Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jennifer's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
5:12 pm	Good news! I passed my PhD viva. (With minor corrections, which about 90% of candidates get..) Apparently I'm not entitled to use the title Dr until I graduate in 7 months' time. Do people generally follow that, or start using it anyway? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
7:24 pm	Bob Dylan has released an album of Christmas songs. How bizarre. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
10:01 pm	I didn't get the job. I'd kind of suspected it for a while but they're not exactly speedy to let people know anything definite! A couple more possibilities worth looking into are coming up, and apparently there's every chance the Physics dept will be advertising for the same sort of positions next academic year. So it'll certainly be worth re-applying then, preferably having picked up more relevant experience if possible.. Job applications aside, I'm at a bit of a loose end work-wise now until I get told when my viva will be. This hopefully gives me a bit more time to catch up with all the friends and relations I've sadly neglected over the last few months! Having a birthday this week helped catch up with a few people, at least. Most intriguing present? A knit-your-own-sheep kit! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
3:50 pm	Today I submitted my PhD thesis. That's good. Frustratingly, I still haven't heard back from last week's job interview. That's bad. (Though perhaps slightly less bad than an outright rejection.) (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 14th, 2009
12:42 pm	Oops I just replied-to-mailing-list instead of replied-to-sender, and would have expressed myself in slightly more temperate words if I'd realised. Not on a major issue, but still. Everyone's done this sometimes, right? (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
4:14 pm	Signs you should give up and do something else for a bit: being unable to keep straight whether the Mesopotamian invader arguably linked with the founding of Babylon was Sargon or Sauron. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
3:28 pm	LJ seems to have stopped emailing me comment notifications, even though I haven't changed any settings. Anyone else having this problem? It makes it hard to keep up with conversations. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, July 24th, 2009
1:56 pm	Theatre fandoms Still busy, but I finished drafting a chapter so I'll now subject you to my not-very-original musings on the odd possessiveness of fans towards their pet musical theatre performer. (It also applies more generally to, say, your pet political opinion. Or many other areas.) The problem is twofold. Firstly, supporters of performer A, who're incapable of saying "I prefer performer A" without adding "... to that rubbishy performer B". And then get annoyed when supporters of performer B object, and say "But it's my opinion! I'm allowed an opinion!" Secondly, supporters of performer B, who're incapable of hearing "I prefer performer A" without mentally adding "... to that rubbishy performer B". Even when it's not intended. And then taking offence on B's behalf. ( More rambling ) (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
7:11 am	Family party this weekend, with the more obscure relatives we only see every couple of years. This meant I spent most of the time answering the same questions again and again. I think I need a T-shirt which says: "Yes, I'm writing my thesis. It's going OK. No, I don't know when I'll be finished. No, I don't know what I'm doing afterwards" Or at least some leaflets to hand out. I know they're only making conversation because they're interested. But after the 15th or so time of "Why no, I haven't found a job yet. But thanks for the reminder." it gets a little wearing.. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
10:25 am	Thesis update for June ( Probably still boring ) (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 19th, 2009
4:41 pm	Have you encountered Sarah Haskins? If not, you really should see some of her Target Women slots, which look at American advertising/TV shows aimed at women. They're very funny and occasionally disturbing. The wedding shows one is one of my favourites. Anyway, the show she appears on (Infomania) is otherwise very male-hetero-centric. That is, until the last two editions featured a new slot called "That's Gay", which.. isn't hetero-centric, unsurprisingly. And it's also very funny. Here are the first two episodes: TV's Gay Friend Obsession and Marriage is Gay. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
7:15 pm	May's thesis progress ( Updated here ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
4:36 pm	April's thesis progress update ( Probably uninteresting ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
5:52 pm	Things I learnt in America i) Everyone is incredibly friendly. For an introvert it did mean that even a simple shopping trip became a bit of a social overload, but I did appreciate how welcoming everyone seemed to be. ii) The supermarkets are just like here. Now, I've read Bill Bryson so I was expecting shelves of exciting and unusual sugary fatty goodness. However, the local supermarket was a Whole Foods market, which is just like Waitrose but with more granola. iii) If you wait for the traffic to stop, you'll never get across the road. Cars are allowed to turn right even when it's the pedestrians' turn to cross, so you just have to go for it and hope they notice you and stop! In other news, I was reading my new copy of Adrienne and the Chalet School recently. My husband (who's never read any of them) was quite curious to know why one girl at the school was apparently pushing another into a fire while summoning a demon? [1] The truth of that incident is rather more mundane, but once I described to him the strange world of the later CS books, with the crime-busting nuns and the drug gang members who do embroidery in their spare time, and so on, he came up with a new theory: that EBD was really tired of being asked to write about the Chalet School by the end, so came up with more and more outlandish plots just to see how much the publishers would let her get away with! [1] [If you squint, it looks like a demon with glowing eyes is in the shadows on the right] (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
