Bad News! Good News!

SO as usual, I am way behind on the posting. Which is nothing to say for Ryan, who posts, like, once every two months, but anyway. I am back in school and doing a-ok. This semester I am taking: Gender and Development, Social and Political Movements, and Africa in International Politics. So far (i've only had a couple lectures so far) I think that I will enjoy this term, though a couple of my classes are not as challenging as I would like. In the UK they do not have Gender Studies programs at the universities and so the cirriculum offered in that area is much less sophisticated and the average student has had less exposure to women's/gender studies in general. I like Edinburgh well enough but I am going to be glad to move on next year to LSE. I believe that the offerings there will be much more up to my expectations for what graduate level work should be.

Aside from all that, I have been strategizing on ways to earn extra income. So far the options have been 1) get part-time job doing something, likely cashiering at a store or whatever 2) become a paid tutor, 3) start my own fashion line and sell my clothes at a local shop, 4) get signed up with a temp service and get some intermittent work as a fill-in secretary, receptionist, etc. For now I am letting all of these options slide and just working on immediate school, etc. though I think this spring I will both a) begin tutoring, and b) once I finish classes definately get onto the temp work. I actually got an offer from a local shop on the clothing deal but right now I don't have my own sewing machine and honestly its a lot of work for not too much gain. Ryan has been promoted at work to assistant manager and so with both a pay raise and more hours we are finally getting on the road to financial stability. We had a bunch of bills come due this month that were insanely high and unexpected and so that has put us back a bit, but on the bright side we at least had enough to be solvent. Also, due to a clerical error (mixed with a good dose of inefficient British beauracratic BS) we are getting taxed to high heavens right now which really hurts. Hoping to get this resolved soon and get a refund from Her Magistry's Customs... Though who knows how long that will take.

Other than that... I am working on slicing up and honing down a draft of my undergraduate thesis to submit to a writing contest in the US. It is currently almost two hundred pages long and needs to be shaved down to eighty so much work to do in the next week. If I win, I will both get my hands on some cold hard cash and get it published in an annual review. Wish me luck. On that note, I am FINALLY getting paid for the article I wrote last August as a contribution to a new Bedford St. Martin's text book The Academic Writer. Its been so long that I forgot they owed me! Its always fun when you have money coming your way that you had forgotten about.

My hard drive died in a horrible and dramatic way last week, which put me in a panic for a few days. I had tried to wake it up and since it seemed frozen I tried to restart it. Instead of loading up the OS it gave me this gray screen with a flashing question mark. No matter how many times I tried to reset it it just kept giving me the question mark and making this clicking noise, as if to say "Hard drive? What Hard Drive? I don't have a hard drive!?!" After about a day of trying everything I could concieve of do-it-yourself fixes it was apparent to me that the failure was definately a hardware one and so I had to take it in. The only place in Edinburgh that is a certified apple service provider was this place that isn't even in the city but way out in the middle of nowhere beyond the farthest reaches of the local bus service. It took me over two hours to get there, touring some of the worst thatcher-era slums I have ever seen in the process, before I finally found the place, but I arrived safe and sound and delivered my broken baby. Still waiting to hear back whether they have been able to rescue anything at all of my data. Thankfully most of the important stuff was backed up. Just in case I lose all my media, I have been frantically getting music from my friend Sean (who is a music critic and whose collection is boundless). The real bummer is that I had just started work on my dissertation and now it is all (probably) lost. Hope to get my machine back next week sometime. At least it is under warranty so that I don't have a big bill to worry about.

Other than all that, things are going pretty well here in Scotland. The weather is ok, not too desperately wet but pretty cold. For a moment we had snow the other night, though I was sleeping and missed it. After several weeks of illness and lethargy I am finally back up and running again and feeling pretty good. My asthma seems to be under control again and I have more energy these days. Ryan and I ran 8 miles the other night, which is slightly behind schedule but ok. We are going to end up running the Edinburgh marathon on the 27th of May instead of the Belfast (on the 7th) so we have a few more weeks to prepare now. In between we are going to sign up for a half marathon along the Firth of Forth (along the ocean at the edge of Edinburgh, in a part of town called Leith). We seem to have plenty of company because all over town any time of day or night they are scores of runners prancing all over the place. I am sure we will see them all together come May. It is nice taking up the sport in a place with a real vibrant running culture; it is all very encouraging. Come the end of spring though, when the marathon season is over, we are planning on continuing to go on occassional runs but want to spend more of our time cycling. That way we hope to explore more areas outside of the city and actually see the Scottish scenery at bit.

Well then, that's probably enough for one post. I hope everyone is happy and well back home (or wherever else in the world you are).
Much Love,
Alletta (and Ryan)