this makes me happy

Terry Pratchett will be knighted. A snippet quote from him on the BBC News has him saying that the weirdest part of being knighted is that he'll then be married to a lady. :)

In other news, Happy Birthday, baronsnorri! Hope it's a good one, brother.

The year in review

Following hrj, I'm stringing all the first sentences of the first blog post of each month together into one big paragraph. It's more amusing that way:

No slogging through the rain for us this year; we stayed at home and rang in the new year with a bottle of New Glarus Raspberry Tart (we brought two bottles back in June, and had been saving the second bottle) and watched the sky over the canal fill up with firework smoke (you can hardly see across the street now). Today's foray into breadmaking involved Egyptian sesame rings. Last week Joel lost his umbrella and since mine had completely sheared into two pieces during a big storm in December, we went out today to the big department store on the Dam Square to get new ones for each of us. So yesterday I found an apartment in Paris for Joel...from April 12 to May 11. I just got email confirmation of my dinner reservation for tonight at the Waag. mmm, happiness.... I woke up this morning and my leg did not hurt. We opened ESSLLI registration 45 minutes ago. I just saw Joel off to the airport; he's heading to Liverpool. Over the last 6-8 months or so I've noticed that not all of my travel experiences have been hassle free. We had a lovely weekend in Paris. It's a bit unexpected after the last three winters, which have been quite mild.

Let's see, twelve months, of which:

* six months the first thing I talked about was travel related.
* three months the first thing I talked about was the weather.
* two months the first thing I talked about was food.

And then there was July, when I was dealing with the thrombophlebitis. If we chalk that up as an aberration (which we certainly hope is the case), I'd say that the rest of the paragraph is pretty typical of my usual blogging here -- though lately I will admit things have been a bit dissertation heavy (and will continue to be so for the next 60 days).