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This has been an odd series to read, somewhat enjoyable, but very much a chore. I’m about 80 pages from the end of the third book and I’ve decided not to finish it: I no longer have the energy to read it for more than a few minutes at a time. But many of my friends enjoyed the book, so I thought I’d briefly give some of my thoughts on it.
One of the great things about climbing at Higgovale is how beautiful the quarry is. Tonight, while I was at the top of a pitch untying the equipment in the approaching twilight, an owl started hooting. It was the end of a climb, I was safely secured at the top, and I had a moment to just relax and enjoy the dusk, the cool breeze. The owl. And the whole quarry below me.
On the walk out you can see the city bowl below you, still sunlit enough to clearly see the buildings and their colours, but now the buildings also have their lights on, those darker yellow lights and the bluish florescents and halogens.
So pretty.
And it seems that the paper I submitted has been published on the journal’s website, here. I think it’s been available for a few weeks now, although I’m not sure when it’ll be published in print.
The amount of work I put in to it is frightens me. The paper’s a writeup of my masters, which I finished off at night while working a full-time job during the day. Then there were the examiners’ (thankfully limited – I finished those in a day) corrections to my thesis, followed by the whole paper process: choosing what went in, cutting that down so that it fit into the length restrictions, cutting down the tables, submitting, working on reviewers’ changes, looking over the proofs. I am very relieved that that part of my life is finally over.
And now for the PhD 
Yesterday I sent in my corrections on the proofs. Thankfully it was all just small typos, and a minor modification to the tables. The one surprising thing is how much it cost to fax off the copyright transfer agreement: the copy shop in the Gardens Centre charged me R15 per page. Thankfully there was only four pages. Still, that seems quite exorbitant, even for an international number.
I just received a pdf copy of the proofs for the paper, which I’m going to start working on. Very little to do now: mostly just need to reread it and look for typos. Which means that hopefully tomorrow I can fax this off to the publishers. Yay 
My paper finally seems to be out of the editing phase. This morning I got an email from the journal saying that editing is now over, and they’re happy with it as it is. Next I should be seeing the page proofs, unless there are any major formatting problems. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that there will be none.
Also, it seems that South African National Parks are the people who put up the gate at the Higgovale Quarry, apparently as a way of keeping muggers and the like off the mountain. The key is going to be copied and made available to people, although I haven’t entirely discovered how yet. But I have the contact number of the person from SANParks who manages Higgovale, so will be phoning them soon.
I’m not fond of writing papers. At least, I’m not fond of writing the paper that I’m working on at the moment. I’ve reached the point where I’m trying to cut down its page count — why journals use a page count rather than a word count escapes me, as does the reason that many journals want authors to “type set” their documents in Microsoft Word. I need to cut out two more pages to reach a total of 25 pages, which I should hopefully have done tomorrow sometime.
It’ll be good to have this finished. I’m looking forward to getting back to working on my PhD.
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