Monday the 3rd of March

Five chapters done on my thesis now, two to go. One of the final two is based on a paper that I did with my supervisor last year, and he seems to think that it will be OK if I just go through it and remove anything that I've already brought up in definitions and leave the rest in. Hopefully that means that my first draft of chapter six will be done by the middle/end of next week...

The final chapter (which will actually be the final chapter in my thesis) is just a short account of some work that I never really got a handle on, but which I got some results for. Not sure if my supervisor will agree on title I have in mind, but the author's prefered version would be "Speculation and Portents in the Annulus"...

Long weekend, and yet over so quickly. My nan is still in hospital, but seems to have recovered from the operation to remove the drainage tube that was accidentally left inside her weeks ago. Yesterday was Mother's Day in the UK, and so I took my mum to see an orchestral concert at the Philharmonic.

Over the weekend I read "Half the Blood in Brooklyn," the latest Joe Pitt novel by Charlie Huston; vampire noir at its best (not that I know of any other vampire noir), it takes two really interesting genres in extremely interesting directions. His descriptions and background for a clan of Jewish vampires (who only drink kosher blood from orthodox girls) make for intriguing reading, and add a bizarre religious angle to the vampire mythology that he's so far grounded as a purely physical (viral) phenomenon.

I also read "Odd and the Frost Giants," Neil Gaiman's World Book Day short story. It may be aimed at children, but it's a cracking little read for adults too. Alas, if memory serves it isn't being released in the US!

And the next book on my list is Rewired, described as a "post-cyberpunk anthology". I'll probably crack on with that tonight: I've got more done today than I had planned, and my cinema plans that I had with a friend this evening have fell through. I think a nice tuna salad when I get home would be good, and then curl up with a good book...

Yeah... More actual blogging soon.