T minus 2 days and counting...

So, in other news today -- my pre-oral will be two days long. Friday and Saturday, one question each day. So that should be fun. Plenty of stress time in between. Though I have to say my adviser knows me well: part of her decision in making it two days long was so that I'd sleep instead of working on the questions for a full 24 hours.

I'm feeling fairly psyched after two wonderful, productive meetings, with my second major list adviser and one of my minor list advisers. I am also adding Beowulf back into my exam, which seems like the right move. I was going to miss him! Also, I think it will be a productive space to try to think about temporality and the problems that arise when a sort of hybrid temporal space is inhabited by a character in the text (Beowulf is many things, but I don't think a firm argument can be made that he's fully Christian -- and the time of the text at least is a nominally Christian time, or at least a time aware of Christianity. I think).

And I acknowledge, that's entirely a half thought. Maybe the other half will come after some refreshing sleep.

Clare Lees' talk was amazing -- it's funny, but she actually has the status of being the first Anglo-Saxonist *other* than my undergraduate adviser that I heard speak. My sophomore year of college, she gave a talk on Heaney's introduction to his Beowulf. Five years later, I'm glad to say that Lees still gives some of the most provocative and interesting papers I've heard. I always come out of her lectures with endless amounts of energy.

And the webcomic of yesterday...a perennial favorite in my NC family household. I still remember when Theater Sis introduced me to it. The words "and life was never the same" come to mind...so, get ready to look SOOO good! and enjoy Homestarrunner's Teen Girl Squad.