Mid-term Blues

 My primary Icelandic activity, aside from consuming tea

and porridge and copying out paradigms. And writing

things like this.

The western sky out my apartment window.

Watching a lot of youtube blues these days. Son House, Guy Forsyth, Guy Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and anyone who seems willing to play slide on a 12-string. In related events, the term draws ever closer to its conclusion. Midterm exam for Old Norse on Wednesday, and final papers for Viking Age Archaeology, The Medieval North (the prosaic title of our history class), and the Old Norse Literary Corpus draw ever into the realm of immediate reality, proving themselves sufficient antidote to any callow conception that carpe diem is an effective way to live.

Roommates offer flack for my generally asocial behavior. I bought a fancy Mad Hatter hat for a Halloween costume, in hopes of silencing them. We'll see how effective it is. Trying to put together some literary questions on the transmission of Trojumanna saga, concerning which I have almost entirely philological scholarship. I don't entirely trust my interpretations of this. But I'm sending an abstract to the Vagantes conference tomorrow, one way or another. So we'll see what they think.

I am receiving sufficient letters from the West-I no longer feel entirely disconnected from home, just the proper amount to make me not take the whole idea of travel for granted. Likewise there will be at least one other person around for Christmas, so I won't be entirely on my own, wishing there were some proper firs around to decapitate and drag into the living room (David's room).