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I actually feel quite human today, for a change. This is probably due in no small part to the way I've spent the day.
It's getting to the time of year (actually, it's past the time of year, but that's due to a slight lack of arsedness) that I start cycling to uni again, which requires me to take the bike out and tune it up. After the rather interesting spontaneous-axle-disassembly last year, in which the axle migrated slowly sideways through the hub and then fell partway out, damaging the hub in the process, I've been dragging my feet on the repair. Eventually, I ordered a new hub (and later, some new spokes after discovering the existing ones were a bit marginal) and rebuilt the wheel. Today, the day after I finished, I took the old machine out for a bit of a warm-up, in the brilliant, hot sun, around the streets of Brighton. Results: good. There was a bit of a weird noise at one point which may have been a bearing wearing in, or something rubbing on the tyre, but since it's gone away for a while now and nothing seems to be out of place, I think it'll be OK.
Of course, cycling randomly around the town doesn't really accomplish anything. Fortunately, a friend is moving across town right now, so I was able to ride to their place (up one of the biggest hills in Brighton: argh, but a good test for the gear system) and then on to the new place once I'd helped load someone else's car with their things (downhill all the way, wooooooo...). The move took most of the day, what with trips back and forth between old and new houses, packing and unpacking things, dismantling things and then mantling them at the other end and so on. It was good fun though, lots of fairly mindless effort and the opportunity to learn a little more of some people who I often only interact with through personas, at roleplay events, which was nice. The pub lunch (at the Thomas Kemp, excellent pub) helped too.
So today was good, even if I accidentally left my water bottle at the new house and had to ride back to get it, passing Red Roaster on the way. Oh, the hardship. Yesterday I went shopping in town (for various things, not least to help a couple of friends pick out outfits for a third and fourth friends' wedding - only partially successful there, unfortunately). All in all, this has been a restful weekend, which probably helps my state of mind.
More things that help my state of mind have to include the Lewes Road guerrilla garden. About six years ago, a petrol station on Lewes Road closed for some reason or another, and was torn down. The site was levelled, and concrete crash-barriers full of gravel erected to prevent vehicles from driving on to the site. A few weeks back, the local residents had had enough. They successfully broke into the site (damaging a single padlock in the process, if that), spread the gravel from the barriers on to the floor to create usable hardstanding, filled the barriers with soil instead and planted flowers. Since then, they've painted the barriers with a simple colourful mural, laid turf in areas where the gravel didn't reach, and set up benches and other bits and pieces. An empty site transformed into a community garden (where today they had a low-key little party, which I joined briefly to break the ride home). This kind or re-purposing empty and abused spaces is a wonderful thing to see. The ground is completely unused - it's owned by a real-estate company, as far as we know, and there are no planning notices or anything, so we assume it's going to remain that way for a while. Until the company chooses to do something with it, the locals have taken it over, and turned a piece of dead space into a vibrant little garden. If they turn up tomorrow with a bulldozer and start building something, fine: it's not the use we object to, it's the disuse. Very calming, and a surprisingly good little community-centre: it seems to have got the local people talking to each other, which is a bit of a surprise in modern Britain.
Things that don't help my state of mind include the annual review process I am currently undergoing. It's the main reason I've been so quiet lately: I have to look back over the last year, sum up my achievements and justify my existence to an interviewer and to my supervisor. This year it's harder than I'd like, because we've done so much paper-writing and conference-organising (and so on and so on) that I've not really had the time for much research. "They also serve who only stand and wait", and all, but it's getting a little annoying. Oh well: I'm entering the write-up now, doing the final iteration of the test rigs and collecting results, then writing the report to our funding body, then writing my thesis. In less than 365 days from now, I will have completed my DPhil, assuming nothing goes very very wrong. Here's to the Grind.