In which development is embraced

The Biggest Mall has just opened in the sleepy hamlet where I live. This is exactly the sort of town where flinging up a multi-story carpark and shining banks of high-street shops is a vast improvement. I spent an hour there this morning in pre-consumerist bliss; money can possibly not buy happiness, but the prospect of spending it is definitely cheering.

Application of the day: Warwick, where the modules turn out to be perfect for me. Going just by the course layout, that's where I should go.

Bizarre dream of the day/night: Chris Onstad stopped writing Achewood. The last thing he posted was an announcement that he was just going to end it now, without tying up any storylines. I was (possibly disproportionately) shocked and saddened.

gasp!

I woke up about forty-five minutes ago in spectacular bolt-upright-in-bed fashion, thinking "SUMMER JOB". This was after a dream in which I was working in a church, making breakfast for a group of schoolchildren by dividing giant brioches, rolls and muffins into quarters. Of course, the message to take from this dream could just as well be "BREAKFAST".

I feel a disconnected-points entry coming on.

- For the CV: I am able to tell from the slightest of clues who the romantic interest in a chick-lit novel is going to be. (Sometimes it's not very difficult. But I've only been wrong once, and that was out of wishful thinking because I found the actual romantic interest so deeply boring.)

- A shopping experience I find disproportionately delightful is when they do a No.7 giveaway at Boots. I bought some powder and blusher, and got an excellent little jewellery box full of baby-sized beauty products for "free". Yaaay pink grapefruit-coloured nails and cotton candy-flavoured lips.

- The Dublin application is underway. I'm hoping it can get to them within a week, passport photo and Electronic Funds Transfer and transcripts and proposal and references and all (the references are the limiting reagent, as they need to get to Cambridge and back). I am at the waking-up-from-stress-dreams point of the endeavour. Hate application season, but it's all over soon.

- Back to the icy wastes on Easter Sunday!

In which stimulants are available

This morning, accompanying one of the girls, I found myself in a dentist's reception that had, next to the usual coffee-maker, a full bar with high-end gin, whisky, vodka, wine and ouzo. I had, and have, absolutely no idea what to make of this. (I had three cups of coffee with no intriguing mixers; it was excellent.)

Beep.

I'm on house duty, in a different house from my usual one, where the fire alarm started malfunctioning around four this morning and hasn't been fixed yet. It goes off randomly and loudly for a few seconds or half a minute, then stops. Sometimes you can make it stop temporarily by pressing a button, but not always. I feel like I'm being experimented on. (The experiment would show that when irritated, the subject writes a blog post.)

In which plans are made

In an instance of great minds thinking about clothes too much, I spent a conservatively estimated hour last night thinking of what to wear for various events this week, without even having read Ellen's entry on conferencewear. I probably can't match my outfit to my binder, but as the conference I'm going to doesn't require me to advance my career so much as to serve tea and dispense charm, I think I can get away with it.

For charm and tea duty, I'm going to wear: my full black skirt with a black and white polka-dot scarf as a belt, white Victorian-type shirt, grey blazer, black Victorian-type shoeboots, pearl earrings.

For post-management conference drinks and dinner, I'm going to wear: a black empire-line cocktail dress, pewter-coloured heels, grey blazer, pearl cluster earrings (nothing like the other ones).

For the completely unrelated Golden Age of Hollywood ball this weekend, I'm going to wear: a different black dress with the polka-dot scarf as a sash, a little grey cardigan, black patent-leather heels, all the pearls I can find.

(As this suggests, my work wardrobe is close to being perfectly monochrome; the main elements of colour are my Hello Kitty socks, and I only wear those around the house. I'm not sure whether to amend the situation or just go with it.)

So I'm self-indulgently listing outfits because staff shortages have landed me on Guarding the Children duty for hours and hours tonight, as well as Waking the Children duty tomorrow. My other sources of amusement are reading Emily Post online, wondering whether to eat some chocolate, and working up nerves about universities.