A postcard from hiatusville

Howdy.

This blog has gathered massive amounts of dust for a bit over 2 months since my last post. For a number of reasons, September 2010 has been a crazy month filled with both lovely and not-so-lovely events, realizations and experiences.

Just to fill my occasional reader in (Hi dad!) with what hijacked my time and attention from writing, here's the zippy version of events past and upcoming that play volleyball with my thoughts right now:

HUGE EVENTS

• I went to Norway for a conference and presented the "light" version of my PhD thesis, which says that "Ergonomics needs infrastructure to work". And it went so well reaction-wise that now I'm kind of frightened to follow it up with the real version... :0
  
• D's little brother S and his fiancée M got married in PARIS (ooh lala oui) - we were there for a week and D & I were photographers :)
  
• D's little brother and (now) wife - whom I affectionately refer to as S&M ;) - had their wedding party one weekend later in Gothenburg. D & I were still photographers.
• I'm off to Berlin this weekend for a family reunion! We meet every year "that day of that month of that year", meaning the tenth of October 2010 this year (10-10-10). Yeah, the Berlin family... in Berlin... I'm imagining funny looks from passport control when they get seven of us flying out of Gothenburg together, hehehe ;)
  

IN OTHER NEWS

• I sent in a funding application (that I reeeally didn't have time to write!) that might hopefully cover me another year's (paid) work after I defend my thesis this spring. I think it was crap and am trying to 'fuggeddaboudid', but you never know.
  
• Gogol bordello are coming to my hometown in December! FUN! Will the experience be anywhere near as amazing as the last time?
  

REALIZATIONS

• I am 2½ months away from my PhD thesis deadline, with two unfinished articles and the thesis itself unwritten. :0
• I said yes to being 1/3 of the teaching staff for an entirely new course, while I write said thesis and articles.
  
• I have started participating in a research project with some colleagues that is not being paid for, which is why we call it our "Skunk" project. Why? The research is frickin' interesting, but it doesn't fit with any of our ongoing funded projects.
  
• I am getting more and more doubtful that I want a hyper-successful career in research. While I love the nitty gritty and the teaching, the actual getting funding and writing articles with no artistic freedom whatsoever is beginning to get to my nerves. 
• I love working with photos. But after Paris and the wedding party, D and I have some 2000 pictures to sift through and reduce down to a sane amount for the wedding album we promised S&M...
  

So the long and short of it is that my days up until Christmastime are going to be full throttle writing academic fluff, meaning that my energy for writing anything else has been and will be sporadic. During my free hours, I try to dance and move around instead of sitting even more at the computer.

So please don't give up on me entirely. I'll be back. And oh, PLEASE wish me luck :S