Have you ever felt like you were watching something new for the first time, simply because you'd become interested in it?
I got some "field observation" in, if you will - I spent an hour or so on Saturday at an arts festival where a local forge was doing a live blacksmithing demo. I've seen blacksmiths at work before: at the Ren Faire and various living history-type field trips as a kid, and on television, but to be that close now that I'm this interested felt like a whole new ballgame. It also turns out that they teach classes, including one on building your own propane forge. I'm not ready for that yet, but hopefully in eight or ten months I will be.
Hopefully in eight or ten months I'll be ready for a lot of things.
Speaking of which, I checked the website for my spring program to see if there was anything else the office there was requiring of me. Instead, I was greeted by a notification that my appeal - the pile of red tape which I just filled out last week, and which they warn can take 30 days or more - was approved. Plan A proceeds apace!
Since the semester is almost over and I'm moving away from the university setting, I decided to use the time I had left in the library to do some academic-type research on Ilmarinen. Nothing says "I'm a geek" like being bent over the microfiche machine at three in the morning reading someone's dissertation from 1977. (Talley, Jeannine Elizabeth, "The Blacksmith: A Study in Technology, Myth and Folklore." University of California. Los Angeles, 1977. In case you were curious.) I'm planning some updates using that information.
One of the things I am trying to do is get away from using books so much. Books are excellent! They really are. But for me, they can be a little too excellent - they can be a crutch that gets between me and actual worship. Heathenism encourages books to a point where it becomes detrimental to me. This may not be the case for other people, but for me the focus on the lore above all (especially in Asatru) just does not play well with my head. Sad but true. I may write more about that later.
In the meantime, I need to catch up on Reverb10 tomorrow.