Month: September 2010

At last, Margaret is here. Right away, though, we’re heading off to St Andrews to participate in a small conference and to reconnect with our friend Rob MacSwain. The sermon on which I was working diligently all day Saturday, apart from the wedding, went all right, though the last pages didn’t print out and I had to recreate them by hand on the train.
 
More later — but for now, life is beautiful.
 

I was in a hurry to get my haircut, so I could get home and wring words from my soul into a sermon, so that I could get to church in time for this afternoon’s wedding, so that I could get home and not be rushed in the wrapping-up the sermon, and would have time to do laundry and clean up the flat.
 
I hurried fro the flat to the barber’s, but on the way I turned the ankle that I had already turned Thursday night on my way home from Mark and Alana’s; I hobbled a little on my way along to get my haircut. The barbershop didn’t open till forty minutes after it was supposed to, though (the proprietor asked some pointed questions of the employee who opened up, but I did not rat her out). While I was waiting, a local coffeeshop opened, so I decided to pass the minutes in a nutritive pursuit. Sadly, though, I forgot to ask for black coffee, so I was served a steaming flagon of milkified coffee. It was my fault — I oughtn’t to ask for something different from what I ordered, so I sipped my medicine.
 
From then on, things picked up. The wedding was fine, though the sermon articulated a more severe patriarchy than I would have expected. I got home in time to make some dinner and sit down to write, and writing has gone well tonight, but I really want the sermon just to end so I can go to bed and wake up on the day my sweetheart rejoins me from the States.
 
Counting the hours.
 

I don’t feel like concentrating on writing the sermon that must be ready for Sunday morning, and I don’t feel like blogging, because I can’t focus. Margaret will be here in fewer than forty-eight hours!

Very full day, but I note that I was a Nina Paley fan way back in the alternative-newspaper days, and I cheered for her during the Sita Sings the Blues saga, and now she’s having a cracking argument with Cory Doctorow over how to handle copyright restrictions. It’s great to see two leaders of the slow groundswell toward a rational regimen for supporting creative artists talking policy; if only they were making policy, rather than debating at the margins.
 

I’m slowly getting the hang of the strange-to-me admissions process here in the UK. This morning, our campus — which had been still as a graveyard for most of the past four months — swarmed with eager young scholars who were sizing us up to determine whether they would cast their lot on studying Theology & Religious Studies at Glasgow, plus a few students interested in other topics (for some reason). They came to a talk in our ground-floor classroom, and took away brochures about our department subject area in a big Expo of fields of study in a vast open room in the Main Building.
 
We did pretty well in the Expo; I was teamed up with Madhavi Nevader, and we enjoyed the huckstering for our subject, magnifying the personal and career benefits of an undergraduate degree in Theology (or Religious Studies). I got to ask them about their “highers” and “A-levels” as though I were thoroughly conversant with what I was talking about. The prospective students seemed to appreciate our ebullience, and we signed up more people during our two-hour stint than did the other T&RS teams in the whole rest of the day. Pwned!
 
I hope there young characters get their applications in early enough that they don’t get caught up in next year’s enrolment crunch — and that they all want to study the Bible with my cool colleagues and me.
 
Speaking of which, all that stuff I said about getting a postgraduate degree at Glasgow still holds true, and I would still like a student or two to come on up to the lovely shores of the scenic River Clyde to work with me for toward a PhD. Lots of fun to be had, a beautiful country in which to work, a great staff with whom to work, and I promise not to mislead you if you ask me not to.
 
Plus: We’d be interested to hear if there’s someone working in an undergrad program in the States who would like to start up a study-abroad program to bring a dozen or two students over to learn about the Scottish Reformation (for instance) here in Glasgow. It would seem like a natural for US Presbyterian colleges, but if there’s interest Stateside, this is something we could begin to explore formalising on the Scottish side, too.
 

The vaunted Apple Event seemed to hit a number of strong notes. The Apple TV sounds like a good deal, sounds as though they actually have a device that does what probably want at a price people can afford. The iPod lineup looks snappier, although we apparently have seen the end of the iPod Classic (maybe Pippa’s will become a collectable). The new HDR photo feature makes me want the new iOS, but I’ll continue holding out till it’s clear that my 3G can run the software without straining. iTunes Ping? Well, we’ll see how it goes. I’m not convinced that people want another whole social network, but since it’s built-in to an app they already use, it might get traction.
 
He did not convince me to like Coldplay, though.