Misc update

[liv]

Nothing very exciting to report, but a few nice things going on in my life at the moment.

A lot of the theme of the second half of August has been really nice weather. Cool enough to be pleasant again, and sunny, and that rare opportunity to revisit the golden days that get remembered disproportionately from childhood summers. Being unemployed sucks in some ways, but a month isn't long enough to be depressing and it's been pretty much like school holidays, except that I'm independently mobile now and don't have to come to a consensus with parents and siblings, I can just do whatever I feel like.

nogazivan came over from Israel with her husband and two little ones, and we did the Cambridge tourist thing, including punting and looking at pretty buildings. We had lunch in the Anchor, since it was convenient and we didn't want to wander around too much with two hungry small people. But I'm never doing that again; in 25 years since I was last there, it's changed from a grotty little dive that didn't mind serving alcohol to teens in school uniform to an overpriced gastro-pub with utterly terrible service. They served us food with prawns in it after I'd explicitly asked and been told there weren't any, and were slow, and arsey when we complained. Anyway the Anchor is shit, but having a day out with one of my favourite people in defiance of geography was great.

jack and I had a day at the beach at Felixstowe. Even though it was the bank holiday weekend, it was perfect, perfect beach weather, so ok, the whole of East Anglia had the same idea, but we got to paddle and watch the sea and sit on the beach and read and talk and eat ice cream and it was amazing.

ghoti_mhic_uait graciously agreed to walk with me up the river to Waterbeach, and we had tea in the Bridge and came back on the train, and I so enjoy the rare opportunity to spend a whole afternoon just chatting to my gf.

shreena took me up on my invitation to visit the Chihuly exhibit at Kew, and I got to meet her baby, and we talked about everything, and admired the glass in bright sunlight. I was not at all sorry to go a third time.

This weekend I went on a long cycle ride with cjwatson and his younger two. They've suddenly acquired stamina for long trips, we made almost 15 km up the river to Bait's Bite and back down through Fen Ditton (albeit with some diversions because they're rebuilding the path along the river). And then we played in the nice playground on Stourbridge Common, and came home and ate dinner (with no complaining about the food I prepared), and played Mysterium and Army of Frogs. I could hardly imagine a more perfect day, really. It's so nice that my partners' children are old enough to enjoy pretty much the same things I enjoy, and miraculously are still enthusiastic to spend time with me.

Also I've made it to a couple of the regular local meet-ups, geek pizza and Thursday night Carlton, and had a couple of afternoons with my parents and brothers.

So yes, politics is awful, and I'm a bit nervous about how few job leads I have managed to find, but my personal life is just perfect and wonderful currently.

I've also started in earnest on learning things, I've joined this cool Woolf Institute course, and just started the introductory reading, which I'm really enjoying so far. And working on re-learning to read Arabic, with a view to actually learning the language a bit, and I'm getting back into recorder, and I am hoping to do some more programming.

The Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations course follows good practice of asking students to keep a blog of our reading, so I've set up a wallet name blog here. Partly because it avoids having to go through the pain of trying to blog directly on Moodle, I'd much rather use the system that has been an extension of my brain for over 16 years now, and partly because it's about time I claimed wallet name space. I don't suppose anyone will be particularly interested in reading my learning diary, and I'm intending to keep it separate from this pseudonymous blog, but it exists. I've subscribed to a couple of friends' similar public-facing blogs about their studies that I know about. Happy to add anyone else, or to tell you the name if you happen to be interested in the detail of my studies.

Comments

[steorra]

I'm curious about your study blog.

[cynthia1960]

As am I.

[lilacsigil]

That day out sounds terrific!

[nou]

Glad to hear personal-life things are going well for you!

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

The building work is a complete new bike path and bridge, btw - where the railway crosses the river, there is going to be a cycle bridge next to it. So it will be really good when it's there, even though it's annoying now.