It's only once essays are over I realise how much else I have going on right now.

Apologies for lack of posts, particularly so early in my blogging effort. My only defence is that I am terrible an concentrating on other things when I have coursework essays to write (I had 2) and not practised at all when it comes to coordinating blogging with 'real life'.

I'll get there. I promise. New year's resolution to blog at least once a week.

Anyway, Big News: it's snowing! No, not really.

I mean, yes, it is snowing - there is a considerable amount of snow - but that's not the Big News. Big News is I did go to Olympia despite the snow, which is all very well and good (and pretty) if you have nowhere to go, but otherwise a bit of a pain.

Olympia was awesome, as usual. I'd never been on Puissance night before, so that was a treat. I'm hoping I got myself a few decent photos (I haven't looked through them yet, given that the Canon raw codec will not work on my laptop but it's alright because I have Lightroom...that's another saga) since I got to borrow my lovely boyfriend's 100-400mm Canon L lens. Very exciting for me in my little 400d/50-250 ownership. I will get round to editing those now, along with some other things to get onto Flickr and subsequently here.

Did I mention I tend to neglect other things when coursework deadlines loom?

I was very pleased I did manage to get my first 2 MA coursework essays done in time for Olympia, actually, given my past track record of using every available minute until the deadline to finish such things. I've now done a report on a museum mission statement, a rather abstract and conceptual essay on 'living' and 'intangible' heritage (with liberal use of inverted commas) and a more grounded on the role of volunteers. I have Christmas off to start making moves toward organising my work placement next year (20 days minimum) and do some research on our exhibition project.

Ah, yes, exhibition project. This is the other Big News. Scary and exciting all at the same time. Our 'Museum and Site Interpretation' class are working with the Geffrye Museum in London to produce an exhibition as part of the Cultural Olympiad 'Stories of the World' project. Sounds very big and important, doesn't it? Supposedly it's tough, and will take over our lives, but it's also a fantastic opportunity to get some real experience of heritage sector work in a fabulous setting.
Two of us are assigned as the 'web resource development' team, I suspect mainly due to the fact we expressed a greater than normal familiarity with certain social networking sites and visual media. We did both feel the need to make completely sure the role didn't require any in depth technical knowledge - coding is not a strength I possess. I think it was enough we knew enough to ask if coding was required.
Our role is set out as:

To create an SOTW web resource inspired by the objects selected for the concourse case displays, this could be a digital story or podcast. The team will also be required to tweet and blog about the project, however they will need to have a corporate awareness about the content of the posts and what/where/when things are posted.

So, very exciting. And gives my blogging here another justification as 'work experience' I suppose. I find the new importance (or lack of importance, depending on your view) of digital aspects of heritage work and I'm quite looking forward to spending the holiday looking at the kinds of things we could bring to the project before we start really working on it next term.

So much to coordinate! But first, I am having 'fake' Christmas at home before flying to the states on Tuesday (weather permitting) for Christmas in Memphis with boyfriend's family.

Adventures!


I also think maybe I'm not cut out for Adventures. I'm currently lying in bed with a hot water bottle on my hip I have done indeterminate minor damage to, either related to hauling heavy stuff around in aid of looking after ponies in the snow all morning or to pushing a car up a frozen hill. One of the two.