Our five and a half days in Pennsylvania were pleasant, and only a bit less rushed than our six days in Massachusetts. We got to see my paternal grandparents, my mother, my father, my youngest sister, and a handful of other relatives (great aunt and uncle, various of my father's cousins, etc.) My allergies acted up a bit, however, as there were ( Read more... )

sathinks is back in the UK, and she's staying here until she can move into her flat. In other news, PJ Harvey's White Chalk is, in a word, incredible. Chardonnay with dinner: God, my head hurts. Everyone else has gone to bed.

(Forty photos from Mont Saint-Michel. Editing those'll take up at least half of tomorrow, I swear.)

Last night, James and I had our friends Ehren (aelredthemonk) and Laura over for an inebriated evening of culinary snobbery. We needed an excuse to crack open the bottle of tokay that I dropped twenty quid on back in February, so we went out and got some prosciutto di parma, quail eggs, chorizo, grapes, pears, and several cheeses. I think we consumed three ( Read more... )

Most of the letting agencies were closed, but sathinks managed to grab listings from the handful that were. At 1:30, we met up with shadowsaine and her lovely friend Nikki (and Nikki's lovely nephew) at the Minster, from where we decided to have lunch at El Piano (an organic/fair-trade/vegetarian tapas restaurant in Swinegate). The Mud Mushrooms were faintly ( Read more... )

• Review of The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer written although the Routledge ABES database tool is being a fuckwit, which means I can't upload it for approval, grrr, or even add keywords to the record.


• Paper proposal for NCS '08 (Session 42: Haunted Chaucer) written/sent off to organizers.


• Lords of Misrule signatory switch-over papers submitted to ( Read more... )

I woke up with a headache, which was apparently the result of drinking half a bottle of Nivole Moscato d'Asti last night. It persisted through this morning's transcription session, and it got worse as my 4-hour shift at LUSH progressed. I'm at home on the couch now, deciphering some particularly nasty Latin abbreviations that I notated as best I ( Read more... )

The Multi-Fandom Friending Extravaganza! It looks cool, and it'll probably end in tears. But what the hey!

I'm trying to decide whether a) to tackle the review of Spearing's book, which arrived in the post yesterday CHECK, b) re-proofread the new TS story that twilightgardens will be illustrating, c) open word and see which characters decide to come through ( Read more... )

My head still hurts from last night. Comes of going along to James & Co.'s Pendragon gaming night at sororkama's flat (her man's the GM). Two people smoking in a small, enclosed living room? Urk. Something tells me my transcription speed, normally the closest thing I have to a super-power, will be cut in half, and I'll be sitting there thinking, I want ( Read more... )

Yesterday was my last day at Beacon; they cut off one of my last two days, which I'm actually quite grateful for, because today is the day that Dad and Grandma fly in from Pennsylvania.  I had planned on sleeping in, but things didn't pan out that way.  I ended up wide-awake at 7:30 AM, and since jennaria had already left for work, I found myself facing a ( Read more... )

It's so hot I could scream, even with the fans on. It's too hot to think, too hot to read, too hot to write, though I did manage the latter for at least a little while. I spent some time on the phone with Mom, but that was a mistake; her resolve to go through with a divorce is actually starting to waver ("I was angry," she said, "but that's ( Read more... )