themis1

... today from the university computer room, which we found by being very British and asking everyone we met until someone sent us to the right room.  It snowed again overnight, so everything was crisp this morning, but the pavements are mostly slushy now.  The sky in the mornings is beautiful and blue, by midday it starts to cloud over, and by mid afternoon it's usually snowing.  The keyboard here has all kinds of extra letters in, so if you get a ö or a ü or a õ in the middle of a word, it'll be because I keep getting those characters instead of the ones that are usually there!

I think I have a cold, but it's hard to tell as it disappears when I go out in the cold!

Nothing else to report, really - how are things in England, anyone?!

... the cats get about 10 minutes out of the house before they have to come in; we don't like them being out in the dark.

Since I last wrote an entry, I've discovered I might just possibly not be as stupid as my school teachers all thought I was, since my professor seems to think my essay (with which, I have to tell you, I struggled to the point of tears) meets the grade, and I can continue on to do a Thesis. I mean, I just nearly killed myself producing 8,000 words and I want to do 50,000?! Educational masochism, however, cannot pass this point - PhD is as far as I'm going. Honest.

So that's my excuse for not doing this - I've been too busy doing that. Have also spent a LOT of time playing Titan Quest, and got quietly hooked on CSI: Miami, which has very well concealed arc plots. This may simply have been because on four consecutive occasions, it was the ONLY thing on worth watching whilst keeping the Tig company on the sofa. Tig, at 18, doesn't really go anywhere else much - the food bowl, the litter tray, the occasional stroll in the garden (mostly to drink out of inappropriate rain collectors) and back to the sofa. When I'm that old and frail I intend to do likewise (with the exception of drinking out of things in the garden). Hence, CSI Miami. Jeff still rooles, however, even if he IS doing a soap - or will be when they get round to him, presumably (they seem to have been pre-empted a lot lately, and not for anything especially interesting, either!).

Did I mention the hedgehog? Wandered out of the back door one night to check all the cats were in (they tend to sit in predictable places in the garden, so this is possible) and there it was, looking up at me. "Oh, hello," I said, in surprise. "EEK!" it said (really!, turned on its, er, spines and dashed off to hide behind one of the tubs. Haven't seen him or her since, so they may have been just passing through.

Have lost my work ID, possibly whilst brushing up my Shakespeare. Patrick Stewart's voice carries perfectly to the VERY VERY top/back row of the balcony at the RSC in Stratford-on-Avon. I haven't seen The Tempest before, so wasn't overly distracted by the set, although the occasional pauses whilst everyone posed did make me wonder if someone had forgotten their lines ...

In February, my week in Luton will instead, apparently, be a week in Estonia. The University of Tartu is older than Oxford. Who knew?!

Favourite e-mail of the week: "Please note, Intelligence will not be available between 4:50 and 5:05 this evening ..."