It's Always More Complicated

I did have to resort to doing a reset on my computer, but at least it was the one where it kept my files (and this actually included a bit more in the way of settings than I had anticipated).

Even so, there has been a lot of Getting Things Back To How They Should Be - and Thunderbird as most recently downloaded looks weird and unheimlich, but after if not dangers untold, hardships unnumbered I have managed to get it to recognise my local files and getting it to incorporate two subsidiary mailboxes was a lot less hassle than last time I had to do it.

Certain other things that I thought were going to be a hassle were less than anticipated (e.g. talking to printer), but what is giving me a problem is iTunes, which keeps telling me that the Library.itl folder cannot be found, even though it is, in fact, in the default folder which is in the default location. What is this thing that this thing is, even?

Also, but probably unrelated to computer crash, in fact I think it was manifesting before that, is recent purchases loaded into Calibre saying they are have DRM and cannot be opened or viewed in Calibre. They will however open actually in the ereader.

Otherwise, a lot of the tedium is dredging up buried details.

This morning I (briefly and virtually) participated in a workshop discussing the contributions to a project I am contributing to.

During the week I put together a very condensed version of my contribution for this presentation (my contribution already pretty much having been filleted out of longer pieces).

Did a review that's been hanging over my head for a while (there was a lot to praise about the book, but wow, it so had the equivalent Gaping Hole to that book on the history of Sex Museums which had zilch about Magnus Hirschfeld....)

Did I mention, about the chapter I had been asked to contribute to a thing, that I finally got an abstract hacked out and sent off, and volume editor much looks forward to reading the actual chapter? - aaaaargh. Fortunately the whole thing still has to be run past the publishers.

Revisiting temps perdu (as that chapter is, rather, since, as I may have mentioned???, it draws on misspent early adulthood dilettante reading of early C20th women middlebrow novelists Before They Were Cool) -

Somebody asking could I do a biographical piece for a project of theirs on one of my ODNB subjects? (I do not think much new will have turned up since I did that, but a different approach is, I imagine, required.)

Somebody contacting me apropos the papers of a doc mentioned in my PhD thesis - which I didn't managed to locate then, and documented my process, and doubt will have turned up since - the author of their ODNB entry doesn't mention anything. I have a few sparse references from various collections I have consulted over the years.

The week before last I was rather on a roll, I thought, in terms of getting somewhat forrader on various projects in the pipeline -

And then last week I was drooping around feeling a rather sad miz weary hedjog, due to sleeping badly, which was mostly due to the achey bits deciding to be particularly achey or flaring up after having long been quiescent, which was tiresome.

(I do not entirely acquit sitting with my laptop literally in my lap for a Zoom seminar for some of that.)

Or maybe, having been looking back over neiges d'antan, I just had a recurrent case of The Time of Year, and those previous occasions when I diagnosed the cause as Whatever Was Going Round at the time were actually to do with the season both as such and for personal history reasons.

There were also various annoying small accidents.

But, anyhow, things have shifted somewhat (several decent nights' sleep may have something to do with it) and I have tinkered about with expanding conference paper for chapter in edited volume and also done substantial work on the bibliography thing, as well as reading the book I volunteered myself to review because I did not think it was going to be so much of Same Old, sigh.

Also Story moved on somewhat after stalling a bit.

Got off my commentated version of an ms within my sphere of interest that I had been reading. Also got off a couple of emails in connection with outstanding projects, and revised an abstract and uploaded it to the relevant site.

Bought myself a new laptop! I have been less than satisfied with the Yogabook for some while, and have been havering and dithering over a Which Best Buy which was given out, among its other merits, to be very light (Samsung Galaxy Book Ion 13) and finally succumbed. Just in time to qualify for a promotional offer of a free Portable SSD T7 and free 3 years guarantee cover.

It has arrived and today has been mostly starting to get it set up.

In the realm of mad consumerism, I have also bought myself some new slippers and 2 pairs of trousers from M&S, and mirabile dictu, the latter actually fit me, and do have pockets.

Yesterday I was a living archive and did my rescheduled oral history interview - there were some questions to which I went duh, because I really could not recall with any great accuracy precisely what I was doing when I was X years old, and some which were perhaps not how I would have phrased that, but anyway, it was two and a half hours of recording. It was a bit exhausting.

And of course those of you who follow t'other blog will know what else I've been up to.

It's rather an Eeyore-ish time of year for me anyway, and this week I have been in rather lowered spirits, between sleeping not terribly well, and (relevant to that) having bad days for the neck and shoulder problems, and the horrible weather (as a result of which my daily walk is curtailed for reasons of mud), and partner having a cold, and a mild case of travel angst for the weekend and the conference...

You know, on top of everything else going on.

But, to look a little on the bright side -

The proposal I slung together in rather a rush for the extended deadline for the small intense focused conference that I like has been accepted, yay, and the timing is such that I can also make a side research trip, I think.

And what might be a however, some little while ago my interest was solicited for being a keynote at an interdisciplinary conference in the summer, and while, lo, I was gratified to be asked, I was, shall we say, not entirely inspired by the prospect (I may invoke my old metaphor of 'performing seal honking The Bluebells of Scotland on the motorhorns'). And it turns out that now the conference is going ahead it is happening slap bang after the small intense conference on the other side of the ocean and I think that is Just Not Going To Work for assorted reasons. And really, I am somewhat relieved that I do not have to botch together some kind of paper that has some kind of slightly new take on the subject...

Also, went to an interesting talk the other day, and had good conversations and useful connections afterwards.

Plus, am actually making progress on A Thing on my Guilt List.

