So, it took me only a week after getting home from Stockholm to unpack my suitcase and put it away. If nothing else, that should tell you how the week has been. It wasn’t a bad week, really, just a busy and hectic one.

The conference last weekend was great, with plenty of interesting papers and discussions and, best of all, terrific people. I had the change to catch up with some friends and also to meet quite a few new, interesting people. Believe it or not, historians can be a lively bunch (particularly when the drinks start flowing!). My friend, Astrid, and I bunked together in a “cozy” (read “small and windowless”) room at a hostel in the middle of the city, and it was fun to get that old dormitory feeling for a couple of days. I tried to talk her into getting an apartment in Uppsala with me in the event we both get Ph.D. spots starting in the spring, but I’m not sure she was as keen on the idea as I was. I’ll keep working on her, though.

Speaking of the Ph.D. business, again, my proposal for the country house project is due on Tuesday and I’m fairly pleased with what I’ve got so far. I’m going to try to finish it up tomorrow, between school prep, a dentist appointment for Yrsa, and orchestra practice for Tage, so that I have only to give it a quick run-through on Tuesday before sending it to the university. I’m also thinking about submitting an abstract for a conference in England next May, so I need to get that written up as well.

I’ve been thinking some, too, of what I’ll do with my time if I don’t get a Ph.D. spot, and I’ve decided that I’ll take a course in either French or German. I studied French in my undergraduate days, stopping just two credits shy of a minor, and I still read it almost passably. It’s been so many years, though, that I think I’d probably start in a beginner’s class. I haven’t got any German at all, so that’d be a beginner’s course as well. I haven’t decided yet which I’d prefer to study, but in the end it will probably come down to which is more easily available. I could take either one as a distance course, but I’m thinking I might prefer to travel down to Umeå instead, as I think language is more easily learned face-to-face. What I’m really hoping, of course, is that all of this consideration will have been for nothing, and that I’ll be beginning the Ph.D. position. It is good, though, to have a bit of a contingency plan in place.