a meme (sorry)

blame Ros for this:

"book meme" instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

As you can imagine, working in a library makes this almost irresistable! ...not to mention rather tricky. The closest books are actually dictionaries (these live on little narrow shelves behind my desk where they can be protected from marauding language students,) I discounted them because they don't really have many sentences in as such (I looked in the big Collins Spanish which is the actual nearest book to where I sit, but there are mostly just words and disjointed phrases in it which don't work for the purposes of the meme)

Instead I carefully paced out the distance from my desk to the next nearest shelves - it's a close run thing but 940 "European History" is marginally closer than the other nearby shelves

Nearest book in the 940 shelves (going by the height I'm at when seated at my desk) is the Vainglorious War: Barker, A.J. (940.2 BAR) and the fifth sentence on p.123 is:

"In their hurry to get back to Sebastapol the Russians had not demolished the bridges over the river or attempted any of their usual scorched earth routine"

There now, wasn't that worthwhile?

...

Why yes, I have finished work for the day! how did you guess? ;) I'm finished for the year in fact as of five minutes ago, and now I'm off to brave the horrors of Princes Street in search of the remaining presents I have to buy - if I never return it's been nice knowing you all.

better late than never

I've updated my amazon wishlist - unfortunately I can't seem to do a direct link, so if you want to see it you'll have to go to amazon.co.uk, click wishlist and then enter my name in the search box.

appologies to the people who've been asking me for months what I want for xmas and getting "I'll get back to you" as a response - since the wishlist has lots and lots of stuff I want, consider yourselves got back to and since it's taken me so long it's worth mentioning that I actually quite like late presents

:)

[updated 20/12/04 - thanks to Liz for spotting the link problem]

hee!

see this is why I'm a dog person

'tis the season not yet!

it's not time for anything seasonal yet. No it isn't. No I'm not goingt to use that word* for at least another two weeks. And no, this doesn't have anything to do with me only having done a tiny fraction of the dreaded shopping...

... however due to circumstances beyond my control I have to go and do seasonal-ish things this evening with friends, circumstances being that one of them is inconsideratly going to Canada tomorrow. So I've been looking for things to make me resent the early onset of things which shouldn't be for another fortnight and happily I found this. It made me less cranky about it all so I thought I'd share.

* Incidentally when I do mention it I'm more likely to use this word on account of not really feeling that religion has anything to do with the holidays. Not because I'm a lazy typist, no no.

splatjournalist

hee. look at me, I'm a motoring journalist

OK so that's an exageration - I was scanning that site on an idle impulse yesterday and decided to write them a review of my one true love car since the only other owner review of the Bravo was a pretty half-hearted attempt... for reasons best known to the editors they axed my paragraphs on performance and value - the former probably because I raved like the love-struck loony I am when it comes to that aspect of my car, the latter probably because it just wasn't very interesting (shut up Hamish: some people do find car stuff interesting... though maybe not when it comes to the money side)

Now I'm looking at it, it could maybe have used a little polish before posting (much like my blog entries really,) but all in all I'm happy to have put my tuppeneth on this subject 'out there' somewhere people who want to know might actually read it. Might go some way toward redressing the ballance, given the unjustified bad press that FIATs still get...