Our first monthly chat topic of the new year.
As always the rules are simple, feel free to chat about pretty much anything going on in your life at the moment, from education/employment, books/games/films/music to any random interests or plots to take over the world you might have .
Unfortunately, as I said at the end of December's topic, Mrs. Dark and I are still feeling bloody awful as we both have terrible colds, albeit the fact that I can actually sit up at my computer is a bonus since I've not been able to do that for a couple of days now.
I'm hoping 2019 goes better than 18, since while 18 wasn't as bad as 14, there was a lot of frustration and bad stuff going on, but its a new year so hopefully we'll see some changes.
The biggest thing on the horizon for me right now is my formal graduation ceremony in two weeks where i get actually presented with the certificate for my phd (I've been awarded the qualification, this is just the formal ceremony, albeit a big formal ceremony at Durham cathedral in full academic robes etc).
Unfortunately, Durham university with their usual efficiency have contacted me not at all about my graduation since I phoned them earlier this year, which means I don't even know when I need to be at the cathedral .
I bet they've sent the details to my Durham email address, the one which has been inaccessible for the last 10 or so years which I've repeatedly told people not to use .
Still it should be fixable, albeit it will probably mean me having to do a lot of annoying phone calls tomorrow when their office reopens.
My lady is having similar bureaucratic hassles in trying to sign up for a councelling qualification, though hopefully that will get sorted this year since, if we can't find anything singing, that is what she really wants to do.
for me, the other annoying point about haaving a cold is my work on my sf novella has had to stop for a while. This is a shame since I have had a suggestion of what I might do with it when its finished, and I've pretty much decided writing is what I want to do at this stage. My poetry has been liked by the people who've heard it, and I would be interested in taking things further and writing fiction etc.
I'm also continuing with the book reviews, though due to some issues in the personal life of the poor webmaster, fantasybookreview.co.uk has a wee bit of a backlog at the second, still, my thoughts on books should be appearing soon, and as people will have noticed from the update last week, I am trying to take the db in hand and get things uptodate there too.
So hope everyone else is having a good 2019 thus far, and feeling better than I am .
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)