whee!!!

[aryanhwy]

There I was, sitting at my desk out at the office, minding my own business, listening to music on my headphones, when I hear a noise. A noise which occurs so seldomly that at first I couldn't place it. Then I saw a light flashing. And then I realized, yes, in fact that was indeed my phone ringing. (Quite possibly the first time it has done so in my presence since we moved. One of the advantages of the previous office was that there was one phone for the four of us, and it was about as far away from me as possible, so I never had to answer it. Here, everyone has their own phone.) I stared at it dumbly for a moment, commented to Nina and Fengkui, "Who on earth is calling me?"

Turned out to be the guys from the delivery office downstairs, wanting to know exactly where I was located 'cause a shipment had arrived for me and he'd bring it to me, if he knew where I was. I was pretty sure I knew what it had to be, but even so nothing quite prepared me for the sight of a pallet being towed down the hall way, stacked three by three and two high with boxes (17 total) of my dissertation! 250 copies suddenly looked like a huge overestimate. But they look wonderful! Like real books! Way thicker than I expected, too. And the covers are so gorgeous, no one is even going to bother reading the inside, they'll just want to admire the cover. (A number of people assumed that ursule's art was in fact from a real medieval manuscript -- until they looked closer and saw the logical symbols on the book!)

So I went round the department and distributed copies to those who were around, stuffed more in some of the mail slots, and then spent the rest of the afternoon addressing envelopes to send copies to various people. I've now got only 11 boxes left, and still have some that I need to set aside to give to people in person, e.g., at next week's International Medieval Congress in Leeds. I'm going to violate my usual "no leaving books in the unprotected, unsealed office" policy and not worry about toting the boxes home. After all, if someone wanders in to the office and decides he wants to steal a copy of my dissertation, I'm not going to complain. (Though I'd be pretty peeved if he made off with all of them, though lacking a cart of some type, that would take some doing.)

So, wheee!!!! I'll take some pictures and post them when I get home.

Comments

[cryptocosm.livejournal.com]

And you still get to look forward to the first time you see it shelved in the library.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Yes, that will be exciting! I also hope mine ends up in the display case in the main lobby of the Science Park where they have dissertations from all the various faculties. I don't know how they select what goes in there -- whether it's (a) all of them, (b) all of them they receive, or (c) some subset of either (a) or (b).

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Send me your address and I'll mail you a copy! With 11 boxes still on the shelves, I've got some to spare. :)

[eliskimo.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! That's exciting.

[thebronwen.livejournal.com]

I'd like a copy of my Daughter's book... (bats eyelashes and smiles sweetly)

[jpgsawyer.livejournal.com]

Good for you. My University require it to be hard bound in a certain way with certain lettering etc and then paid for exactly 6 copies.....

One for me, one for my supervisor, one each for the two external examiners, one for the library and one for my external associate supervisor.....

Still who wants to read something about the Inelastic behaviour of paper structures anyway. :)

Well done and all the best for the defence I know you will do well.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Wow, they required hardbound? That must've been expensive!

There were certain constraints I had to follow -- e.g., the inside is done in the ILLC's LaTeX style file, the frontmatter had to have certain info, and I had to have the ILLC logo on the spine. Luckily I'll be paid 500EUR for 15 copies by my department (the library gets 25, for free).

I still don't know why anyone would want to read about modalities in medieval logic, but at least this way anyone who ends up with a copy has a very attractive book they can put on their shelves. :)

[baronsnorri.livejournal.com]

So cool! *And* you're happy... : )

"Any chance of sending one to Tasmania?", he inquired, sweetly...

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

If you provide me with an address Tasmania, there's a pretty big chance! :)