The threat of Christmas

There are some clear indications around that Christmas is coming once again. Apart from shop decorations (which I haven´t seen yet beause I haven´t been in a mall for weeks), they include the freezing mornings and all-day leaden skies, the chain-reaction car crashes on the highway, and the declining number of students who actually seminars.

Of course this means that the end of the semester is coming closer and there´ll be a two-week holiday before the exams start. I´m really looking forward to it. But I just can´t help feeling that the holiday would be nicer without Christmas.

Let me explain the problem with Christmas. Basically I think this should be a time people can spend with their family, which in my case is my husband and the guinea-pig. While I spend some time with the guinea-pig all year round, I get the feeling I hardly ever see my husband, the reason being I´m usually too sleepy after 10 p.m. and before 7 a.m. But as he´s going to work around Christmas, and we´re going to have some relatives in for the actual holiday, I don´t think the situation is going to get much better. (I´ve suggested the idea of going away for a regular holiday, but it seems he can´t leave work for a whole week.)

The other thing is that I´m going to have to spend most of the upcoming weekends running around shops and buying presents for all my relatives as well as for myself. I do realize  it´s nice of everyone to give me money and let me decide myself what I really want, but trying to do this in December shopping malls is rather exhausting, to put it mildly.

I must say I really dislike disliking Christmas. But I guess I do dislike it…

Better than normal

Autumn is really great, especially when the weather´s awful and your husband is too busy all the time and you´re the only girl at the school reunion who doesn´t have kids (and still the weirdest of them all, of course) and you´ve been feeling depressed for a week. Oh, and the guinea-pig still bites your hand when you feed him.

Which is the perfect situation to skewer the guinea-pig and roast it for dinner go and shout at someone until they feel as bad as you do be quiet and then jump out of the window unexpectedly watch another episode of Futurama.

You´re better than normal – you´re abnormal!

Autumn pics

This year´s a bit weird… First we had summer till the beginning of October, then winter complete with snow while the trees were still green. You couldn´t really get any normal autumn pictures until this week.

Addicted to lettuce

Mr Plinge the guinea-pig looks like he isn´t much affected by the rather early dose of winter weather we´ve had here (I turned the heating on for him especially, so he can´t complain). The only problem is that there is no grass outside for him. However, he solved this difficulty by finding out that if he won´t stop bothering me, I´ll just keep buying lettuce for him because that´s just about the only thing that will shut him up.

He actually behaves as if he were addicted to the stuff, and unless he gets his daily dose, he´s really unbearable. But it´s kind of nice listening to him crunching a fresh leaf, so I don´t mind very much. Plinge having eaten his lettuce and lying happily in his cage almost creates an illusion of a sweet pet (as opposed to furry little terrorist).

Amber Love

So cold

One step away from stone

Empty hands

In the glove compartment

Memories put away

To sleep

Your love captured

In amber

Back to school (for an hour)

Today I went to see some people from the English department of the university. It was the first time since my Ph.D. 3 years ago. I must say it feels really weird… No matter how old I´ll get, I´ll probably always feel like a student there.

They moved the department to a different room, built new shelves inside and got a new secretary (good move that), but the teachers are the same and I still get the feeling that they´re somehow much cleverer and more educated than myself. They don´t treat you that way at all, but it´s hard to shake off.

I´ve learned about a conference I could attend next year, so that´s great because I need one for my grant research. But I´m still not sure if I should try to develop an academic carrier, or leave all that publish-or-perish hassle behind and earn some money for a decent life somewhere. I wish the EU were less of a dinosaur (referring specifically to its size, speed and decision-making activity, which dangerously resembles, say, a middle-aged brontosaur). I could just become a translator and stop worrying about the immediate future.

Love of gardening

Yesterday I spent the afternoon potting flowers. Originally, I´d just wanted to do something about the cactuses that didn´t quite fit into the pots any more. Then I discovered I didn´t have enough soil, so we went to buy some, added a couple of larger pots, and I ended up repotting most of the flowers from the spare room and some tulips in addition to the cactuses. Altogether, a most satisfying afternoon.

I thought a bit about why I like gardening, because theoretically there´s no reason I should. And I´ve come up with the following theory: You are likely to love gardening if a) you´re good at it, b) you haven´t got a garden, and c) you´re a teacher. (Perhaps (c) could be extended to include other jobs where you´ll never see any tangible results of your efforts.)

Funny, isn´t it. I remember when I taught at secondary school, at the times when we English teachers just hated our job we used to discuss our dream work: gardening. I wonder if there are any gardeners who would like to become teachers… but I guess not.

Autumn dreams

This is what we dream about this autumn:

I dream about school (teaching lessons of economic English), Mr Plinge the guinea-pig (feeding him, feeding him again and then feeding him some more), and occasionally being murdered.

My husband dreams about school all the time. (He started his university course for the third and hopefully last time.)

Aren´t dreams supposed to make you rest a little and refresh you before you wake up and real life asserts itself once again?

Autumn

As there is no more evidence to the contrary, I hereby declare this year´s autumn started.

Fortunes

As I was preparing for next week´s lessons, I came across the expression “Fortune 500″ in my textbook. Which made me look into my favourite dictionary, because fortune is in fact quite an interesting English word.

Funnily enough, the first meaning given in the dictionary is a great amount of money. (Considering that a small fortune is defined as a lot of money, a fortune would presumably be a lot of lots of it.) Then comes fate, chance (as in fortune smiled on them, or the fortunes of war). And last of all is what will happen in the future, with the associated fortune cookies and fortune-tellers. Plus a note about seeking one´s fortune (and sometimes fame as well) in the world.

Of course if you´re fortunate, that´s good fortune. (The same seems to apply to fortuitous unless you know it´s supposed to mean accidental.)

A nice link between money, success, and luck in English. Not all languages are so sincere.