Real Life (Update)

So last Thursday marked the end of a lovely, if unproductive, two weeks of watching a lot of movies, reading a lot of books, and hanging out with friends (some highlights include the day I did not see a single other human being, the day Melissa and Alix and I had a movie night - watching The Cabin in the Woods, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Bon Cop, Bad, Cop - going to the National Museum of Scotland with Eve, Becky, Melissa, and Alix before going back to Melissa's place for pancakes, where Leanne joined us...

Becky's penguin was enjoying the catapult game

And Alix was giving me sass

... and Melissa, Alix and I getting Starbucks, going shopping, and then having a girls night, complete with wine, facemasks, and painting our nails).

Alix and I split a pair of cool earrings from H&M (my necklace is also from H&M)

Nails! (and wine!)

Face masks ;P

I also had to scrape out the freezer, which was starting to resemble more a glacier than a freezer. David walked into the kitchen when I was scraping ice out onto a towel with a spoon and he just looked at me and asked if I really missed Canada that much.

*just like home*

Thursday was just a quick meeting in which we learned which live publishing projects we would be working on this year. We were divided into two groups, one of which will be coming in all day Tuesday and one of which will be coming in all day Wednesday (my group). I volunteered to be co-Project Manager of my group, so, along with Camille, I will be in charge of managing all of the departments and signing off on any major decisions. While I am kind of nervous, I am also rather excited.

The projects which we are doing were chosen out of all the publishing projects that were proposed (mine was a reprint of The Turn of the Screw, which was not chosen) the board of Merchiston Publishing chose four to go ahead with, though not all four will necessarily end up being published, depending of course on budget and time. Both the groups and the books for each group were assigned, and then we decided on roles. First we choice the project manager, two for each group. Then people choose which department they wanted to be in (they could be in multiple departments but had to also pick their primary department that would take their priority). Camille and I also had to join depts so I joined production (which will include design and digital). The departments were: editorial, production, marketing, finance, and rights. Then people volunteered to be department heads, and we ended up having to vote on the dept heads for editorial and prod.

View of the courtyard (finally no scaffolding in way of the view)

Friday we received our grades for two of our final three assessments from last term (passed both, whoo!). We then attended a rather mind-numbing orientations for both our dissertation and placement modules. I am quite excited for both modules, though our dissertations don't actually start until next trimester, I tentatively am thinking of writing on censorship in YA literature through parents, schools, and publishers (this will need to be better thought out, obviously, and I need to pick a country to focus on).

Friday night I ended up making gingersnaps at like midnight, which was fine, because I also FaceTimed with Logan, Connie, and Brad for three hours. It was Logan's birthday Saturday (happy 21st bro!) so Connie and Brad had gone down for the weekend - Logan and Dad had been skiing that day, so I chatted with them while dinner was cooking, all the way through to dessert (and my final batch of cookies).

Yup. He's an adult.

Gingersnaps (this recipe comes to me from Connie, who got it from Brenda).

3/4 c. of butter
2 c. sugar

Cream together

2 well beaten eggs
1/2 c. molasses
2 tsp. vinegar

Stir in

3 3/4 c. all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
2-3 tsp. ginger (I go for the full three but I'm a big fan of spicy gingersnaps)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cloves

Sift and add

Mix ingredients until blended. Form dough into 3/4" balls. Roll in sugar. Bake on a greased cookie sheet (or on parchment paper) about 12 min.

In the UK, they don't typical measure using cups, tsp, tbsp, etc. Instead, they measure everything by weight. While there is a scale that came with my kitchen, I wasn't really thrilled with the idea of converting all my cookie recipes into weight, so I went and bought myself a set of cups and tsp/tbsp measuring spoons. However, when I opened the butter, instead of markers indicating a cup, there were ticks for 50g. *sigh* So I guessed. They also call baking soda bicarbonate of soda and you can't get it at a lot of the smaller grocery stories, which, considering that those are mainly were I shop, caused me to think that you just couldn't get baking soda in the UK. I still complain about it a lot.

Saturday I was supposed to go to the Writers Museum with Kate, but it was raining, so we decided to postpone. I had a lot of people over for Burns Night that night - more on that on my next post.

Yesterday was my first official day of classes, which involved a class for Publishing in Practice (the module in which we are publishing the real live books) which was mostly talking about finances, followed by the Placement module tutorial, in which we just answered any questions we had left about our placements. So Monday I have PIP from 2-3 every fortnight, and then Placement and Dissertation modules from 3-5, on a rotating schedule (so next week on Monday, we will not have PIP, but will then have the Dissertation tutorial). Tuesday I do not have classes, then Wednesday we are in from 9-5, with a board meeting at 10, working on our publishing project. Thursday I have my optional module, Interactive Media, from 10-1. And no classes Friday. So a pretty awesome chill schedule. I have decided not to try for a part time job this semester however, both because it is better to have a more flexible schedule for the placement, and also because I am a Project Manager which will involve more time and responsibility.

So for our placement module, our placement is about ten days, though it can be more or less, and involves self-assessment, making learning goals, and an assessment by our supervisor wherever we go for placement, which we get to choose off a list on the MSc Pub page if you want to check it out. I'm not quite sure what we will be covering for the class on the placement, nor the one for the dissertation, and I haven't had my Interactive Media class yet, so I will keep you updated on all of that!

My hair is getting longer and longer! Also £1 necklace FTW