Ah, January, such a lovely month.

Things were fine until I woke up on the one morning I actually had to leave the house and found this upon opening the curtains:



Which looked very pretty, but was not what I needed. I did manage to hang on for a couple of days before succumbing to a ridiculous cold in which the entire contents of my brain appear to have turned to snot. How lovely. So it has been me, the ice-skating, and copious boxes of tissues. Yesterday I made thai curry but even that hasn't helped much. Ian came round yesterday bearing lokum and chilli-cheese and I beat him at tavla which was quite an achievement as sitting upright was hard enough.

Today I feel better able to string a sentence together, possibly because I have less brain escaping, although instead I just have a headache from all the pressure and I have run out of Karvol, woe. So today I am going to see if I can manage to do some more reading for my PhD proposal, which so far consists of about three paragraphs in word that all finish "argh".

Which, all things considered, isn't a bad start.

* posted by nat 2:59 PM

Monday, January 15, 2007

Ian has decided that we now need to have seperate log ins for the computers. I am not quite sure why this is necessary - I was rather miffed to come back to find I now have to click to log on to my own laptop; strange racing-car games I can cope with, having an extra button to click I cannot - but I have found having my own space on his computer has led me to fill (read: waste) several hours downloading Japanese train station announcement tunes and Bleach wallpaper and generally being a teenager about it all. If I'm going to do it, I might as well do it properly.

I have also been rediscovering things on the web that I had previously entirely forgotten about - Geoffery Chaucer is still in fine flow (see the V Thinges Meme), and I have been sitting in the sunshine (hurrah!) and laughing, which is good.

I have a social life this week. Hurrah!

* posted by nat 12:20 PM

Sunday, January 14, 2007

On Friday I had my biannual run in with UCL hospital. For the first time in ages, I only had to wait about fifteen minutes to be seen. The appointment consisted mostly of ways to remember to take my tablets, the weather in Tasmania, and grumbling about the eye department, who ought to be checking up on me but aren't. Then I had fun with the receptionist, ("You need to come back in four months so how about the end of May?" Me: "How about the middle of April?" Her: *clicks mouse several times, looks disapproving* "End of April?" Me: "Done.") and then my favourite part of the whole experience, the blood test.

I don't have any blood, apparently. It took two perfectly competent nurses several minutes to find a vein, then try to hit it, and then try to get any blood to come out of it whatsoever. After a few attempts in my arm, I ended up with one of those nasty needles in the back of my hand and a little sprial tube with my blood trickling down into the collection tube. It took forever. It, too, dried up. They suggested next time I should be drinking red wine before I came in. Or Guinness. Having a blood test should not take about fifteen minutes - it should take fifteen seconds.

I somehow got down to London Bridge after that, to die in a large comfortable armchair in Starbucks, with a boyfriend to procure many sugary things, and then wandered slowly around the Tate Modern. Ian went sliding; I did not.

Funnily enough, I have not managed to do much since.

* posted by nat 12:39 PM

Monday, January 08, 2007

My brother has, in his own words, "got this bird", and brought her home on Friday night (this is apparently a regular occurrence; I have just not been there). She seems to do the same kind of things as my brother, namely watch a lot of TV, play computer games and shop at Bluewater. She is perfectly nice but does have the habit of ending every sentence with the word "babe". On the other hand, Ian came home from frisbee on Saturday caked head to toe in mud, having spent a couple of hours in the pub after practice to let it all dry on (apparently, people on the train kept looking at him strangely. I can't think why). I made him change in the kitchen, about the same time that they were starting to cook dinner, and then we spent most of the rest of the evening playing backgammon and eating chocolate cake. So they probably think we are as weird as I think they are.

Having had a few days of resting up, I just about managed a full Sunday: up to grey, damp central London for a late lunchtime pint with Ian's friend Kary, then an afternoon pint up at an Irish place in Kentish Town that Ian has been dying to visit, then hot chocolate in Camden, and dinner and comedy down in Forest Hill with Vanessa, then back to Deptford, where the flat turns out to be freezing, so I am going home to collect warm stuff, right after I have been swimming - I have to do something to counterbalance the chocolate cake.

* posted by nat 1:45 PM

Thursday, January 04, 2007

2007 has started the way most of my New Years start: with me staying in bed for three days, aside from a brief foray out to Greenwich on the afternoon of the first to meet El and Mo.

We went up to Greenwich again today and went ice-skating on the outdoor rink at the Royal Naval College. Ian has progressed from last year's "move slowly along the barrier, hug anyone standing there in order to get around them while always keeping one hand on the barrier" to a more impressive "walk round the ice like a penguin". We skated for about an hour and a half and I tried to remember how to go round corners backwards, but did not really manage it. We found a nice little cafe afterwards that serves delicious hot chocolate, and then I collapsed for a bit, but on the whole, quite energetic!

* posted by nat 11:43 PM