Ah'm a spaghatta nadle!

Today there are Things That Make Me Happy On A Friday (apart from the fact that it's a Friday, naturally, this week's Fridayness being unpleasantly undercut by the fact that I have to be on campus tomorrow to guide confused would-be students through the mysteries of curriculum design during University Open Day, sigh...). Therefore and however, anti rant list!

• Despite being actually quite good recently about not eating junk food, I succumbed and bought chocolate Viennese shortbread yesterday, and have scarfed the lot during the course of the day. This was evil, but pleasing.
  
• I got invited to give a paper at a conference! In Glasgow! In August! By someone who liked my book and felt my interests are relevant! I can't afford it and am not sanguine about finding funding, but it's nice to feel wanted.
  
• Castle is just as much fun second time around.
  
• Students give me stuff sometimes, as a thank-you for disentangling their tangled lives. Things students give me have included chocolate, flowers, books, cards and, today, a rather beautiful wooden keyring with my name carved on one side and my surname on the other. I can't even remember what it was I did for the student. But it's cool.
  
• I spent an hour earlier putting up posters for orientation leader applications in three separate buildings. During the course of this five separate students started random conversations with me, all cheerful, interested and friendly, and only some of them actually about orientation leadership. Either there's something fundamentally accessible about putting up posters, or I'm becoming a Known Figure in the faculty and hold no actual terrors any more. Either way, it made me remember how much I actually like students.
  
• I finally finished compiling my reader for the eroticism lectures. Reading through it, I am amused to notice how much it's evolved over the years, to include far more explicit sexy stuff. I can't help wandering what the photocopy people make of it. Particularly the Weaslycest. I have to make them read Wincest, too. Heh.
  
• I like hyperbole. In particular, I like Hyperbole and a Half, who is completely insane and pleasingly demented with Paint, and I really like the alot. I want one. Several. A pack. To set on people who make me grammatically unhappy. Also, her Spaghatta Nadle is a perverse sort of genius.

I am still sinusy and exhausted and have ricked my back putting up posters, but I'm buggered if I'm going to let it get me down. Up yours, Chronic Glandular Fever!