the human heart is no small thing

That said, I want to thank all our local friends who helped Scribe & I pack and deal with our remaining things so, so much. We were the recipients of so much kindness and it is kind of hard to believe, but we are so incredibly grateful and are going to miss you all unfathomably.

I truly am so excited about having a thesis topic I love so much. Obviously I'm leaving some room for things to shift and change as I research, but I'm already so excited to be the monster guy in my department.

If it's a topic that sounds cool to you, too, you might be interested in the Early English Books Online version of Ambroise Paré's On Monsters and Marvels (or Des Monstres et Prodiges in the original French), which is a fairly accessible translation of a 16th century monster text. Paré was a surgeon who wrote on a number of scientific topics, which speaks to the fact that monsters were of legitimate academic interest at the time!

Thank you! Today has been, uh, not the most encouraging, although I do think I've found a new place to hire some movers from tomorrow morning, which is definitely cutting things closer than I would like, but we persevere. It's good to hear that you had an alright experience using shipping containers -- I'm worried about everything we want to bring actually fitting in the ones I reserved, but we're using a company multiple people have recommended, at least, so I do think the things that we're able to pack will at least arrive safely. I hope.