Post hoc
You may have noticed that the attempt to post something every day has gone the same way as pretty much everything else this month, viz., the way of EPIC FAIL.
Work continues mostly stressful and unhappy for reasons which are mostly completely outwith my control; the weather has gone all drizzly and miserable; choir has become less of a respite from work-style stress because of personality clashes; I keep getting bitten by nasty insects; and now the boiler has just packed in, leaking all over the kitchen floor (thankfully before we started getting a new kitchen fitted).
þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.
To try to offset the fail, a short list of positive things:
* the Installation of the new Vice-Chancellor yesterday was interesting, and a good chance to swan (jackdaw?) around in a borrowed gown
* I have pulled up about a million miles of deeply-embedded nettle roots from something that may one day be a flower-bed in our garden
* Warneford Meadow Apple Day one weekend, and Wolvercote Community Orchard's Apple Day the next, have together allowed us to sample a lot of tasty apples and local produce (it is amusing that "produce" nearly always means jam and cake rather than, say, soup, or bread).
* We have discovered that Tesco on Cowley Road do an incredible range of interesting Polish and Jamaican foods. Salt fish! Apple mint juice! Weird biscuity things! Tasty snack! (addedentry vetoed the gigantic jar of sauerkraut, sadly.)
* It is lovely having a piano in the house and being able to play it while knowing that there is nobody behind the adjoining wall who might be tutting and objecting to the noise (I am competent enough that it's mostly fairly tuneful noise, but the music might not be to everybody's taste).
* Friends and kittens are a great comfort.
Work continues mostly stressful and unhappy for reasons which are mostly completely outwith my control; the weather has gone all drizzly and miserable; choir has become less of a respite from work-style stress because of personality clashes; I keep getting bitten by nasty insects; and now the boiler has just packed in, leaking all over the kitchen floor (thankfully before we started getting a new kitchen fitted).
þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg.
To try to offset the fail, a short list of positive things:
* the Installation of the new Vice-Chancellor yesterday was interesting, and a good chance to swan (jackdaw?) around in a borrowed gown
* I have pulled up about a million miles of deeply-embedded nettle roots from something that may one day be a flower-bed in our garden
* Warneford Meadow Apple Day one weekend, and Wolvercote Community Orchard's Apple Day the next, have together allowed us to sample a lot of tasty apples and local produce (it is amusing that "produce" nearly always means jam and cake rather than, say, soup, or bread).
* We have discovered that Tesco on Cowley Road do an incredible range of interesting Polish and Jamaican foods. Salt fish! Apple mint juice! Weird biscuity things! Tasty snack! (addedentry vetoed the gigantic jar of sauerkraut, sadly.)
* It is lovely having a piano in the house and being able to play it while knowing that there is nobody behind the adjoining wall who might be tutting and objecting to the noise (I am competent enough that it's mostly fairly tuneful noise, but the music might not be to everybody's taste).
* Friends and kittens are a great comfort.