It appears that I have not made a bloggy post in a week (apart from yesterday’s video – I started this post before that…). Oops. I don’t even have Rob’s excuse of, you know, working. I have been posting on Twitter, not that it’s much help…
Anyhoo, my desk seems to be rather a mess at the moment, which ought to suggest I’m doing quite a bit. Alas, that’s not the case, but a guided tour of the mess seems to be an easy way to catalogue what I’m up to.
1 – Canadian Work Permit Application
I’m in the middle of applying for a Canadian work permit, to enable me to go and work in Quebec for a few months as soon as possible. With any luck, I should have the permit by the middle of May (I’m waiting for Nottinghamshire Police to confirm that I don’t have a criminal record…), and then I’ll be able to go and complete my year abroad in Canada. It’s been, to say the least, rather frustrating over the last few months, sitting around, knowing that I should and could be somewhere else improving my French and Arabic… but it looks like the wait is almost over.
2 – Microsoft Windows Vista
Yes. I upgraded to Vista when it was released at the end of January, having been using the beta and release candidate versions since last summer. It is a fairly funky overhaul of what we know as Windows – it looks pretty, even if it doesn’t necessarily add six years’ worth of missing features…
Anyway, Vista died on me last week, refusing to boot. So I formatted my hard drive and started again. Rather annoyingly, I’d deleted my backups about a fortnight ago, so I lost my work from between last Easter and now. Gah.
3 – Le Nouvel Observateur
Just because I’m at home, doesn’t mean I’m not keeping up with my French. Honest. We saw Mr Bean’s Holiday at the weekend, too – lots of French in that! (“La mer, qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs, à des reflets d’argent sous la pluie, la mer…“)
Also, just to join in with election fever… “Ségo, Ségo, Ségolène!” (she’s on the cover of the magazine…)
4 – Rushcliffe Borough Council Recycling2Go
I was bin-minding for some neighbours while they were on holiday, and their bin was not collected by the council. So I rang the council’s call centre, and they came and emptied the bin. True story.
5 – E.M. Forster’s Alexandria
Seeing as my essay on Alexandria was on the un-backed-up version of Windows, I lost it when I reinstalled Vista. So I’m writing it again. Typing in Arabic, at about one character every 30 seconds, is a very slow business…
6 – Mini Eggs
‘Cos it’s nearly Easter. Obviously.
7 – Sniffles
I think I’m coming down with / recovering from a cold. Meh.
8 – Theatre tickets
A group of us are going to see Avenue Q next Tuesday. I can promise that I’ll write something about it, but from past experiences, that’s unlikely to actually happen…
9 – Music
Music is good. For some reason, that small pile contains Wicked, Avenue Q, Little Shop of Horrors… and Bryan Adams. All of which are already on my computer (and backed up!), so I have no idea what the CDs are doing there.
Incidentally, on the right-hand monitor there is Twitteroo, a nice Windows-flavoured way of posting to Twitter. It’s the closest I could find to Twitterrific (for Macs), of which I am, frankly, rather jealous. And no, I still don’t really know what the point is of Twitter. Just that it’s strangely addictive.