Oh hey, I'm not dead

Hi everybody. On the off chance you're still reading this, rest assured I am alive and have not been murdered in an attempt to find the thieving crackhead who stole my laptop and iPod. In fact I have a shiny new laptop and will hopefully be getting a fancy new iPod Touch when I get back, all for free! (Actually I profited from the thing, since the insurance company sent us more for my new toys than we paid, even though we told them exactly how much replacements would cost. Very curious.)

I don't have time to upload pictures of the last, oh, month and a half of my life just now, but rest assured I will get around to it someday. I still have trips to Stirling and Edinburgh to relate, as well as my awesome fun visiting Bath and London with the girlfriend and parents.

This term I'm taking a tutorial on Early Modern Spain and Latin America, which is awesome and extremely fascinating. It's going very well and I'm always fascinated by the new topics. Unless something goes horribly wrong in the last four weeks, the course has reinforced my desire to study colonial Latin America in graduate school and pursue a doctorate in it.

My other tutorial is on Republican-era Rome, starting with the Second Punic War and ending about a hundred years before the establishment of the Empire in 27 BC. It's very different from what I've studied in the past, since I've never done ancient history before, but my tutor is very helpful (and patient!) with my silly elementary questions and it's quite a bit of fun.

Check back soon (okay, who am I kidding) for more updates: they WILL come!