Back in Cambridge, back to work

Three weeks at home went by in a blur, and now I'm back in England.  It's a couple weeks yet until Easter term, so the town is pretty quiet, and spring has truly burst forth since I left.  I find I have only clichés at my disposal: the air is perfumed with flowers; songbirds twitter from every direction of the deepening dusk...You know, I wasn't especially depressed by winter here, but this explosion of sweet nature really shows you the appeal of ancient paganism.

While I was at home, I spent some time reading and writing for my schoolwork, saw some friends, and generally enjoyed the California spring.  I watched Stanford football's spring scrimmage against itself, and I even went to Disneyland before flying from LAX to London via a close connection in Chicago.  I've been working a conference the past couple days, but starting tomorrow it's back to the grindstone for me.

One reason?  I've gotten the go-ahead to give several talks this term: one for my fellow Tit Hall grad students (friendly crowd); one for English department "undergrads" (though I've only seen grad students and faculty at the other talks in this series); and one at an English grad student conference in London (my first conference paper!).  Here are the titles for each:

• Searching for a Ghost Town in the Eternal City: Writers in Rome in the Nineteenth Century.
• "A Collection of Faded Metaphors": Language, Meaning, and the Implications of Philology in the 19th Century.
• To “look on Spirits breathed away”: Locating the Spirit in In Memoriam.  

I know, you totally wish you could come, don't you?  It's really exciting to have these opportunities, but it means that I have to write some really polished material, more or less from scratch for the last two.  But at least I'll have lots of daylight and perfumed air in which to do so!