These mornings, instead of blogging, I have been snuggling in bed listening to the radio and the little noises the chihuahua makes in his sleep.
navel-gazing
It’s just as well I don’t have writer’s block when it comes to blogging, otherwise I’d still be trying to write posts for January now, or something.
At the moment I’m trying to tidy up and finish two abstracts that have to be submitted by tomorrow. So far, to procrastinate, I have:
- eaten breakfast and brunch
- drunk three cups of tea
- expanded my mighty galactic empire (did I mention that Galactic Civilizations II is a good game?)
- finished a book (Wolf to the Slaughter by Ruth Rendell).
- started another book (Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge).
- flicked through a couple of other books I am reading: Walt Crawford’s Balanced Libraries (more on this later), and T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell’s The China Study.
- pondered what I would write for a couple of memes: this one, and thanks for the tag, Woody. (I think I need to finish at least one abstract before I do anything else!)
I’ve decided that I don’t like writing for more formal media, but I’m sure it’s good for me.
I have a day off today - Time Off In Lieu, TOIL (I love ironic acronyms).
I haven’t got anything planned but so far I have been:
- Playing with Ubuntu. Found out yesterday that a number of the doctoral students I support use open source tools like LaTex and Inkscape and KBibtext (they don’t use EndNote! ¡Ay, caramba!) I don’t have to learn how to use LaTex, for example, but I hate not knowing anything about it. And this gives me an impetus to play around with Linux a bit. Thanks for M for installing it on my PC (we’re using virtual machine software so I can keep running things like iTunes on Windows).
- Watching the birds outside my study window. I’ve been leaving seed out for them for a few weeks now. Initially they didn’t touch the food, but after almost a fortnight I guess they realised there was no longer a cat around to make things hazardous, and they’ve been enjoying it.
- Cleaning my fountain pens. I’m sure this isn’t particularly interesting, even to fountain pen users, so that’s all I’ll say about this
Plus the usual reading, pondering and general pottering around the house. It’s so nice to have a day off!
