damn fine coffee

Oops. I just gave free reign to self-indulgence and bought myself the boxed set of the complete Twin Peaks TV series for Christmas. Possibly this is because my will-power is doing its usual thing, which is to curl up in a small, fluffy ball somewhere in my backbrain and decline to be stirred; alternatively, the fact that I've been fighting off Sid the Sinus Headache for two days may have caused me to feel entitled. New Year's Resolution: books, CDs and DVDs will be confined to a R200 per month budget for the duration of 2009. Unless, of course, they're necessary for academic wossnames, such as the complete works of Anne Radcliffe which arrived a few days ago (there's this Masters thesis I have to mark ...). Academia is a cloak under which I can conceal a multitude of crimes, in the manner of the Far Side cartoon with the gentleman smuggling a grand piano under his coat.

The rampagings of Sid have made the last couple of days a bit surreal, particularly since I'm still trying to finish the last few curriculum reports for work - a task made the more difficult not just because of the pounding head, but because the campus database has been having fainting fits all weekend. The last of the headache finally vanished this afternoon, something I'm inclined to attribute to the consumption of the French hot chocolate at the Kirstenbosch tearoom. It's a dark, thick, creamy sludge, bitter rather than sweet, not only perfectly suited to Cape Town's day of musing, retrospective rain but productive of a serious endorphin rush clearly sufficient to see off the persistently sadistic gnomes of sinus. I should see if my nice doctor will write me a prescription.