Restarting, take 29348

I am lying on my bed, in my pajamas, watching the darkening grey sky that is either a result of the Icelandic volcano or just normal England spring, and it’s 8:30 pm. Why am I in my pajamas at 8:30 pm, you might ask? Well, because this week I started an internship. It’s supposed to be only four days a week, but since this is my first week, I’ve gone in every day – to make myself known, to let myself get to know the project and the people.

It’s a four month internship, so I’ll be there until the end of July. Four months of sitting in an open-plan office, making databases and sending email. I honestly could not be more thrilled. I said, after last fall, that I needed a quiet office job, and that is what I have right now.

Plus, the database I’m currently making is of research case studies from every school in the university. I get to read representative research from every field. How could I not love this? I said in an email to my supervisor today that I keep getting distracted from building the database by actually reading the case studies. I keep finding out about research centres that are based here that I had no idea even existed. Like the Centre for Evidence-Based Dermatology, which is actually in the same building as I am.

It’s amazing how hope and energy come back when you have something external to do. I’ve picked up some writing from a “content mill” (where you get paid by pageviews, for the most part), plus this internship, and I’m starting to feel like a productive member of society again. And even though I’ve been fairly tired when I’ve gotten home this week, it’s been the kind of tired that makes me yawn, not the kind of tired that makes me unable to do anything but stare mindlessly at the computer. (Instead, I stare mindfully at the computer. Or something.)

The tiredness also may have something to do with the commute – I’ve walked both ways every day. There is a bus combination that could do it, but honestly with the waiting and the changing it would probably take about as long. And it’s been mostly nice outside. Like I said at the top, the greyness of today is either due to typical English spring or the Iceland volcano that’s pushing an ash plume across the British Isles and northern Europe today. Tuesday afternoon was drizzly, and I probably should have taken the bus, but every other day has been fine or sunny. It takes me just under an hour to get to the campus where I’m working. Home again takes a little bit longer if I stop at the store for some food (even though I really should be eating what I have in the house, by the time I am coming home I am so hungry that I can’t focus on “what do I want to make tonight”). As the weeks go on, I’m sure that I’ll get used to the hours and the walk and the lack of snacking (or manage to snack more) and I’ll be fine. I’m developing some calluses on my feet already from the shoes I’ve been wearing.

I really am excited about the project I’m interning on. It’s sort of a University-wide practice for the research assessment that’s coming up in a couple of years – the guidelines and requirements have changed, and no one really knows what to expect, so it’s probably best that we figure it out before the real thing comes. It manages to satisfy my mild organizational obsession with the database creation and the file-naming, it lets me be in thrall to academia and research (even if it’s not my research) for a little while longer, it lets me work with adults who know what they’re doing, and work on things that I kind of know how to do, and am getting better at every day (even little things like “go to Marie and ask her to do this thing” – that’s something I’m getting better at!)

I’m already not looking forward to (late) August, after this job is over and after my mom goes home. I know that this summer is going to be fantastic, and I won’t want it to end.

Media Roundup, Part 1

I have been in a "long-form" video mood lately. Actually, I've been in a long-form everything mood: instead of single tracks, I've been listening to whole albums (Ocean Eyes, by Owl City, mostly, although I also finished the Ring last night) and instead of random TV episodes, I've been watching movies or whole series. (There is one tiny exception to this, which is Doctor Who, which is possibly self-explanatory.)

It started with Casualty 1900s, which I wrote about before and have watched all of about five more times since my birthday. But even I can't watch a series incessantly. I needed a break, something new and stimulating. But I was still in a "historical" mood, so bring on Foyle's War, which my best friend had been recommending for ages.

Foyle's War, if you don't know, is a British TV series set in WW2 Hastings. Each episode is about an hour and a half long (so two hours when it aired on ITV, a commercial network). Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle is a WW1 veteran who (eventually) sees his role in the war effort to be keeping down crime on the homefront - murder doesn't stop being murder just because there's a war on.

Each episode is a discrete story; the story arcs come from the war itself and the main characters. Foyle's sergeant lost a leg in the Norway campaign; Foyle's son is in the RAF; they're in Hastings, on the coastline, so fear of invasion is a running theme for a while. Each episode is incredibly grounded in the real events: Dunkirk, the American presence, the Blitz, the Normandy invasion, etc. It's so well-researched; in addition to being a compelling procedural, it gives such a vivid picture of life on the coast and the homefront during the war. I learned about things that I'd never known existed (like Exercise Tiger) and got a sense for things that I couldn't possibly experience. And I can't say enough good things about the actors. I fell in love with them all. (However, as a warning: the murder in the first episode is the most vivid and quite horrific.)

Next on the list was Life on Mars, which keeps on with the historical police drama theme. It's so different from Foyle's War, though: in Life on Mars, the main character is in a car accident in 2006 and wakes up in 1973. Is he mad? in a coma-induced hallucination? or actually a time-traveller? It's never made 100% clear, although the last episode leans greatly toward the coma-induced hallucination with a touch of near-death time-travelling.

This is another series where the actors and the characters totally make the series. The stories themselves aren't anything too special and unique; it's the characters, especially John Simm as Sam Tyler, that make them shine. The final episode in particular was stunning. I had tears in my eyes at the end. It was heartbreakingly sad and inevitably right at the same time.

Next on the list was the BBC miniseries of Casanova. David Tennant and Peter O'Toole. *sigh* It was incredibly funny. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be funny, given that it was written by Russell T. Davies... There were some absolute laugh-out-loud moments. David Tennant overcomes many different levels of bad hair and just leaps off the screen. I may be biased here, but he was just fantastic. And Peter O'Toole as the aged Casanova exuded faded sexuality - he's always been wonderful and I'm so glad he's still acting. I completely believed the love between Casanova and Henriette (even though it's probably not historically accurate....and why isn't Laura Fraser better known?) and now I want to read Casanova's memoirs. Just skimming the Wikipedia article made me realize that his romantic reputation is only a small part of who he was. (Well, not small. That enduring legend couldn't be founded on anything .... small.)

The last series I want to mention is Lost in Austen. It was quite cute, and I enjoyed some of the liberties they took with Pride and Prejudice (especially Wickham. I unashamedly loved Wickham in this version. They made him believably redeemable). It did fall into the Darcy trap but not for long, and it was quite amusing to watch Amanda panic and try to "fix" everything. Causes and consequences were kind of hand-waved away, but it's a charming enough series.

Next time: films.