The Fear

Right, I am now exactly 3 weeks from my dissertation hand-in and am experiancing what is commonly known as 'The Fear'. It's completely irrational as I know i've done a lot of the work and have more than enough time to finish it and edit it (oh good, more editing), but all the same I'm starting to wake up in the night panicing because I can't remember if I saved the work I had done that day (mind you, I keep on waking up thinking I left the oven on too, so maybe that's not so suprising afterall, but it's still messing with the old body-clock). And I'm worried, given my laptop's level of sheer vile malevolence, that everything is going to be lost in the ether - again irrational as I have 3 differant back-ups (paranoia, moi?) Gah! But was very ammused by the dissertation word-limit one-upmanship that was happening on the classic fm forum yesterday - think the winner was 300,000 one, although that was in actual fact a book so doesn't really count. Put's mine into perspective though :) Why am I so worried by 10,000 words?!
Family dinner last night was tres ammusant! It was almost like having dinner with a modern day version of the Bennet family - my Mum and Aunts all teasing Gran for being daft about "the youngsters of today are really missing out by not learning Bridge", and bullying Grandad into giving up the kitchen to them to prepare his birthday meal - reticence is not the word! He would only agree if Uncle Peter would agree to supervise, mostly because he knew this would wind them up. But I can't help but notice that Grandad really does prefer (my brother) Pete; suspect that it's because he's an athlete and is an engineering student, where as I'm a theatre person and study an arts subject; just feel that he underestimates me because I'm not like him. It really shows in the way he'll turn to Pete in discussions about certain subjects, even when Pete doesn't know much about it but I do, I can give an answer and he'll say 'ah well, that might be it certainly, but I'll check and see if anyone else knows', where as with Pete it'll be 'Ah yes, that'll be right' - have noticed it for a long time and it's really quite a confidence shaker :( But I reckon it's because Pete's the only boy on this side of the family - neither of my Aunts have children and my Grandparents never had any male children - so Grandad expects a lot of him, where as because they had all daughters, then I'm just not quite as important to him.

Later still...
Just back from huge family meal - was fun; intelligent debate about the expression of pride in industrial heritage through the works of Lowrie and the 'Angel of the North' - suitably highbrow. Then continued discussion of situation in Zimbabwe via Facebook - really interesting stuff. Now feel like a true intelectual snob ;) And it's back to the postmaterialist value orientation and social movements bright and early tomorrow. Must rest ovesized brain now...