up the hill backwards

[freckles_and_doubt]

It's ridiculously hot. I've had to frantically consume my entire chocolate stash on the grounds that it was limp, soggy and in seriously danger of liquefying. A bit like me, actually. Now there are melted chocolate smears on half the papers on my desk, and quite possibly the last three students as well.

I'm stealing back the meme that egadfly nicked from me last year and this egadfly's meme again. The Internets, so promiscuous. You're supposed to go back over the last year and take the first sentence of the first post of each month. I run it into one paragraph; also, I cheat, otherwise far too many of the sentences consist of the word "Hmmm", to which I'm apparently addicted as a post-opener. In honour of the year-end thing I've taken the last sentence of every last post in the month, ignoring footnotes like a proper academic. I also appear to be slightly more randomly surreal at the end of the month than the beginning.

The confusion was indescribable. Fiddle with it for a bit, then paste in the code from Elizabeth Bear's Goth dahlia, and feel inadequate. (I think my subconscious is actually revelling in the possession of money, here). Frilly goth. Memo to self: do not allow the dean to guess that my subconscious clearly finds students less interesting than weebles. To come full circle, it's probably a good thing that three of the four of us are currently working full-time, since something has to break up the otherwise more or less wall-to-wall wallowing in eating, drinking and random badinage. Sigh. I am snuffly, trippy and cross, a situation only partially mitigated by baby moose, and unmitigated in any way by the fact that I have to spend the whole weekend wading through my own deathless prose. I loved the Uglies, though. Jo's full review snarkage at Salty Cracker sometime soon. It's magnificently silly.

Comments

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

I don't think I nicked the meme from you last year... I done it, then demanded it be done by others, and you were kind enough to humour me in my Canute-esque (not to be confused with Knut-esque) raving.

This year I done it again, but I yoinked the format you used last year.

Being one step and 12 months ahead of me, you've gone and changed the format once more. And may I say how brilliantly the last sentence thing works here?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

oops, sorry, I misread your meme post and didn't check back to see the actual state of affairs. Bit stressed, me, which makes my usually abysmal memory even worse than usual.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

That's ok - academically fastidious as you are by nature, I think you can be let off carefully researching meme histories before posting :)

'Tis the season for stress, it seems. I'm frantically trying to get the minimum necessary done before flying to Poland at daft o'clock on Saturday. This mostly involves redefining "the minimum necessary" in ever-decreasing terms.

When do you get some proper, relaxifying holiday?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Today is my last day before a two-week holiday, hence the stress. Some of the stress is transference - I'm dealing with curriculum reports for students appealing against academic exclusion, so there's a sort of continual, chin-level fug of angst in my office. I have twenty reports to write before I can go home this evening. So, comrade! shoulder to the wheel in the cause of righteous and deeply earned vacation!

Chocolate in Peril

[(Anonymous)]

You ate all your chocolate?!

We might need to be conserving it. ;)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026873.400-chocolate-in-peril.html

pK.