Lotte's Pudding.doc

You know you've been working hard when the highlight of your week is a pudding. To be fair, this wasn't just any pudding. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Since Emily left on Tuesday I've returned to the normal routine that brings me a lot of joy. I'm back to the dining table dissertation desk followed by a few hours at the gym in the afternoon. Lately, as process on the dissertation keeps steady, I've also incorporated job searching into the daily routine. My job site bookmarks increase each week - the full court press will be in full effect come mid-November I imagine.

Tuesday evening we went to a play at the Warwick Arts Centre called Deep Cut. It's a piece that explores the strange and unnerving "suicides" at a UK military outlet by four youth in the span of ten years or so. I didn't know much about the issue before the play, but from the outside it seems like there is a coverup going on. The play used some verbatim material in weaving together a portrait of one case in particular. I thought that the various perspectives speaking to one another (parents, journalist, official report, first hand accounts) was an innovative way to tell the story, but that's about all that grabbed me about the play. It was too didactic for my tastes, and my most astute colleagues assured me that the Welsh accents had been butchered. Nevertheless, it was nice to see some theatre again as it had been a while. We went out for a cheeky pint afterwards.

On Wednesday I made only my fifth trip back to campus in six weeks for a MAIPR seminar. There were two very distinguished scholars visiting from the United States as part of the coursework for the new class. Each presented a paper at the seminar and then chatted with us afterwards. It was nice to see a good group gathered again. In particular, Sue-Ellen Case (who Natalie Rewa will be just THRILLED that I chatted with) is one of the leading academics in my field. Her research interests are extremely diverse, but she has an accomplished body of literature about the very things I'm writing about. I chatted with her briefly about my topic and she thought it sounded promising. It was nice to hear from such a distinguished professor. She sent me book references via my supervisor that will help as I go.

In business news I had a major breakthrough with the thesis. Instead of focussing on Canada, the States, and the Netherlands, my supervisor and I decided to focus solely on North America. He was fully supportive of narrowing down. I think it will be a nice way to frame things now as a comparison of two countries that share a border. It's a shame that I won't get to discuss the Netherlands (since I wanted a more diverse study) but with what I've written so far I wouldn't have the space for three nation studies and a chapter of theory. This means I'll arrive at a draft sooner than I thought.

On my way home from the gym on Thursday Lotte called and asked if I wanted to come round for pudding. I knew pudding would probably cancel out my time at the gym, but I didn't care. Translator's note: pudding means cake here in England (so don't picture me eating a bowl of liquified chocolate but rather a delicious cake). We met at the grocery and picked up some supplies. The cake was simple but cleverly chocofied: two large chocolate swiss rolls lathered in nutella and covered with bits of a cookie infused chocolate bar. It was placed in the oven for about ten minutes where it baked into pure joy. Talk about chocolate overload. It was a delicious pudding, and so rich that no one could have another slice. It was the highlight of my weekdays.

Doc's Prescription of the Day: Some pudding - I'll let you interpret that as you will.