to Valencia. Normal lack of service will be resumed from Monday. Enjoy Who!

On Thursday I have a meeting with the Senior Commissioning Editor of Continuum Press's new Classical Studies list. That's Continuum Press.

::runs round in circles::

I think that might have been the best episode of Doctor Who actually ever. Possibly the best episode of anything ever. Bonus points for hilariously non-subliminal message in the title. Extra bonus points for showing the area of Leeds where I used to live. Triple extra bonus points for... no, we'll start getting into spoilers and besides I think my lunch is burning...

Next Saturday I will be in a five-star hotel in Valencia celebrating the fortieth birthday of one of my closest friends with various more-or-less-namedroppable queer women. DAMN THEM ALL, frankly. steepholm, expect plaintive emails asking you for back-up videotaping services.

[Comments now contain minor spoilers for Turn Left]

( cut for squee-harshing and spoilers for Midnight )

So anyway, but that was the only episode I haven't liked this season, which has otherwise been of an excellence sublime enough to stand comparison with Season One. Hooray!

In other Doctor Who news, gerald has fallen in love with the Seventh Doctor and Ace and - I can hardly bring myself to type it - wonders if any of you have any recs for Seven/Ace slash. Or 'het', I suppose it would be called. (She says she had a look for some and it all starts, like, The Doctor and Ace were on a planet with not much going on, so they decided to go out for a night on the town. Ace went off to get ready and although the Doctor had only ever had fatherly feelings for her before, when he saw her coming down the stairs in a ballgown he began to feel different, so she gave up.)

(when Sojourner Truth delivered this speech at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio)

So I mentioned recently that I'm reading Gyn/Ecology, and slasheuse commented to this effect:

You know what would be awesome? If you or persons equally awesome made me a reading list for this summer. Yes.

Which sounds like fun. But you know what makes things more fun? Rules!*

Accordingly, I'm going to nominate three books - no more, no fewer - for slasheuse to read this summer, and ask all of you to do the same, and to spread the word. We could make this a meme! With a title like 'Books For Young Feminists!' Or something. Or you could post your lists of three books - on the broad themes of feminism, gender... stuff, trans* theory, queer theory, etc - in comments to this post, to make it more like a reading list. What I like about that idea is that, hopefully, it means no-one will feel the need to be 'representative'; the lists can be as random and subjective as we like, because (hopefully) someone else will pick books from one of the many other areas we've left out. Hopefully, because I've picked three second-wave white American feminists...

Here are mine (with annotations, because annotations are almost as fun as rules) ( under the cut )

*why yes slemslempike you may quote me on that

THE RULES: You are having a dinner party. You have a table that seats six. With whom will you fill the five empty chairs at your table? Choose anyone you want, as long as it's someone with whom you haven't already dined and this person is still breathing. Then tag 5 friends and they can do the same.

choctaw_ridge tagged me for this. You know what I should say, I should say that I love being tagged for memes (usually, probably not those ones that are really long lists of factual questions) but I am really slow at getting round to them, sorry...

( But I do go on an awful lot when I do get them, so it's value for money, really )

*we had a day of life-admin yesterday which involved tidying.

**I know! I wouldn't have thought it was possible either!

***Yes, I do mean 'talking to', but that does make me think rather sadly that I have wasted the opportunity to put together a dinner-party entirely for the purpose of slashy match-making.

So I commented with squee on a beautiful post by mcicioni, completely forgetting that the rules of the meme she was doing at the time meant that I would get five questions to answer, and now I have these five brilliant questions to answer. But the answers are getting long liek woah, so I'm taking a break after the first two - to, um, do a meme that I was tagged for by choctaw_ridge!

( What book did you read, and reread, and reread, at 16? )

( What's the best thing about cross-generational romance? )

Oh! While I'm here, I thought I'd announce that one of my plans for the summer is to create many excellent salad dressings (I have new kinds of mustard!) mraltariel, plumsbitch, anyone else... any recipes or tips?

Isn't it strange how I find it quicker to post than to reply to comments? I will reply to comments on my last post, because I want to talk to you all about second-wave feminism and the weirdness of me (a) having a kind of retro/camp interest in it, (b) genuinely believing in lots of it and being really pissed off that some of its strands seem to have vanished without a trace, and (c) being ON WITH IT. But I am only here for 5 mins before running off to a conference, and it is more urgent to ask you guys about Yes, Minister, which is gerald's and my new obsession.*


( Poll under cut )

*but going quite slowly as it transpires it is impossible to watch more than 2 episodes a night because it is so beautifully crunchy.

I'm reading Gyn/Ecology. So far* I kind of like it, but gerald has let me know that this is not an acceptable response, so I'll keep you updated. My project for the summer is to read the whole of second-wave feminism, especially lesbian-feminism. (And plan a new undergraduate unit and do all the reading for that. And write a book. Well, two books if you count finishing my novel-length fic. Ah, summer! Good thing you are infinitely long.)

Off to a conference for three days now. See you all next week. Be good.


*I'm like two pages in.

... there is no other news. Except that I am full of fandom and desire nothing other than to sit around writing my FUCKING STORY and making my vid and, dare I say it, watching Blake's 7. Two more weeks to go, two more weeks to go...

