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Who needs chicken soup when you're sick when you can have corn and crab soup instead?

Yesterday I felt the beginnings of my first cold of the winter coming on (headache, sore throat, the usual), so today I decided to take the day off, fairly-guilt free, especially considering how exhausting last week was. Tuesday we got in to the office around 10:30, and I spent the next 7 hours translating pretty much non-stop. At the end of the day, my brain was just mush, and my hand not much better! (I've taken to writing my first draft translation out by hand, so this was something like 5 A4 sheets of paper covered both sides top to bottom, margin to margin, and I have a tendency of griping my pencil too tightly, which quickly leads to cramp.) Joel had spent the day figuring out how CPLEX works, and neither of us felt like cooking so we took refuge in the little Chinese restaurant just around the corner from us. We save it for occasions like this, when we really don't feel like cooking and have no leftovers. It's hardly much more expensive than getting two frozen pizzas from the grocery store, and a lot more enjoyable. Wednesday Joel spent all day at the GLoRiClass half-time event, and I worked in the library awhile in the afternoon before joining him in time to hear his talk. After that some 25 of us went for dinner at an Eritrean restaurant (not the one I've been to before, and somewhat better), which was good but again a late night by the time we'd walked home. Thursday I again spent most of the day translating, and then the ESSLLI organizers went out for a "working dinner" at an Indonesian restaurant. It was the strangest feeling when I had to tell a friend on IM "gotta go, dinner meeting". Not something I've ever had to say before. :) Dinner was good, but again we were there until the proprietors politely asked us to leave, hashing out details for the summer school. This was followed up by a meeting on Friday that started at 10:00 and went until 2:00, when we headed over to a little Spanish restaurant a few blocks from the institute (just across the street from the zoo) that I didn't even know existed. We had lunch there and continued our meeting. I'm really looking forward to an excuse to go back to the place; I had a toasted roll with serrano and baked brie, hot chocolate with real cream (not the watery stuff with sugar added, but real, thick, "stands by itself" cream), plus a slice of apple cake, and it was all fabulous, and reasonably priced.

Gosh, I went out to eat four times in one week, all to rather nice restaurants. When has that ever happened before?? All in all, I don't feel bad about taking a day off today, because I'm just not quite functioning at a high enough mental capacity to translate. Rather conveniently, sue_n_julia sent me some onomastic articles that I'd offered to put into HTML, which doesn't require quie as high a mental capacity as generating readable English from Latin, so I've been able to put in a very productive day.

Widget is a horrible little kitten

In the livingroom by the big window overlooking the canal, we have a table set up for the cats, with some blanket or other folded up on top for them to sit on. This winter Slinky discovered that she can squirm her way between the folds and hence have a very warm, rather private place to sleep. The best part is, when she's inside, she can't see Widget (and therefore he doesn't exist). But the worst part is, when she's inside, she can't see Widget. :) And he thinks the best part is that he can stand on the table next to the blanket and stick his paws in the folds and hit at whatever is in there. He thinks this is great fun. Slinky thinks he's horrible. I try to pull him away when I see he's about to entertain himself in such a way, but I'm not always quick enough and he thinks it's so fun!

Horrible little kitten. :)