- Marked some papers,
- Gone to the doctoral training seminar to invite people to present in the workshop I help run,
- Got my transcript out for a workshop that I'm doing next week
- Studied a bit of French, and
- Begun work on an abstract for the metaphor conference in Amsterdam next June.
After this, I went to the library to look at the materials for the French class I will be taking because I haven't been sent them yet. I have a TMA (tutor marked assignment) of reading and writing due on December first, so I was a bit worried, but after looking over the material I am less worried. Unlike Japanese, when you look at a French sentence, the grammar is pretty self-explanatory. The words look familiar. If you need to look a word up, in Japanese, this is a very time consuming process, especially if you're reading, and requires knowledge of at least one 40+ character writing system. French? Well, you just type it into bablefish. Bam! You have your answer. Anyway, I don't think it will be too difficult. At least for the first book (there are six). We'll see though.
My abstract is also coming together well. I thought last night, as I was going to sleep, if I had to explain what I was doing to someone who had no knowledge of metaphor theory or linguistics or ethnography or discourse analysis, how would I explain it. This was a very good exercise because it reminded me why it was that I am interested in what I'm interested in and what it is, exactly, that I'm trying to accomplish.