Unfortunately I have very little of interest to report since my last entry on the Sunday Roast Adventure.  Mainly I’ve been working with great haste on a fieldwork summary of the work I did in the States, as well as quantifying the work I did overall.  (15 interviews with 16 participants over 20 hours, this many Americans, this many British, this many Hungarians, etc.)  Now that that’s finished, I have to produce a draft of a paper by Friday so my supervisor can read it before she comes to meet me next Wednesday.  The paper is on the fact that the best-laid research plans often go awry and how young researchers shouldn’t panic about that, because that’s just what happens.  (Much like life.) 

However, I’ve been laid low by a cold (story of my life, I know) so mainly I’ve been having feverish dreams and wishing I had a better stock of Terry Pratchett books to enjoy during my convalesence. 

I did manage to spend an evening cooking chili, cornbread and roasted vegetables before the illness really took hold, which meant I haven’t had to worry about food while I’m sick.  Plus I realized again just how much I love cooking: most of my life is spent producing writing on a subject that I love and work hard to justify as a useful contribution to the store of human knowledge, but in my heart of hearts I often wonder what all my academic toil will really add up to.  (I wonder about the true value of most academic research, actually, not just mine.)  But when I cook something, the reward is immediately tangible and understandable.  The pride I can take in my work is obvious.