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

Hi everyone!

Various things have been happening over the last couple of months ... I'll see what I can do to put them all into a journal entry!

First things first, I've been house-sitting for my family for most of the time while they've been away on holiday, so I've had the pleasure (or horror! ) of looking after the two cats, Willow and Cody/Jesus/Winston (depending on who you are in my family). Willow has been reasonably well-behaved, but Cody (his official name, apparently - according to my mum, anyway) has been irritating the hell out of me - trying to eat my meals before I get a chance to start, running around the house at breakneck speed, waking me up far too early in the morning, licking me(!) and digging his sharp claws into me. Apart from that, it's been nice having the house to myself and just one of my sisters ... although being the nicely-behaved boy I am, no house parties took place!

I also did some valuable research work before I had a week off in August - I'm making progress, but I'm now panicking about getting my end-of-year report *and* presentation completed in time for the end of this month! The main reason is that my supervisor wants me to go to Italy for a course on two-phase flows - which reduces the time I have to write the report (about two/three weeks now) and arrange the presentation by a week! However, I know more or less exactly what I want to say and what references to put in, so I shouldn't have too much trouble completing both of them in time. (Here's hoping!)

During my week off, I finally went back to Esperanto House in Barlaston to do some more cataloguing work while the Esperanto Summer School was taking place. It turned out to be a very productive week - I managed to add 1773 books to the concise catalogue I'm compiling and a group of Esperantists from Cambridge added another 1119 items over a weekend - so lots of the catalogue got done! The summer school was also quite lively this year - there were quite a few strong characters, both amongst the tutors and the students, particularly a lady from the US who bought a couple of hundred pounds' worth of books from Esperanto House and had a particular interest in the erotic/rude stuff! In fact, someone wrote a poem about her for the entertainment evening ... hopefully, it should be printed in the next "La Brita Esperantisto", so I'll be able to see how good it was!

Finally, a bit of sad news ... Darren and I are no longer b/f's. Basically, the continued separation because of me living at home in Congleton meant that we only got to see each other once a fortnight ... and the spark in our relationship fizzled out, basically. So we decided to end it last Friday - we're still good friends, though, so I'm pretty sure I'll still get to see him fairly regularly. However, now that I've become single again, there has been some new interest in me ... it's still too early to say exactly what is going on, but I'll let you know next time!

So that's it for now ...

Hello, and welcome back!

It is a pity about Darren, but if you can manage to maintain a friendship with him, it'll be well worth it. Trust me on that one. It can be a struggle at times, but the end result justifies the effort...

This helps, too:

Ivan.