blue moon and happy new year

it was a blue moon yesterday - that's gotta be an auspicious start to the new year and new decade. blue moons, in case you didn't know, happen when there are two full moons in one calendar month. here in the uk, last night's moon was hidden under angry clouds of sleet and obscured by howling winds, but tonight it is luminous (well of course it would be!) and huge. reminds me of a bruce cockburn lyric when he writes that "the moon was hanging so low in the sky it looked like it was trying to hatch us..."

makes me think of the singing mice in babe as well, they sang "blue moon". i am such a sucker for talking animals.

we had a good new year - we went to a dinner party at friends of ours in town. they cooked an amazing feast and we then proceeded to dance the old year out and the new one in beside a roaring fire. we're somewhat subdued today. i slept in shockingly late, then when i finally did get up i padded downstairs to get some melon slices and a cup of coffee and promptly crawled back into bed with a good book. ahh bliss.

it feels like sunday - complete with the back to school feeling that never quite leaves even though the original cause is long forgotten. i keep telling myself it's friday night but self isn't convinced by paltry calendar evidence. self will undoubtedly be elated tomorrow morning to wake up to saturday and not monday.

happy new year

may all your wishes come true (but only if they're good for you or at least really, really fun).

holidaze

woke up
coffee
walked dog
lounged/read
breakfast
lounged/read
bath/read
lounged/read
walked to town to buy veggies and chocolate
lounged/read (ate veggies and chocolate)
napped (dropped book whilst sleeping)
talked to mom on phone
lounged/read
caught up on current series of QI on iplayer
bed/read
sleep
*happy sigh*

ps i learned a new word today

mardy

from wikipedia:

"As a word

• Mardy is a word in some dialects of English meaning: awkward; un-co-operative; bad tempered; whiney; aloof; stroppy, sulking like a small child. Its usage tends to be more common around, but not exclusive to Mansfield, Nottingham, Derby & Leicester (ie the East Midlands), Sheffield and Staffordshire. It is often used in phrases such as mardy bum, mardy cow, mardy bugger, mardy mustard, mard-arse.... etc"

the context i heard it in:

Project manager 1: "she wants to know about the blinds. She's going all mardy about it"

Project manager 2: "well she can keep going mardy - this is not a priority in anyone's books..."

negligence

yup i know.
you can fill in the blanks but for the record, not just busy - crazy insane busy!
with bells on.
should be slowing down slightly now. down to just one project on the go, and the prospect of a 2 week holiday - just the thing to write my 4000 word paper for my international financial consititionalism class. yeah baby. no time for pronouns.
or, y'know, blogging.

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balancing the books

i read something in the paper last weekend - i think in the money section, another article about how the recession is hitting men harder than women (if you count this only in terms of job losses), and how some women were now the primary earners in their relationships and how stressed out this made them feel.

at the time i thought, 'huh', (direct quote), and read the rest of the paper, but it's been niggling. for one thing, what a completely hetero-normative analysis. for another thing, the guardian (the paper in question) continually trots out this sort of gender stuff without questioning it and it's really getting on my nerves.

but it also made me think - wait a minute - i've been the primary earner in my relationship for ages - i've earned more than my partner for at least a decade and for the last few years we have lived solely on my income. am i supposed to feel stressed out about this? maybe i do and i just hadn't realised. goodness knows i have enough to be stressed about - it would be plausible to mis-attribute sometimes. as you can see, i can be very suggestible at times.

i've thought about it off and on for a few days, and i've come to the conclusion that no, i don't feel stressed out about it in the least. but it still niggled.

this evening, i was updating my budget spreadsheet. i have to keep track of everything - it's the only way to make things work and make sure we spend money on what we want to, not just piddle it away on wine and take-outs (not to mention books - ahem.) i balanced out the spreadsheet against my online account and checked that we were on track for this month and next month. we are, i smiled, and logged out of my account.

then it hit me - what i feel about being a primary earner isn't stress, it's pride. kind of what men, when questioned, often say they feel.

why wouldn't women feel the same way? why shouldn't they?

new carpet!!!

old carpet:




new carpet: (with gratuitous laser eye dog)



it's not patterned. it's soft and squishy. it's positively dreamy. to paraphrase jan and dean, i'm in love with the new rug in school.

when we came to the oast to pick up the keys all those years ago, we were met with the startling sight of a man on his hands and knees carefully cutting out a burn mark (old tenants apparently did not believe in ironing boards). he was filling this in with a piece of carpet that our new landlord proudly informed us he had kept from his original fit out. you know, back in 1970 something. we didn't say anything because frankly we just wanted the keys and the moving van was coming the next day but as we walked back to the train station we were both like WTF??? this was without a doubt the ugliest carpet we had seen in a house ever. and this guy kept a piece for repairs?

turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg but we love our oast. the landlord, john, died several years ago, and his wife is much more pragmatic. we have been extraordinarily lucky with our housing and with our landlords. and best of all, the hated carpet is now consigned to someone's allotment.

seen on train last night

i first saw this guy on the tube - it was packed and this man had tons of luggage and this giant stuffed bear. then he ended up sitting in the seats across from me on my train home to kent. just before i got off i asked him if i could take a picture of his bear and he smiled and said "of course".

it's crazy busy at the moment - big projects at work, tough move this weekend with some serious crap going down (literally - building manager wouldn't allow me to use the lifts so my poor, but very strong and tough removal men had to take everything down the stairs, and then the plans were wrong and i was short 25 metres of filing. arggghhh).

classes started last week too - my class this year is fantastic - i'm so excited about it.

but now, tired. i need to go to bed, but i've only been home for 2 hours and i want to stay up! i feel like a five-year-old. if i were a dog, i'd be on the second turn just before i flop over and fall asleep half way across my bed.

thump.

???

from yesterday's Guardian:

Three pensioners were today jailed for up to nine years for their part in a £60m cannabis smuggling operation. Derek Mercer, 70, of south Norwood, south-east London, was sentenced to eight years; John Rowe, also 70, of Bethnal Green, east London, got seven years; and Wattie Soutter, 68, of Rotherhithe, south-east London, received nine-and-a-half years. The cannabis, disguised as frozen chickens, was imported from the Netherlands to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. Police recovered two tonnes of the drug, and the court heard there had been 12 previous shipments. Two accomplices were also jailed.

emphases mine, of course.

happy october

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