h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fewf! Three weeks!! It cannot have been that long! I must have gone through a time warp!! Actually that sounds about right. I just finished my last summer course and it was an unbelieveable amount of work! Now I'm just working on my honours paper. Not going anywhere though. I have to make three topic proposals and hand them in on the 7th. I'm having a heck of a time thinking of topics!

Ah your poor Mum! The guilty party all that time! Did she feel sheepish when she realised? I think I would.

Is it strawberry frozen yoghurt? Or just plain strawberry yoghurt? Does it have real strawberry chunks?

Asside from working on my honours topics my cousin is coming for two days (Friday and Saturday) and I'm really excited about visiting with her! Her parents are coming and it will be nice to see them too. Especially as I'm kind of feeling like I dislike one entire side of my family. But that's another long and ongoing story.
In other news I'm having three out of my four wisdom teeth out on the 2nd. Have you had your wisdom teeth out? I'm worried that it's going to hurt.

Well I'd better go and do homework now. I'm thinking of making mind maps with every idea that comes into my head and then when I've exhausted my supply of ideas I'll try and make some sense of it. I doubt it will work well but it's all I can think of to do.

I've been having a perfectly horrible time at the office. It's not the bosses this time, it's my underlings. I have three now; one is an absolute treasure, but the other two... Well. Let's not go into it. I have five more w*rking days before I get a week off; I'm just trying to stay sane in the meantime.

Mum did indeed feel sheepish when she realised that she was the messmaker-in-chief. She does try to be tidy these days but it doesn't come naturally.

The yoghurt was non-frozen strawberry, with real lumps of fruit. My favourite. But right now I'm denying myself such luxuries. I simply *must* get thinner before Summer. Or, to create a better sense of urgency, before the wedding next weekend. I'll have to stand up and read Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, and I'd rather not feel like a human blancmange while I'm doing that.

Now, teeth. Wisdom teeth in particular. Yes, I've had mine out; it was sometime in the early 90s. I had the full hospital experience for mine. In hindsight, I don't think this was necessary - but having the teeth out was definitely necessary. I don't miss them.

According to this you posted five days ago. I'm hoping this means that you're having your week off now. I'm sorry to hear w*ork is horrible right now.

I do like strawberry yoghurt but I think my favourite is probably peach. I've been trying to be good and avoid ice cream and chocolate but it's not going well so far. I just think I should watch what I eat because I don't really exercise at all.

It sounds funny to hear you talking about getting thinner before summer. Here summer is almost over. The weather will stay nice for at least the first part of September but then after that it will be overcast, cold and rainy for a long time. I don't mind. It used to bother me that it was always wet but now I'm used to it and I think I might actually miss it if I were to move.

Sonnet 116. Is it a good one? Did you say that you didn't want to read Shakespeare?

Was if very painful having your wisdom teeth out? Did it take days to recover? I wasn't worried but everyone seems to be making such a fuss about pitying me when I tell them that I'm quite afraid now. I knew it would take a few days to recover... but I wasn't really expecting excurciating pain. Having them out will be fine because I'm going to be unconscious. It seemed the sensible choice to me. It's just afterwards I'm worried about. Do your cheeks really puff out like a chipmunk!?
I'm now planing to make some kind of soup that won't be too horrible once put through the blender. I'm in search of a good recipe. I've also got seasons 3 and 4 of CSI: New York to watch so I think I'll just lay on the couch for a few days after. But hopefully it won't be as bad as indicated.

I still have one more day of w*rk, but I can cope with that.

Shakespeare is preferable to some of the things I could have been asked to read. I had specified that they should make sure to pick a poem that wouldn't sound strange being read by a man - something I felt I had to point out. I'm also glad to have avoided being given something by Gerald Manley Hopkins, 'cos his rhymes and rhythms are so eccentric that I couldn't be sure to do the piece justice. Shakespeare, on the other hand... Actually, it's a sonnet we did at school about a quarter of a century ago () so it's not too challenging.

Now, the matter of teeth. I had mine out under general anaesthetic; I don't recall much pain afterwards but the anaesthetic made me rather dopey for a day so I wouldn't have noticed even if my toes had been on fire. The gums were a bit tender for a couple of days but my face didn't puff up or anything. Now that I think of it, the first thing I was given to eat after I came around was a cheese sandwich. It felt odd, but I managed to eat it.

As for soup - how do you feel about lentils? If cooked properly they don't need to be pureed and they only need a token amount of chewing.

I'm glad you've only got one day or work left. It's been odd but nice to not have to work this summer. Well not work work anyway. The school work has been mostly fun. I'm almost done my three proposals for my honours paper. I've been stressing out about them because they don't seem very good to me but I still have time to work on them.

I've gone and read Sonnet 116. That's a very nice choice. I'm sure you'll do a good job reading it. Do you know why it is that all his sonnets are numbered instead of named?

I'm glad to hear having your teeth out wasn't too painful. The man taking my teeth out said to allow for four days recovery!! I'm really hoping that's an over generous estimate and yet just incase it's not I've got that time booked off with nothing to do.

