Forge heated up

2 hours writing, 1 hour reading, page count = 173

To continue with the fire-based imagery from the last post, I'm making like a glass-blower: when a piece doesn't work, you cut it off, melt it back down to malleable form, and start again. I took a step back and outlined Chapter 1 how it should flow, incorporating the lit review pieces organically, and making it about my argument rather than a bunch of sources. Feels good. Now to start implementing it.

In terms of reading, I focused on Uruguay, which is an interesting and ambiguous case within my comparative framework. It has a strong two-party system like Colombia, but is also more prone to coups. I need to learn more about the history of its army and police, especially in comparison to Argentina's and Chile's. It's an interesting country, basically created as a buffer zone between Argentina and Brazil after independence. So the role of international conflict obviously plays a much larger role in the 19th century than in Colombia, which after the separation of Ecuador and Venezuela in 1830, was pretty much left alone in terms of international conflict until 1903.

We visited our friends Geordan and Pattie in Philadelphia over the weekend. They've just moved to a new house, which is beautiful; we ate really well (the White Dog Cafe on the Penn campus is terrific, very locavore-y); and generally had a fun time. On the way down, however, I left my laptop adapter on the train. Grrr! The replacement should arrive tomorrow, but it was a chore trying to track a reasonable one down.

On the plus side, I had a good meeting with a colleague from my volunteer project, the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund, and a productive PT session.