Microsoft gave me all kinds of new “Live” software today and there was some blogging stuff in there, so I thought that I would give a test and see how it works.

Not too much has been going on here these days. Anja has been in Dresden for the last several days and before that she was at home. That means that I was living the bachelor’s life again for about a week and was able to get pretty significant amounts of work done. It still isn’t as much as I’d like, but that is generally the way this works for me; I always seem to think that I never get enough done. We’ll see what comes of it in the coming weeks though.

My professor asked me to turn in everything that I have finished for my dissertation this week. That is the reason that I have been burning the midnight oil for the last several days. The extra time and effort has allowed me to put some material together that should satisfy him. This means that I have had to put some other projects on the back burner for a while, most significantly is the preparation for the Aramaic course that I am teaching this semester (which starts in two weeks!). I will have to devote more time to that over the Easter break.

The added pressure also meant that I hadn’t been swimming anymore. It was so bad with the extra stress and lack of sleep and such that I thought I was going to blow up on Friday. My head hadn’t stopped aching in about 3 days. So after lunch I called it quits, went for a jog (too long…my legs are still a bit cramped), and then took the afternoon off. It was a great idea. That evening I watched Ben-Hur (the Charlton Heston one), but my copy is messed up, so I only got to see up to the intermission.

Saturday was going to be a day off for me as well, but just before I woke up I dreamt about the resolution to a problem in my dissertation that had been troubling me all week. Once I came out of this dream, I got up, made some notes, and worked all morning. Then I went to watch the Bayern-Munich game with my friend Caro and witnessed them getting obliterated 5-1, the worst loss of the day, which took them out of the immediate running for taking the championship. They still have time to win it though. The rest of the evening was pretty relaxing, although I did get some more work done. I concluded my evening by watching The Maltese Falcon (I’m on kind of a classic film kick right now, in case you hadn’t noticed).

Today has been a little productive, but I felt it time to take a few minutes and pause, listen to a little music, and write some nonsense to publish on the Internet so that stalkers can find out more about me. Other than that, not too much to report. Tobi, Petra, and I went out to get lunch today because a restaurant we frequent was serving a Franconian delicacy known as Schäufele, which is pork shoulder served on the shoulder blade with potato dumplings, and a vegetable similar to collard greens. It was fantastic. Since then I have just been working again. Anja will be back soon though, so I don’t know how much I will get done today. I may try to knock one more book out today and then call it quits. We’ll see if the spirit moves me…

Anyway, I think that I am out for now. I hope that you have a nice Palm Sunday. I know I’m looking forward to the end of Lent so that I can enjoy a beer in the evening again (I gave up alcohol this year, and it was obviously the right choice for me to give up).

Hopefully I’ll keep this blog up to date a little better than I have in the past…