Busy busy busy

(Yeah, when am I not busy?)

After a nice quiet weekend, life has reverted to its usual whirl of activity (but it’s ok, it’s in a good way). Last week of term, so work has been the usual madhouse, of course, and it’s turning into quite a social week as well.

On Monday night I dropped round to visit my ESOL student. I haven’t seen her for a couple of months, because we didn’t have any lessons during Ramadan (because at this time of year sunset falls right at the time we’d normally be having a lesson, and feeding her family after their fast is understandably a higher priority than English lessons), and since then she’s been busy with Eid parties and visitors. So I dropped round for a cup of tea and a chat, to make sure she got a bit of English speaking practice, even if we didn’t have time for a formal lesson.

Last night was meetup night, but MrPloppy and I also wanted to go to the UC in the City lecture on Research in Mathematics (once a maths geek, always a maths geek, even if my academic interests lean more towards linguistics and psychology these days), so I used my organiser privileges to change the meetup time to 7.30. The lecture was fascinating – a lovely mix of mathematical history and glimpses into the seriously exciting research going on now.

Unfortunately the meetup wasn’t so exciting. Just me, MrPloppy, and MarcieNZ there. Which isn’t to denigrate MrPloppy or MarcieNZ’s conversational abilities – we had a great chat and the meetup was most enjoyable – but it would have been nice to see a few more people there. I’ll have to put a bit more effort into re-inspiring the local bookcrossers again.

Oh well, at least MarcieNZ and I were able to do a bit of book-swapping. She took Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Mackler, Mean Season by Heather Cochran, Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson, Lucy Talk by Fiona Walker, and Bookends by Jane Green to read and distribute to her fellow musicians at The Bog, and in return I grabbed Getting It by Jane Blanchard to read (yeah, I’m still feeling like reading light and fluffy stuff, so I can’t be 100% well yet), and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy for the OBCZ.

Went out for lunch with Jenny today. Just to the Chinese place just off campus, but at least it was off campus, so made for a pleasant break in the day. We’ve been talking about escaping for lunch for ages, so it was nice to finally do it. Now I’ve just got to catch up with all the other people I keep saying “we must have lunch sometime” to…

Tomorrow night my lace class starts again, after the school holidays. I missed the last couple of classes of last term, what with being unwell and then being away, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Luckily it’s pretty much a work at your own pace sort of class, so I will be able to catch up.

Then on Saturday we’ve got a visitor coming. This is the big news: it’s Fuzzle! For those who don’t remember her (which will be pretty much everyone, seeing as she’s been gone for seven or eight years – longer than I’ve been a bookcrosser, anyway), she used to be our flatmate, and was Ming and Saffy’s original owner. She left the cats with us when she went overseas, supposedly for “a year or so”… yeah, I think she underestimated that one 🙂 Anyway, we got an email from her totally out of the blue the other day, saying she was coming home and asking if she could stay with us for a while when she gets to Christchurch. It’ll be great to see her again – I wonder if Saffy will still recognise her?

Oh, and apparently Mum & Stepfather are going to be in Christchurch for a few days too. Don’t know if we’ll see them though, because it sounds like they’ll be in meetings most of the time.


It’s been a while, so time for a catch update (good thing Steve changed his mind about the links!):

I should go down to Alexandra more often! (Though at this rate, I reckon the entire population must have caught one of my books by now :-))

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