Tokens

I didn't get to the GSA Christmas party last night; instead I ended up massively over-ordering Chinese food (eleven giant dishes for seven people, plus starters and a quantity of espresso to shake us out of our MSG stupors), drinking wine at several pubs, being mocked for my snowflake-shaped reflector, which no one could see the point of at ALL ("Do cars drive on the pavement in Norway?"), and then provided with medallions to keep me safe from bears (a two-pence piece) and lions (a penny, and to be fair I was attacked by neither lions, bears nor cars on the way home), and being told by someone plunked rather heavily in my lap that I had "a silly little face", which on my protests was amended to "a nice little face".

Now I'm gazing at my almost-completed packing while drinking a cup of the tea Sarah got me, full of sodden little blue flowers that drift up to the rim of the cup. Home in twenty-four hours.

God, I miss Green Wing.

we're #1

I was wrong; it was a very cheering class. The results of the Research Assessment Exercise were published today, and York has come out as the top-rated English department in the UK, so our seminar leader - who joined the department in the seven years since the last RAE and must therefore feel at least a bit responsible for our meteoric rise - was very happy, and we had champagne. With the result that some members of the class (not me, I'm not that much of a lightweight) were slightly tipsy by ten in the morning and shouted about how Wilkie Collins doesn't understand women.

I'm oddly proud, and not the least pleased because this has a massive effect on funding for the next seven years, though I'm not sure how much of it will trickle down to Ph.Ds. BUT STILL. And then I was given back my procedural essay and had a very brief supervision consisting of the phrase "it's terrific" and a very long reading list. Whee.

Now over the next two days I need to do laundry and vacuum the floor and wrap gifts and PACK and get the very long reading list out of the library and write more of the next essay and go to two parties. And then I'm coming home.

Better late than never

So I just randomly listened to Oslo Gospel Choir doing "En stjerne skinner i natt" - it was in my iTunes Genius recommendations - and all the Christmas spirit that's completely eluded me over the past month hit me like a truck. OH GREAT, I have class in half an hour and I'm WEEPING A BIT.

and going to class isn't going to improve matters, because we're doing "George Silverman's Explanation", which is a Dickens short story that has no point other than to be sad, and not in the Little Nell sentimental-death-scene way but in the grim, quiet despair sort of way where I don't want to consider the extraordinary use of the first-person narrator but just go "ohhhhh".

At least I'm wearing a dress, because I'm going to the King's Manor Christmas lunch afterwards. That should help a bit.

shall we?

So instead of reading The Moonstone I accidentally spent the evening reading blogs by people who wish they lived in an odd sort of Past Times version of the nineteenth century, with no laudanum and a lot of highly decorated cereal boxes, and I realize that criticizing the militant-homemaker blogs is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I'll stop there.

The perfect antidote, fortunately, turns out to be the Dresden Dolls doing a four-minute intro to "Half Jack". I think it works best if you know the song already, but it's really mostly in the facial expressions.