I feel good about lentils. In fact I was hoping to find a recipe with some in. I haven't even looked yet. I'm going to soon though. Yesterday I spent a long time starting to write up my proposals. At the bottom of each one I now have in large red letters BUT WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE? HOW WILL YOU PROVE IT? Which is not very helpful but I must remember to put that in or I'm sure the lack of support will be commented on. Maybe something brilliant will come to me while drugged up on pain killers.

Well, time to find a good recipe. Today I plan to do my laundry and make some soup.

My holiday has started.

This is just a quick post - my brain's not up to much this evening. It was that sort of day. So here I sit with a nice drink (vermouth and lemonade) and a feeling that I can do whatever I want, whatever that turns out to be. At this time tomorrow I'll be in a bar in Sydney, waiting for D to get out of his office...

I don't know why the sonnets are numbered; in a way I wish I did. Most of them seem to be known by their first line, at least among the sort of people who know multiple sonnets.

Between now and bedtime I plan to eat some lentils. It's Dhal Makhani in one of those boil-in-the-bag arrangements. Things like this often just taste like boiled bags, but this one is actually good. Ideal food for a cool evening.

After bedtime, of course, I shall sleep - then I'll get up and set off for Sydney. I'll see you in a week. In the meantime, good luck with the teeth. When are they being done? (I have a bad head for details just at the moment; if I knew, I've forgotten. I'll read the backlog again in a minute.)

Just read it again. You're basically getting the teeth seen to within the next 24 hours or so... Once again, good luck with it all.

I hope you're enjoying your vacation!

Thank you for the good wishes. They must have helped. Everything has gone really well. I'm actually doing pretty good. I've been really surprised at how relatively easy this has been. Everyone made such a fuss I thought I'd be dying but I'm not. I can see why people need to have time off though. The pain killers make me wonky and when I start to do too much it gets the blood going which makes my mouth throb. But if I just sit around with ice packs clamped to either side of my face I really feel quite all right. It's been a wonderful excuse to watch TV. It's really the summer vacation I've wanted but haven't had. Just relaxing and doing nothing. I'm glad to have the excuse to just lay around. Otherwise I'd probably be making myself busy with other things.

I was going to ask you for the recipe to your Dhal Makhani but as it's a boil in the bag thing I suppose that won't work. I'm always on the lookout for good things to eat though. My family has a tendency to make the same five or six dishes over and over again and I get quite tired of them.

Have a great time away! I hope you're getting lots of fun and relaxation in! I'm looking forward to talking to you again when you get back

The best bit of the trip away is now in my Journal.

I assume you're still adjusting to toothlesness; it won't take long, really. In the meantime, just rinse the mouth from time to time. One bright spot is that wounds in the mouth heal quickly.

The dhal thing has three or four types of lentils in it, along with kidney beans and onion and garlic and tomato and any number of herbs and spices. There'd be any number of recipes online. I think I'll have some for lunch...

Hi Ivan Glad to have you back!

School is being a tad overwhelming. I just have so much to do I don't really know where to start. I'm just slowly making my way through it though. My only worry is that I won't get enough done for the meeting I have on Friday. But I'm about to go and do more research now so perhaps it will be alright.

So far my Latin memorization is going well. Ii can now correctly identify the meaning of most of my cue cards. I'm not sure about spelling and I can't go from English to Latin but I think that as I only really started this morning I'm doing swimmingly.

Lentils. I have a new friend and we've been talking about cooking because I'm not an adventurous eater but he's an adventurous cook. We compare lunches when we eat together. He uses lentils a lot when he cooks. I'm sure I must remember having eaten it at some point in my life but I don't remember it.

I made beef stew last night. I wanted something delicious to pack for lunch. It didn't turn out that great. I'm inclined to blame it all on the one small beet I added but really I think the problem is larger than that. Next time I'll stick to the recipe. My little foray into the land of cooking adventure didn't go well. Undoubtedly I'll try to do something myself again but it may take awhile to work up my courage. Not that the stew is /that/ bad... it's just really not as satisfying as I would have liked.

I'm reading "Two Boys, At Swim" for my Queer Literature class. I didn't like it when I started but now that I've read further I'm quite enjoying it.

I had told myself that I wasn't going to read any "fun" books this semester because I don't have the time but I think tonight I'm going to have a bath and read "A Spot of Bother" which I think is one of my favourite books.

Well back to doing research!

Latin is great fun. It has such a pure logic to it, and after a while the spelling becomes obvious - which is more than can be said for English.

I've been meaning to read 'Two Boys, At Swim' for some time now. One of these days I'll get around to it. I'd be interested to know what you think when you've finished it...

Today was a bad day in the office, so I'm feeling rather flat and gloomy. It'll pass. In a nutshell, I've lost all ability to w*rk with one of my staff. She'll be removed from my team tomorrow. Then I have to submit my job application, which talks about how good I am at handling staff. Goodness, what a fraud I'll seem.

What's really unfair is that only a week ago I was on a high after M and K's wedding. A perfect day, in a perfect week's holiday - and I've come back to this rubbish. I do wish I could capture a mood or a feeling in a box and just step back into it at will.