Yeah, screw that crap.

Last night, as I was suffering through the last throes of wakeful fretting over the lost necklace, I heard a ruckus starting up outside my flat. Now, I overlook a road, and across the road is another college. Said college is having its May Ball tomorrow night (and check out what these kids are going to be getting up to...). The ruckus taking place in the middle of the night had the distinct sound (i.e., loud bleeping accompanied by shouted directions) of large machinery being backed into place. And sure enough, when I looked out the window this morning, I saw the back end of the closer of these two trucks:


All I can read from my kitchen is FAIR. Which seems, if I may, fair enough, especially since I'll keep this part forever:


I may actually put an enlargement of this picture on my office door, just as soon as I have an office for the fall. I may even do a diptych, using this one and another I took the other day:


Which is the noun and which is the modifier--well, that's something that I'll have to decide later. Or maybe I'll decide each day whether we'll be having OFFICE FUN or a FUN OFFICE.

Right now, I haven't been having much of either: I have a conference paper to give on Tuesday afternoon, and as always, I've been fretting. (Did I mention that I have a piano recital on Sunday afternoon, too? And that there's an all-night ball at my college Saturday night--though, sadly, with no Fun Fair? Is this a sensible line-up of events? Um, why not? I mean, it's not as though it gets dark before 10:50 p.m. Might as well use all these hours.) But tonight, after a very settling evening at Pilates for People Who Thought They Might Not *Get* Pilates But Wanted to Give It a Try, I reminded myself as kindly as possible that I have never given a crap conference paper and am not about to start now--certainly not when I'm scheduled to be talking about a text I've been studying for a decade. (And for those of you who knew about the Union Action that was potentially standing between me and this conference: the action was called off, as I thought it might be, and I had decided to be loyal to the conference instead of the union anyhow. So many other stories involved there.) My process has always gotten me through, and as the years have gone on, I've gradually become less of a brinkswoman. This paper, too, will be done and fine in plenty of time. Certainly well before the time I head off to a northbound train.

As your reward for listening to me think aloud all this time, I brought you a souvenir of my walk to Pilates:


These two were eating on the continuation of the footpath I take through the fen; you can actually see the pedestrian information map behind them. I was only a few feet from them and would have gotten many more shots even more fun than these had I not been hurrying to work out my core. Probably best for them, anyway: I was impeding their ability to eat that hedge (to the left in this picture) as vigorously as possible.