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!
I must apologise. For the quality of the blogging here lately. It’s been a bit uninspired and repetitive, I think, and I’m sorry. I did think about whether having a blog break would be a good thing, but I found I wanted, needed, the routine of waking up and having this blog to sit with.
Much of my blogging this past couple of weeks has consisted of me writing the first thing that comes to mind and letting it all pour out in a revolting deluge, looking at it quickly, and feeling somewhat better. Then I either hit the delete button or edit it savagely pre-publication, so that I don’t look at it in six months and hang my head in horror. I’ve also been scribbling on paper whenever the need arises during the day. It’s a good curative, is writing.
It’s been very good to have time to myself everyday, just to sit and fester for a bit. Although I do think it’s time to shake myself out of this funk now and start pushing myself a bit. Starting to ponder what projects I’d like to do this year. So far they all seem to involve languages and books!
I think I’m Unreasonably Grumpy about things at the moment.
Listening to the radio this morning, I felt really annoyed at the fact that one of the AsiaPacific journos keeps referring to the Japanese royal family as the Chrysantheum Throne. It’s the ChrysantheMum Throne, Linda LoPresti! Tsk!
Ah. It was good to write that gripe down, because I suddenly no longer feel grumpy about it. Just amused that a radio journalist can consistently make a mistake like that.
Come to think of it, most of the other gripes I had seem completely inconsequential, now, too. Some should not even have made me cross - like hearing the news that Elizabeth Jolley’s passed away (I thought, “Damn it! Not another death!” I did say I was unreasonably grumpy, didn’t I?).
And one peeve, it’s just occurred to me, might be worth researching further and could even be the subject of another paper. Hmm…
