Happiness is a house sparrow

I love birds. And I have three giant bushes outside my livingroom window. Right now there's a house sparrow that comes and sings to me every morning. They aren't really all that pretty, as far as birds go, but they sure sing pretty. And loud. I always get excited when I hear him, and I tend to leave my homework just to watch this small, non-descript bird sing. It makes me happy. Last year, a cardinal nested in the bushes and laid two eggs. She would let me get really close, as long as I didn't try to touch. I went on vacation before the eggs hatched, and when I came back, they were gone. All of them, the eggs and bird. And the nest had been damaged. That really upset me. But I hope they come back this year, fix the next and try again. Of course, I won't be here for most of the summer, but still, it would be nice. For the birds. The crows look different in Russia. They have light colored chests. I don't recall seeing any other birds, except pigeons: those things are everywhere. I'll have to look this summer to see what the other Russian birds look like.

I got my funding. And I'm hoping I can actually stay with my friend in Moscow. I'm getting very excited about this trip, which makes it very hard to concentrate on the two papers I have to write this semester. The ones I should be working on now. I'll get to them sometime. Probably this weekend.

I saw my advisor today and gave her a very brief outline of my dissertation proposal and what I wanted to study/prove. She thought it was great! That made me very happy. And it's an area that hasn't really been studied much. That makes it good (original) but also more difficult to study, because I literally have to start from scratch. She wants me to try to make it to the library in Moscow a couple times a week to do some preliminary research. And maybe even swing by a couple of state archives and introduce myself to the archivists and stuff. All that crap helps when I apply for research funding, which I will start to do the second I get back from Moscow. But now I have to take my 1 page outline and figure out how to expand it to a 15 page proposal. That's a lot of fluff.

Well, I suppose I should work on my papers a bit before bed.
Stacia