M. Willis Monroe

This is part of my bike ride to and from SOAS.

And here’s my bike.

I spent today in the library collecting various translations and transliterations for Old Babylonian and Hittite documents. I also started and nearly finished one Old Babylonian slave contract.

This is our local cat. We think he lives across the street but he comes over every once in a while. He’s incredibly nice and quiet as a mouse. Last night we all went down to the pub quiz but unfortunately came in fourth, one place away from winning a bottle of wine. Oh well next time.

I was browsing the linguistics section of the SOAS library and this book popped out at me. Turns out I don’t really understand it that well. I like the title and cover art though. I’ll probably read another more basic book and work my way up to the eden that is “infinite syntax!”.

I went up to Peter’s on Wednesday. I brought my bike along with me but by the time I’d gotten off the bus in Oxford and cycled to Woodstock it was too dark to continue on, so Peter and his dad came and picked me up. I had a really nice time up there, it was good to get out of London for a bit. The cycle ride home on Friday was beautiful. I left his house at about ten and cycled down through the Cotswolds to Oxford. I got lots of beautiful views of valleys, misty fields and grazing sheep. It was about twenty-one miles and it took me an hour and a half.

This weekend has been rather tame. I went to the pub on Saturday night with Anna. Other than that I’ve just been working and relaxing at home. I’ve decided to enact a new daily regime. I’m going to do a minimum of two hours of academic work a day, thirty minutes of playing an instrument and try and be in bed around 11:30 and wake up around 8. So today I woke up at 8 and listened to BBC radio four for a bit, then did some translation and made my self a nice breakfast. Now I’m going to head into SOAS and work the rest of the day in the Library.

Life’s been very busy recently. We won the pub quiz on Wednesday. I got hired to work at Ziyaret Tepe as Registrar for future excavations starting this summer. The job includes a stipend apparently. I’m well chuffed about it.

Saturday I joined Peter and his family and friends at the Climate March. Afterwards we all went to this little pub near Trafalgar Square I like called the Lamb and Flag. They went back to Oxford and I went home. In the evening I went with Anna and her friend up to Alexandra Palace and saw some great fireworks.

Yesterday I got up in the morning and got dressed up really smart and headed out on my bike down to St. James Park. Once there I met up with some like minded people and we set up a sort of Faux-test posing as Citizens helping the police enforce the new serious organised crime and police act. This act prevents people from demonstrating within a one mile radius around parliament. We stood right on the one mile border and made sure that everyday civilians entering the zone were free of subversive thoughts. The police came a lot and we assured them that we were only there helping them out and that they should keep an eye out for people with red stickers as we had deemed them subversive. All in all it was a great time, we stayed at St. James park for a while then retired to the pub only to come back out in force in Trafalgar square.

After I biked home I made a huge curryish pasta dish for Emily and me and then I headed out again on my bike over to Sam’s in West Hampstead. I stayed a while at his watching fireworks and talking with people and then before it got to be too late biked back home across North London.

Update: SpaceHijacker write-up.