Half-full

I managed to begin today by dumping a latte down the front of my shirt - my white shirt - about an hour before seminars. Too late to rush home and change with any hope of getting to class on time, I discovered that my shirt was made of some magical (possibly radioactive) material that not only absorbed the coffee but also rendered it near impossible to spot.

Then I got to campus to find an email announcing that my chances of remunerative academic employment just dropped even further for the next academic year.

On the plus side, the weather has turned and it is absolutely gorgeous outside. I finally got a good night's sleep - most of my marking is done - and I'm planning to finish work at the library, get a coffee and a table at the local java joint, and read some Derrida.

Really it's not so bad - what I look like is never my biggest concern. Okay, generally I'm cleaner looking but I don't think it really had an effect on my teaching! The news about next year is gutting but hopefully will be motivation for getting some serious research done this summer. I'm all about the half-full today.

beautiful things

Easter hols are nearly over - this fact fills me with some remorse as I haven't managed to do much. I have, though, managed to get some quality relaxation time in, which is unusual in itself and worthy of some comment. And pictures. But I don't have my camera right now so words - though not thousands - will have to do. Scotland is beautiful. I want to live there in a white house by the sea with a wood-burning stove in the lounge and the sea crashing outside. I might never get sick of collecting shells and rocks - so a little garden with a fence would be necessary for holding them all. One of my favourite books is Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn; one of my favourite literary characters is King Haggard - not just for the dickensian name: the sea, he says, is the only thing he can look at forever - he tires of everything else. I love him because he is evil and horrid but so very human and like me, beautiful things pain him in a strange, pleasurable way, a catching in the throat and a fullness of breath that feels like an emptiness - though unlike me, he collects beautiful things and hides them away from everyone else. It's the having that satisfies Haggard and the sea is something he cannot have because it is never the same.

I also love being in places that people I love have loved.

And I got to drive. I had fun - though I could use more practice. I managed to get our little kia cee'd up to 60 mph with the handbrake on... which does beg the question: how effective was that handbrake?

And now I'm home alone while Nas plays in Paris.

Pictures will follow!