Had a good day at college. Mindfulness practice in the morning, which is actually a lovely way to start the week.

Group presentation on Humanistic Therapy went well, thank you @LabourGeek for your help! We ran over time, but as we were the first group of four (and as such the test case), we've been given lee-way. Apparently we were a cohesive group, well read, very interactive, and one of the assessors said he forgot he was assessing and really wanted to join in. So feeling positive about that. It's 12.5% of our Interventions Module, good to have it out of the way.

I've been invited to do a presentation at Wellness Week at the women's prison. Need to find a topic and a partner... I've also suggested/offered to run a School of Ed UnConference, and I've done Class Rep advocacy to do.

Tomorrow Research Methods 2 and an afternoon of Neuropsych. I'm tempted to skip the afternoon session. Last week the lecture was just reading from slides, no interaction at all. I could read them myself in half the time. Over the lunch break I'm meeting someone to discuss my dissertation proposal.

Tonight I've reflective practice for my Mindfulness and my Counseling to do, an IEP to sketch out, the research meeting to prepare for, and l should really do some essay work for Child Development.

Deep breaths, I'm going in...

Thanks for suggestions E, C.
Back from doc. More antibiotics (higher dose of same), referral to breast clinic tomorrow morning for assessment.
It's probably a blocked duct, but it could be an abscess, so need to get checked out.
Meantime, hot compresses are helping, as are copious quantities of ibuprofen. No cabbages in the locality, but picked up some spy leichtin capsules. Also acidophilus, cos the antibiotic is predictably affecting one part of my anatomy....

5,500 words down, only 35,000 to go.

I'm quite proud of myself. I've not done any academic writing in a decade, but the more I wrote, the more familiar and comfortable with the style I became. It helps that my dear friend, S, is a syntactician. She micro-editted the essay for me, and talked me through lots of stylistic and structural points.

I rewarded myself with coffee and John Donne in the bath this morning.

I believe I may have contracted femaleclichesis. I went to the shop, intending to buy teabags and have come home with chocolate mousse, red wine and a copy of Love Actually.

Come on, hormones. This is just absurd.

Isn't it just marvelous when you find out new things you have in common with people? Fellow enthusiasts met through a hobby share a completely unrelated passion, friends you've loved for years confess a common fondness for dated music.

I'm currently seeing the world as a hugely complex Venn diagram.


PS nina_evil loves Neil Diamond.

I'm hoping some one may be able to point me in the right direction on this one.

Last night I got into a rather animated discussion on the topic of Dominant Privilege, with specific regard to male privilege, it being the one that most inconveniences me! I felt unable to adequately explain the ramifications this can have socially, without sounding like a man-basher. (And yes, the difficulties with discussing feminist issues while avoiding the accusations of being man-hating could form an entire series of posts).

Can any one direct me towards articles or other resources on this topic, particularly ones that deal with how it is possible to not be chauvanistic/racist/homophobic/etc and still benefit from male/white/heteronormative privilege, or on how we can be blind to privilege?

I think I'm going to apply for a sabbatical from work, and try piracy for a while. Though illegal DVDs, semi-legal p2p music downloads and even the theft of yoga poses all have their perks, I'm going to go for all out swashbucklin', salty sea air, cursin', spittin', grog-swillin', hornpipe-dancin', deck-swabbin', intermittent "Arrr"ing oceanic banditry.
Death, doubloons and debauchery on the good ship... whatever I'll call it when I get one.