fiddlesticks

Today was a public holiday, Women's Day, to be precise*. On the upside (why do so many of these posts end up upside/downside? I must have a pathologically balanced and indecisive mind), they let us (me, mother, sister) into Kirstenbosch for free, on the grounds that we're women, in an extremely rare incidence of female gender kickback**. On the downside, practically everyone who isn't actually a badly-paid academic with lecture commitments, took Monday off. Including half my students, little buggers. On the upside, this means the roads were really clear driving up to campus, and the heckling in the Disney lecture was so half-hearted as to be non-existent. As a downside, the wretched holiday absolutely had to fall on a day on which I don't teach anyway, so apart from the teeth-grinding engendered by the fact that I was working when most people weren't, I actually hardly got the benefit of a holiday at all. I am aware, may I hasten to add, that the righteous 9-to-5 crowd who have precisely two weeks of holiday a year are probably muttering "Aw, nerts" and shying beer-bottles my way, given that the new UCT semester plan gives me about four months of holiday a year. I have not much to say to this, except to whimper, pitifully, that a holiday filled with the horrible, lowering absence of a Tolkien paper you should have finished six months ago, is not truly a holiday. And to dodge the beer bottles.

My recently-blogged decision to wear a paper bag over my head for the rest of my life has not been materially assisted by the discovery that all sorts of hitherto unsuspected people are reading this blog. Fame at last, she cries, commiting embarassed ritual suicide in the corner. Nice to have you along, all you lurkers. If at all consistent with your dedicated lurkerdom, please sign your comments, anonymous ones cause me to be eaten up with curiosity to the point where I twitch and foam and chew the corners of my desk. Not a pretty sight.

In other news, the dread and much-missed jo&stv dynamic duo are back in town, complete with Roachmobile, and sharing starmadeshadow's flat with the bric-a-brac cat collection. This makes me Very Happy, TM, although, if tonight was anything to go by, it also spells certain doom for the Evil Landlord's booze collection.

And, following last night's party, happy birthday, Lara! (It's tomorrow). I rejoice in the evil of having given her a pair of fuzzy d20s to hang from her rear view mirror, an addition which we confidently expect will, in a happy reversal of the norm, drive her boyfriend bats. Heh.

* South Africa has exactly twice as many public holidays per year as Britain. I feel that competent psychoanalysis of this trend would reveal much that is important about the two countries and the emotional problems in their relationship.
** Although I can't actually say it compensates for the glass ceiling.