While taking a day off from Thesis

I am taking today off thesis but will be back on with it tomorrow as I have a chapter to finish. It should be straightforward but I need to refocus myself and make sure I get to the right point at the end.

I am trying to think back over the last fortnight, which has been heavily dominated by work and thesis, and I really can only think of a couple of other stories with those.

Work wise it is finishing off projects. I have spent quite a bit of time with a PhD student who had done a number of surveys and someone else had done a very interim analysis. I have done about four different analyses for her and I suspect that she will in the end get most from the simple statistics I got to do half way through. A lot of it felt as if she was trying to walk before she could run as she would find a technique in a paper and then want to do that. One I eventually concluded was pointless, the second may produce something vaguely interesting but I am cautious over whether the data is suitable. Well we shall see what happens.

Then there has been work for human nutrition, I am amazed at the way people assume I am an authority because I can do the statistics. I think I have just about got to the last pull on the masters projects there, but next month I am going to be leading a workshop on helping other to analyse ANOVAs. It feels weird to suddenly find out that I am looked upon as this very expert Statistician, as this is basically training people to do the sort of work I have been doing for the last nineteen years. Other than that, I am developing a communications role within my team at work which means that I will be tangential to the power structure but not totally outside it. I suppose that really is where I prefer to be. I am also due to test a range of software next week so it is all go despite the fact I am only in two work for two days.

Thesis wise I have really been getting my head around the tradition, I think I am in the position almost to conclude my chapter on tradition tomorrow and to be able to argue that in some ways it is a self reproducing system of engagement that works on a variety of levels. In writing it has been remarkable easy to argue that what seems to happen in every age is that you get a configuration of similar tension that people work with. As they resolve some of the tensions or a new situation arises that normally involve working with the other tensions in the systems. One such system is that that links meaning and practice. Sometimes practice comes through semi-attached to thought and sometimes meaning seems to disengage from one set of practices but then engage with another (wee cuppies anyone and sharing together anyone). Anyway I have less than 2000 words on this chapter to write and I think I may be able to cover that in the process of writing tomorrow. That unfortunately means my tidy up of the Worship chapter will have to wait to next weekend (well Thursday probably) so as to get the data chapters out to my congregations.

Other bits, Jean and James took me out to Nirmals which is a bit of a Sheffield institution. It is an experience but Mrs Nirmal was certainly less pushy than in the past, only slightly put out when James did not take his mango pip in his hands and suck it. The food was good (the mango was superb), the company excellent but I am afraid I was not up to it and was rather quiet, not really sure why but I was, maybe a bit of migraine in the offing.

I also have bought myself a charcoal grey cardigan. It surprised me somewhat that I should need it as I normally steer away from black but I noticed that I have both two pairs of black jeans and a grey pair. My other cardigans work with them if I am wearing the right blouse but some of my blouses just don’t mix with the cardigans so I decided to get a grey/black one and have it for wearing when I do not want to think.

Today should have been a thesis Sunday but Anne Parker was preaching at St Andrews and wanted to show slides of her trip to Bangladesh in 2011. This meant instead of a sermon we had what was close to a personal testimony, it needs a bit more polish and it will be very good indeed. It also meant that somebody needed to work the technology and that somebody was me. I think if I had been sensible I would have found time this weekend to go to church and set up beforehand, as it was the technology only started talking together during the first hymn. It looked like a loose connection on the projector, I really should do some more researching of that but I had swapped two cables, two computers already and it was not fixed, I was just to give up and suddenly it worked.

Toadstool beads that I made today

Otherwise I have spent today making fly agaric style toadstool beads, I need one for a hedgehog amigurumi I am making. The style of bead is quite specific and I could not find any on the internet even at the website the book said sold them. However the more I thought about it the more I thought it would be relatively easy to make. So I bought some polymer clay and today I had a go at making fifteen. That means I have fourteen spare , but given the amount of time crocheting the spikes requires I am NOT going to make fourteen more hedgehogs. I have ideas for a use and we will have to see. Actually for my first attempt at using polymer clay it seemed quite successful.

I have also been playing around with cover designs for the book writers group is doing. I hope to get another chance to play with that next weekend.