The other thing I am looking forward to at the moment is replying to the five questions I accidentally got mcicioni to ask me. Here they are as a delicious trailer for my next post:

1. What book did you read, and reread, and reread, at 16?

2. What's the best thing about cross-generational romance?

3. What's the worst thing about being an academic?

4. What sort of a boi (if that's the right spelling) are you?

5. Are you a one-, two-, three- or multi-fandom person?

I have been thinking about them happily for weeks as I trundled back and forth from work clutching piles of essays (thanks, mcicioni).

To-do list for today reads:

1. Go to farmer's market
2. Read through abstract and draft chapter that I have to WRITE UP this/next week.

Guess which one I've done?

(drifts off to eat vegetarian pate on olive-oil-and-basil bread).

look, it's 8pm and I'm still working, YOU OWE ME UNIVERSITY. (I just did a workload survey thingy and apparently they pay me for 1600 hours a year. That's forty weeks at forty hours a week. HELLO TWELVE WEEKS OFF PER YEAR.)

It will all start calming down after tomorrow, when I have to deliver 2 responses to 2 papers at 2 events in 2 cities. Just wrote one of them, must now attempt to write the other despite only having v draft version of paper which frankly doesn't make a great deal of sense to me. Never mind.

I miss you all. slasheuse, good luck if you see this before 12:30 tomorrow, CONGRATULATIONS if you don't. plumsbitch, people have been saying good things about your paper, and I miss you extra. gloriamunty, WELL DONE. Everyone else, I have basically no idea what you have posted in the last couple of weeks or possibly more, but (a) I trust you are in the pink as this leaves me, and (b) wasn't The Unicorn and the Wasp brilliant? I will post fevered theory-style posts about it in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, here is a cute thing -gerald is teaching this evening (she teaches very irregularly on Lifelong Learning courses here) and I rang her before I went into my afternoon things to say hello and wish her luck, and learned that she had written out a schedule for the day (to make sure she got out of the bath in time etc) and was currently in the section marked 'have lunch and read paper', just prior to 'finish planning teaching session'. Obviously I crushed on this mightily and told her to leave the schedule out for me so I could besot over it when I got in, which she did, or rather ( two lists )

ETA: Obviously by 'working' I mean 'following links on steepholm's LJ. ALL LATINISTS PLEASE IMMEDIATELY PROCEED here (Youtube link) - it is a bit variable I will admit, but the beginning and bits of the end are just made of joy. slasheuse, I think your day tomorrow will be the better for it you will find it amusing also.

I'm sick. I'm about to be late to interview prospective PhD candidates because I have to finish my Lemsip before I go and it's still too hot. (Hence, obviously, LJ.)

Just dropping in quickly to say that I had a lovely time in Leeds, where I gave a paper to a 'mixed audience' argh but in return received compliments AND A TARDIS NOISEMAKER from purple_pen - it was lovely to meet you properly, and the noisemaker did indeed make noise all the way back home on the train. Thank you! (ooh, and I will send the paper to toft_froggy and altariel when I get home, such as it is - it has quite a lot of TALK ABOUT THIS and SHOW CLIP and not quite so much with the searing analysis. But might spark thorts in your interesting branes and as such is good to pass on.)

And! I also met biascut and glitzfrau who are just as glamorous and shiny in person as they are online, and also now I remember which one has which name much better. Hooray!

Also caught up with some old friends and heard many anecdotes involving vegan food, anarchists,* the Home Office, and small babies, confirming that I know some awesome people.

(And I looked at myself threatening the black bloc guy with a metal spoon over the vegan sherry trifle, and I thought - I never thought I'd end up here, you know?)

Okay. Into the fray. Isn't it lucky it's cooled down enough to wear my suit--

(closing m-dash [c] and [tm] gloriamunty)

Doctor Who two-parter in 'remains awfully good throughout' shock. HELEN WE WILL CONSIDER THE PIGSLAVES TO HAVE BEEN A TERRIBLE DREAM.

Read this! Then write in to the BBC and tell them to stop being such idiots.

(Also: commiserations, London.)

Last time I was up in Edinburgh, I scored a copy of Milly in the Fifth (by Evelyn Smith) from the Old Children's Bookshelf, basically on the grounds that Milly in the Chrestomanci books is called after a school-story heroine and I wondered whether this might have been one of DWJ's references, and also because gerald said Evelyn Smith was a 'name' in the school-story world.

And I was rewarded with everything my slashy little heart could have wished for. WHAT A BOOK. (Quotes under cuts for length.)

( In which Milly is revealed to be a queer kid )

( In which the nature of the butch/femme relationship is brilliantly summarized )

*Milly's brother

**because of the power of the femme

KEEP DOING THEM LIKE THIS PLEASE.

Yea verily even while I was finishing that last post, a student showed up at my door wanting to collect a thing, and when he left he collided with my dissertation supervisee arriving, and when she left she collided with a student wanting me to explain difficult bits of Latin grammar which I hadn't particularly prepared, and now it is 3:30 which is about when I was going to eat my doughnut IN ANY CASE.

(But yes, you all gave the answer that I was SEKRITLY HOPING for. As well as philosophy, culinary information, and in some cases haikus. Livejournal is AWESOME.)

ETA: Now I've had to wait this long, I'm jolly well going to have a CUP OF TEA with it, actually.