a birth announcement

i forgot to post this announcement that i shared along with the photo of my finished thesis:

after a long & difficult labour, i am delighted to announce the birth of my doctoral thesis, weighing 267 pages & over 75,000 words long. mum & baby doing well!

i posted the news as soon as i had e-mailed it to bristol to have it printed and bound  and it was such a  busy day in the office that there was no chance to celebrate. so messages of congratulations coming in from all over the world via the wonderful web (and text messages too) were a real treat. of course i celebrated properly when i got home that evening (as seen in the photos in my last post) and then i flew back to submit two of these (one per examiner).

 i should point out the champagne was for me not as a bribe!

unfortunately all the (well-meaning) advice about my viva has painfully reminded that i have submitted but it is not finished. i am hoping for the viva to take place in november at the latest and then, once i have made the final round of corrections as requested by the examiners (argh!!), i will be truly done and dusted!

BUT i have time to switch off a little (a lot) in between now and then with a trip to italy in a few weeks and then to corsica in october. oh my goodness, those holidays will feel so well deserved!!

this week has been insanely busy (and stressful) in the office but raffaele and i have also had full and fun evenings all week so today i have finally crashed! cue achey body, tight chest and a headache. i have no other plans today other than sitting on the sofa and catching up with photo and video editing and a bit of blogging. i bought an iPad as a treat for submitting (plus my parents contriubted to it for my birthday) and today is the first chance i've had to properly use it! the summer and the internet really don't mix but today is much, much cooler and cloudy so the sofa, rather than the lake, is definitely the place for me to be.