Long time no wibble.

So, I went down to Liz's the day after my last entry. Amusingly, all three of my trains were delayed, by varying times. Fortunately, the first two delays were well thought out. Rushing into Waverly with oh-no-help-I'm-going-to-be-late seconds to go, I saw that my train wasn't there yet, and got something to drink. Arriving at the platform 10 minutes after the departure time, the train wasn't there, and a delay was announced. 10 more minutes, I'm off. Great.

Arrive at first station. Oh dear, missed my connection. Wait, no, it's late too, so instead of a 1/2-hour wait I just need to walk to the next platform and get on. Great!

Getting into Meadowhall, on the other hand, I was less fortunate. Missing my connection, I had to wait about an hour for the next train, with such amusing interludes as an appropriate train being listed for quite some time before just disappearing from the board.

Anyway, to cut a... to finish the story, I arrived in Barnsley in the early afternoon, and Yea! there was much rejoicing.

Cut to Christmas eve. Going to bed at 2am, I discover Liz ill with a sickness bug caught off Adam. This lasted the better part of Christmas day as sickness, and afterwards as general illness. Just past the stroke of midnight on Christmas day, I caught the bug. So we had a fun Christmas. Really.

At least we managed a nice morning. Sitting opening Christmas presents with Adam was wonderful. He meticulously read all his new books before opening the next present. Wonderful to watch a 3-year-old's logic at work. It might be the first Christmas he remembers, too.

Slowly recovering, and starting to think of dull work-like things. Then meet! Whole bunch of afpers gathering at Liz's parents house for new year, along with the better part of the surrounding week. Lots of nice people, some of whom I had not met previously, and generally a happy time. New Year was better than Christmas.

Nearing the end of my stay; last night with Liz. And it snows, good and proper! The sky was nicely covered, the air full of heavy snowflakes floating down hypnotically. Lying in bed, watching the snow fall together... I shall remember this.

Do you notice that I get less verbose the further down the page I get?

Unfortunately I had to come back all too soon. More unfortunately, my laptop has given up all semblance of working order, and needs a good beating and/or repair person. So, having been unable to do the work I intended due to illness and lack of laptop, I came back to a pile of work. I seem to be making some progress now though.

Project status: stalled, but about to be attacked viciously. New courses: seem interesting. Naturally there is a direct relationship between attendance and waffle. I'm attending two "small" courses, circa 10 people taking each (Computational Complexity and Computer Algebra) and a "popular" course (Computer Security). Security shouldn't be too challenging and should be interesting if overly verbose and insufficiently detailed, whereas the other two should be both interesting and challenging. I wonder what I'm in for.