4:28 pm	I'm going home tomorrow! (Well, not arriving back to Newcastle till mid-morning on Saturday, but still.) It's been a productive week, but that means I now have a better idea of just how much I've still got to do in the next few months. Hmm. The flight isn't till the evening, so I've got a few hours to kill in Boston tomorrow. I hope the weather's nice. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 21st, 2009
8:12 pm	I'm in Providence. It's been a very long day - suffice it to say the flight from Paris was long but uneventful (and my goodness do they keep you well fed!) and so far everyone seems incredibly helpful and friendly. On the flight I was sat with a couple from Boston, who told me lots about the area and were generally lovely. Unfortunately we lost track of each other at Customs so I didn't get to thank them properly. All I know is that she was called Angela and they had a very French last name. And then the bus driver, who let me off the $2 fare because the machine didn't give change and　there I was, fresh from the airport with only larger notes　to hand.. I must remember to pay that back at the end of the week. Anyway, I've been up since before 4am UK time, which is midnight this time, which is nearly 21 hours ago. Time to sleep. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
9:40 am	The good: I'm flying out to the US this weekend to spend a week visiting my supervisor. (He took up a position in Rhode Island at the start of this academic year.) The bad: i) This means I need to seriously start thinking about my thesis. ii) The journey there is irritatingly long-winded, involving leaving the house at 4am to get flights from Newcastle-Paris-Boston and then local transport to Providence. The faintly embarrassing: I have the songs from Hairspray stuck in my head, apparently indelibly, so I'm convinced I'm going to do some absent-minded academic thing and end up in Baltimore by mistake. It doesn't help that my hotel in Providence is called the Biltmore.. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
12:33 pm	Yesterday, Marks and Spencers sent me a £30 olive tree for free. Today, Marks and Spencers sent me a letter explaining *why* they'd sent me a £30 olive tree for free. It's very nice of them, and I hate to complain, but I can't help thinking this would have been better done in the other order.. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
8:31 pm	Well, the house is mostly tidy. The vegetables are prepared and the goose is in the fridge. We've listened to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Christmas Carol, and watched The Snowman. It must be Christmas.. :) (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
8:59 pm	I can't believe how wrong Girlguiding UK have got this As you may or may not know, Girlguiding's centenary is coming up. So to celebrate 100 years of Guiding, they want to give every member of the association a "mountain-top moment" during 2010. That is, something amazing that they take part in via Guiding and will remember for the rest of their lives. This is great. So my Guiding magazine arrived this week, with a booklet on suggested activities for this. The suggestions get more adventurous with age, so there are group visits to foreign countries on offer to adults, various UK camps and holidays suggestions for Brownies and Guides. The problem is the theme for Rainbows. For Rainbows, there are two options. First, "Rainbows Go Wild at the Zoo". OK, that's not so bad. There aren't any zoos very near here, but we can probably work something out. Option two? "Rainbows Go Wild at a Princess Party". Yes, it really says that. What were they thinking? One of the major themes of Guiding is "Look Wider" - broadening horizons for girls across the world. How can you possibly go from "We want everyone to do something really special to celebrate our centenary. Here are lots of exciting options for Brownies and Guides" to "The under-7s? Oh, they can just be pink sparkly princesses for the day, isn't that what all small girls are expected to like?". I know, princess doesn't necessarily = pink and sparkly, but that's definitely the line being pushed by the publicity. And even if you don't object to the suggestion to letting them be pink, sparkly princesses*, how is it a memorable event for Girlguiding? *Everywhere* seems to have the "little girl = pink sparkly princess" trend; probably several of their friends over the years will have birthday parties around that theme. A Rainbow party isn't exactly going to stick in their mind as a once-in-a-lifetime event. It's just really embarrassing.. *and I don't, exactly, but I do object when that seems to be just about the only role model set out for what small girls will enjoy. I think that the current trend for all toys to be gender-defined [i.e. pink for girls] is extremely unhealthy. (Interesting post from the pov of a parent here, BTW.) It's not actually genetically built-in for little girls to be mad about pink, and certainly not all of my Rainbows do. (4 Comments |Comment on this)