That thing that happens, when at one point the thing I am writing is stuck and I am wondering why I ever committed to doing The Thing and I cannot make the leap to the next sentence or paragraph -

And then, not exactly suddenly, but within a short space of time, I am looking up and realising that the thing is pretty much finished, and there maybe a touch or a tweak left to do -

At some time the process gets out of the Slough of Despond and up the Hill Difficulty and the burden falls off (I'm going by the March sisters' Pilgrim's Progress game here) -

- or at some level my brain asks the Right Question that heals the Waste Land -

- or maybe I just do something like, not walking towards the obvious destination, as in Through the Looking Glass, where walking towards is walking away from -

So anyway, I think The Thing is done, and maybe the end result is not all happy bunnies, but it's there.

(And why is so short a piece such a struggle?)

I have also, having finally had back editorial comments on a chapter I submitted nearly a year ago, made the what I think are not entirely necessary additions (I think if I am quoting from one source in a single paragraph, one cite at the end is sufficient, I don't really need to add in cites to each quote, but what do I know). However, they had no complaints on the actual content, so I should not whinge.

And now, on to the Next Thing!

Got quite a bit done this week: more research completed at BL than I'd anticipated in the course of several brief dashes, even if I still have to finish organising the photos of documents.

Attended part of a conference and a seminar, and had a meeting about A Thing I've been asked to undertake in connection with Former Workplace.

Various calls upon Mi Expertise dealt with.

Certain bits of life admin accomplished.

Actual socialising!!! - including some that was not a concomitant of conference, seminar etc aforementioned.

Achieved at last: haircut and teeth cleaning (the dental practice had a cancellation).

***

Trucking on with executor type things. Thought that while I'm waiting for various information, I might as well start filling in the probate and tax forms in case there's any other info I need. Do they really need to know whether any of my father's cousins are still alive? His parents were one of 12 and one of 13, but, while a lot of Home Town were related to us, we did not have huge jolly family get-togethers and I have not seen even the ones we had some contact with for decades. WOT.

Also Trucking On: O, I thought, I will take this opportunity to scan the will so that I can send the designated of copies when I finally have everything put together. Dear rdrz: the Probate Office is very, very, very determined to tell you that your original will should not have any staples, paperclips or (I guess) treasury tags holding the pages together. The solicitor who was holding the will had, oh so very usefully, clipped it into a folder with eyeletty things - besides the two, top and bottom, holding it in the folder, there were 2 more eyelets and 2 staples holding it all together. Y O Y. Retired archivists do not, I may add, receive as a ritual leaving gift an inscribed destapler, which would not have worked on the eyelets anyway. I managed to remove them, at the expense of one broken nail and several lacerations on my fingers.

Also wrote a letter to my sister as one is obliged to inform other named executors that one is in the process of proceeding to probate, in writing, by which I take them not to mean, by text, which is our habitual means of communicating.

***

Achieved in academic-related matters, sending off abstract/description of what I'll be talking about to two events I have committed to. Now I have to write the things.

***

Dept of embarrassing myself: While at the hairdressers my stylist was commending the non-black colour of my purse as making it a lot less easy to misplace. Dr rdrz, I could not find it this morning. I eventually found it had fallen out onto something with entirely insufficient contrast for me to spot it the first time I looked.

It was only recently that partner was remarking that I didn't seem to have much in the way of academic appearances forthcoming.

So, of course, this week I get an invite to go to A Northern City where they are doing An Event to commemorate A 50th Anniversary - which one is left as an exercise for my readers -

Plus, coming back to life a thing I said yes in principle to some time last year, and had heard no more from, it would seem because at least one email didn't reach me - which is An Event for A Centenary. And fortunately, it is not scheduled for any date that I could not do without powers of bilocation.

I also managed to get to a small exhibition of research relevance that closes next week.

However, I have somehow still not managed to book appointments in re teeth and hair.

Including being IT Support for partner and new computer - which is, yay, connected to the Internetz. This also involved me in seeing if I could convert some Very Old Files so that they could be used in Libreoffice: I succeeded in doing this and later discovered that the process had done Something Weird to my default view in Word (now fixed).

I had 2 meetings set up this week with people who wanted to consult my Expertise (I think), which I thought I had cunningly organised to mesh with other stuff I was doing, like dental appointment.

The first one, who I was supposed to be meeting after the dentist (check-up: small filling required), did not turn up within what I consider a reasonable time-frame for delay without communicating running late. Texted them and found that they had a Family Crisis and had asked a colleague to contact me to say they couldn't make it and could we reschedule. Have been playing Calender Tetris with them ever since (think we now have a date/time that is mutually acceptable).

The second one, who I managed to arrange for day I go in for my yoga class, that I had no real idea why they wanted to speak to me, and having met them and had a conversation, I still have no idea.

If you go on to local council website to see about the collection of bulky waste, it says, ring them, i.e. there is no obvious online place to book this. If you ring them, they ask for an email so they can send a link to the online booking form. I can't even. WHYYYYYY.

In connection with an event for former employees at my FPOW last week, somebody got in touch with me under the impression that my research career was a new retirement hobby. (I just may have done the 'dropping my bibliography on their head' response.)

Also, I had hoped to get an overdue review DONE this week and it's still only about halfway there. At least I could reply to the nudging email from the reviews editor of the journal in question that I was On The Job.

Had an enquiry from a student about their dissertation subject which was one of those topics that I gaze at and think, no, really, I don't think that was A Thing, because It's All More Complicated.

But, on the up side, I did get half of a review written PLUS have done advance orders for a visit to the British Library that I have been intending to do for weeks if not months for next week.