Dumplings and things

s predicted, winter has returned with a vengance.  A freezing cold day, followed by icy rain and wind tonight (luckily I managed to make it home just before it started).  So Parsnips has got her wish – the fire is roaring, and she is comfortably ensconced in front of it (as I will be too as soon as I’ve written this – it’s way too cold here in the study!)
had a cool surprise waiting for me when I got home tonight – a parcel in my letterbox, from MeganH.  It was obviously a book, so when I opened it I expected it to be something off my wishlist, or maybe some bookring I’d signed up for ages ago and forgotten about.  So I was confused to find it was Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Winged Lion.  Weird, why would MeganH send me that?  And then I opened it and looked inside, where I found a post-it note from Antof9 (now there’s a name from the past!), congratulating me on having registered 1000 books!  It turns out the book was part of a bookbox Newk put together way back in 2004 in honour of my having achieved that milestone, and finally, 10 years later (and after my total has gone well over 5000), it’s made it into my hands.  Seriously cool!
ur team was invited to join the college office staff this evening to learn how to make Chinese dumplings.  They’d arranged for someone from the Confucius Institute to come and give lessons, and we all had a go at folding them (and then eating way too many – I think there were about 200 dumplings between a dozen of us!)  It was a fun way to spend the evening, and to get to know some of the college office people a bit better – even though we share a corridor with them, we don’t have that much to do with them, other than vague pleasantries in the tearoom or waiting for the photocopier.  So nice to have a chance to socialise with them, and making the dumplings was a lot of fun, too – we got given a printout of the recipe, so I’ll definitely have to make them myself sometime now that I know how.