Happily, Rick is back from his holiday, so I can go and pester him with the minor thesis quibbles. Most of the time he was away, I spent drafting chapter four. Chapter three's only bare bones at the moment. As it turns out, the apologists demanded more attention than I thought. In the end, I decided on three texts from the shortlist I made up earlier in the year: Justin Martyr's First Apology, Tertullian's Apology and Minucius Felix's Octavius. Even three texts is a bit of a struggle though. At the beginning of the year I was so worried about not being able to write 20,000 words on the topic, and now I think I may end up going over that. Eeep!
Not that I had been thinking about it a whole lot lately, but I decided the November trip to Japan I'm planning is going to be held over until next year. November/December's not turning out to be a great time to go away at the moment, so I've decided I'll either go in January or in the northern Spring. Depends on whether I want to go and see the snow in Nagano or attend the flower viewing in April/May (argh, decisions, decisions!). And the other benefit is that I'll have an extra few months to save more money and brush up on my Japanese.
And now, I go to squeeze in a bit more work before the Stewart/Colbert hour (they're back, yay!).