And so it begins

erm started this week, and I’m already swamped with work (it’s worrying when the lecturer says she’s going to give you a nice easy reading for the first week, and it’s 40 pages long (and that’s not counting the two “optional” readings that go with it…).  Yeah, I kind of forgot just how hard Honours is.  It’s amazing how you forget these things when you’ve had a year off…  So, life (well, work + study, at least – I don’t think I’ll have much of a “life” other than that for the next few months) is a bit busy.  So don’t be surprised if I go even more into radio silence than usual…
Of course, I haven’t quite got the hang just yet of cutting back on everything else in life to allow me more time for study.  As usual, my big problem is volunteering for stuff.  Like spending yesterday morning helping set up for the regional competitions my Toastmasters club is hosting.  Not that I actually had time to attend the competitions (I’m not eligible to compete myself yet – still too much of a noob – but it would have been interesting to watch the speeches), because I had to dash off to Addington as soon as the set-up was finished, so I could go to a meetup of the Christchurch Bloggers group.
Tartankiwi is organising the group now, as Miriam’s moved to Australia, and she’s trying to get a regular monthly meetup going.  So, having been a meetup organiser myself and knowing the frustration when you organise these things and nobody turns up, I went along.  As I suspected, it was a small group – Tartankiwi said lots of people said they were interested, but couldn’t make it this weekend (but maybe next time…), so I was glad I went, even though two social events in one day is kind of exhausting (I’m just glad Harvestbird had to cancel on our planned outing today – much as I enjoy her company, that would have been way too much social, as well as leaving me no study time).  It was a bit noisy in the cafe, and because of the way we were seated it was hard for all of us to hear and be part of the conversation, but once the lunch rush settled down and it got a bit quieter it got a lot better.  An enjoyable afternoon, anyway.  And I got a wee bit of cross-stitch done, having learnt the lesson from the last meetup that everyone brings crafts along.
Today was devoted to studying – kind of unsuccessfully in the morning (maybe it’s possible to have a house that is too tranquil and pleasant – for some reason I just couldn’t concentrate, anyway – too many nice things around me to distract my attention… (or was it just the cat constantly wanting to sit on my lap?)), until I took myself and my books off to a cafe for lunch, and ended up staying there for three hours and getting all the reading done, perfectly able to concentrate despite all the noise around me.  So now all I need to do is write up some notes and I’m totally prepared for next week’s classes.  I never thought of myself as a study in cafes type of person – I thought it would be way too distracting.  But apparently I am…