Down in the south (relatively speaking)

[luzula]

I've just been at a math conference down in the southwest of Sweden, and I'm now hanging out with my parents, which is FTW. It's also great to be where it's spring--we still have some snow left up in the north.

The conference dinner was in honor of B, my academic grandfather (that is, the man who was the thesis advisor to my thesis advisor, M), for his sixtieth birthday. M and B are so adorably slashy. M had re-written the lyrics to a song for the occasion, and performed it with his band. In the song, he said that B was the most important man in his life. Also, for M's fiftieth birthday a couple of years ago, B held a speech where he compared their relationship to a marriage. Awww.

Other stuff that's going on:

1) I have to do some rewriting on my Big Bang story. Please poke me occasionally and tell me sternly to keep writing, okay?

2) I'm currently in second place in amplificathon, and I'm having fun with that. Taking singing lessons has really had positive side effects for my podficcing, and it's a lot of fun to record in different kinds of fandoms. To save energy, I'm only posting the podfics to the comm, but I'll post a list here after the challenge.

3) I managed to get time off from my post-doc to work in the mountains again this year! \o/ The great thing about it is that they will also prolong my contract so that I don't lose any post-doc time. I was pretty sneaky about this: I asked them if they'd let me have time off to be employed on another research project. I'm pretty sure they thought that it was another mathematical research project, but I never said so (in fact, I'll be doing fieldwork in biology).

4) I think I have discovered a fandom wherein I can listen to long podfics without needing canon knowledge and without getting sucked into the fandom: Supernatural RPS. I love listening to podfic, and I've run out of podfic in fandoms I know. Sure, I listen to other audiobooks too, but sometimes I just want a story with that fanfic flavor, and Supernatural RPS AU:s are great for this. I feel a little bit weird about it, because with most fanfic I read, it's about having a prior love for the characters, and here it isn't (which is why I'm not getting sucked into the fandom). I mean, I don't actually care about Jared and Jensen--for me, they could as just well be new original characters for every new podfic I listen to.

Comments

[isis]

*poke*

And yay for getting to do the mountain fieldwork again! Post lots of pictures, okay?

[cathexys]

Don't feel bad about listening to RPS AUs as original fic. We all do it :) And J2 has some amazing AUs!!! Have you read the dragon one yet? Amazing!!! And pandarus is such a great reader, pretty much all her stories are worth listening to...

Yeah for time with family and yeah for mountain time!!

[suzumenoko.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the amplificathon. If anyone should be champ there, it's you!

I'm interested to hear that singing lessons help with podficcing. I took singing lessons a couple of years back and it helped me feel more confident about singing, but the only way I've used what I learned in podficcing is that I warm up with the same exercises I used in the singing lessons. What's your experience?

The research project in the mountains sounds absolutely idyllic. And its nice that you get along so well with your advisor. My only experience with Swedish academics was when I once went to Stockholm to serve as the Interrogator or Inquistor (?) on some poor student's thesis defense. It was very medieval. Maybe they don't do this in mathematics (the thesis was in literature) but I've never felt so uncomfortable. The poor man's children were in the audience, filming the whole thing. (It made me feel I had to be nice, even though the thesis was obnoxious.) After it was over everyone went out together for a giant fish buffet and acted friendly to their enemies. When you write of the birthday dinner I think of this weird fish buffet.

Despite this, I loved Sweden and wished I could stay longer. Make sure you write about your mountain research! :)

suzu

[akamine_chan]

And this year you have a camera to take with you so you can take tons of pictures. No excuses this time.

And your advisors sound so cute and slashy...*g*

And Happy Birthday, again!

[exeterlinden.livejournal.com]

re: #4 That's sorta how I feel about SPN RPS, too! I don't want to know anything about the real Jared and Jensen, and I actually usually have creep issues with RPS, but the AU's are plentyful and a lot of them are pretty high quality fan fic...

Also, I think I suffer from academical envy *g* Biological fieldwork? *dreamy sigh*