of summer and the sun’s return!

Summer has arrived in St Andrews!  That is, anyway, if you consider 60 and sunny summer, which we wholeheartedly do here in this dreich corner of Britain.  The flowers have bloomed, the shorts are donned, and my feet are sporting their fresh Chaco sandal tan lines.   I’ve waited for these days since returning from Paris last September, as have my Vitamin D levels. 

Other than the return of the sun and my new tan lines, there is not much to report on since the departure of Patti and Mackenzie several weeks ago now.   By the way, congratulations Mackenzie on graduating from High School! 

We had a brilliant sunset one evening.

I made my first pie of the season!  Fresh nectarine!  It tasted heavenly.  I give you the close-up shot so you can note the flakiness of my pastry.  Thank you Mrs. Hawbaker.  Too bad you weren’t here to have some.  I’ll give a heads up for the next one.

‘Cousin Mungo’, a black Pug, has come to visit us from London for the summer!  Holly, Judith’s West Highland Terrier, pretends he doesn’t exist, and Mungo pretends Holly doesn’t exist.  It seems to be a beneficial relationship.  Isn’t he sweet?  Poor guy had five teeth removed two days ago.  He’s still a bit loopy.

On Memorial Day I continued my yearly tradition of throwing flowers over a bridge in honour of those who’ve died at sea in service of the United States.  Summer had not yet come on Memorial Day this year.  What had come, however, were the lilacs, and just in time!  As with most Memorial Days of the past, I plucked them off of an unsuspecting neighbour’s lilac bush, just as my mother taught me to do.  It goes to a good cause, right? 

See, aren’t all these things terribly exciting?  Such is life for a research student.  I know I lead a relatively mundane life these days when I call home and mom has more to report to me about her and dad’s daily activities than I do to them, especially when she sometimes doesn’t leave the house for several days and I’m the one who’s living in Scotland!  Ah, well.  I may be living in Scotland, but I’m certainly not here on a tourist visa! 

My time over the last three weeks has mostly been consumed with returning to my research and writing.  Before Patti and Kenzie came I completed a draft of a relatively substantial chapter of my dissertation, and so now I’m moving on to the next big section of research—the imago Dei.   So much has been written on the ‘image of God’ throughout the centuries that it’s difficult even to know where to begin.  What do you think it means to be ‘made in the image of God’? 

The other new summer 2013 trait that has filled my time is my summer job.  Now that the undergraduate students have all departed for their summer holidays, my job as a tutor has finished as well.  I’ll return to the same position in the new academic year.  This summer I’ve been hired by the University of St Andrews to write the content for a new online module on Academic Integrity/Misconduct which all new undergraduate students (at a minimum) will have to take and pass at some point during the upcoming semester.  The course will cover topics such as plagiarism, falsification of data, contract cheating and a host of other forms of academic misconduct.  It’s a great summer job for me, is entirely flexible in where and when I work, is right up my alley of academic administration, and is good for my resume.  I’ll have it finished before I return home in August, and, come September, all the freshmen (at a minimum) will have to take my course and pass my ten quizzes and final exam!  Pretty cool, and strange. 

So, between writing this new course for the University and writing my own dissertation, there’s not much time for baking too many pies or taking photos.  I’ve maximized my time of reading books for research in the garden whilst soaking up the new found warmth, but now need to spend time on the computer, which, sadly is difficult to work on outdoors in bright sun.  Woe is me.