Gillian Polack's Blog, page 324

gillpolack @ 2010-02-14T13:35:00

Where Queen meets Tat.

Blue Moons and New Moons and bad jokes

I have a useful fact of the day!

Purim falls on a Blue Moon this year. The month of Adar doesn't have a blue moon (blue moons are technically impossible in the Jewish calendar, unless you count Adar I and II as one month), but February does.

I was reminded of all this because I forgot one datething yesterday. It's only the beginning of a new month, but still, that beginning of a new month (today) is in a calendar I use. Also, I get to make a Twilight joke. I shan't though, since there's noth...

gillpolack @ 2010-02-13T22:41:00

In honour of the start of the Olympics, I bring you Canadian comedy. I don't know how good they are now, but I loved them twenty-something years ago. I'd ignore everything (including my Latin prep) and listen to the latest adventures of my favourite RCMP officer and his horse, Cuddles.

In honour of the New Year, my favourite New Year song:



In honour of Valentine's Day I'm eating a chocolate on your behalf.

Have I missed anything?

gillpolack @ 2010-02-12T21:44:00

Balancing stressors and demands is surprisingly difficult right now. Little things, like a friend dropping me at the dentist on her way home, make a big difference. Little things, like a friend dropping in followed by a series of phonecalls, leave me a bit wan. A migraine on top of that, leaves me a bit pale for comfort.

I keep forgetting that the old illesses don't go away when something new gets diagnosed. I get old symptoms remnidng me not to forget.

When I don't forget (when I'm careful...

email

Quick update: some idiot used all the Conflux emails to send spam and virii. If you haven't managed to get through to me in the last few days, this may be why. If you need to get through to me, I'll be checking the comments on my LJ posts, my Facebook messages and my university email acount (Gillian.Polack(at)anu(dot)edu(dot)au).

gillpolack @ 2010-02-11T12:29:00

It's midday and I checked my mail. Thank you so much, shewhomust and kesalemma and bookgirlwa . Also someone mysterious (I have to pick a parcel up at the post office) and Michael Newth (more of Michael in a moment). How did you know I was going to get the miseries? In fact, bookgirlwa hit this morning's mood in one with a card that said "I'm out of bed and dressed - what more do you want?"

Unsurprisingly, I no longer have the miseries. I have more DVDs to keep them at bay and friends wh...

gillpolack @ 2010-02-11T11:42:00

I'm declaring an open thread for whingeing. It doesn't have to be justified. You don't need a reason to hurt. All you need is something that's making you miserable. If the misery will lighten by sharing it, this is your thread.

Why am I doing this?

Now that I've been properly diagnosed, lots of people are expecting me to be happy and are helping avert such a terrible situation by giving me bad news about this, that or the other. Some of these are big pieces of bad news (people who are ...

Minutiae

One of my students found a 1958 6d piece at the bus stop and gave it to me. We wasted a bunch of classtime talking about the pre-decimal system in Australia. Mind you, we also spent an hour working on identifying Latin roots of words and playing with prefixes. All the rest was writing movie reviews. I had to politely dissent when one student identified a certain Lucas film (the title contains the word 'clones') as a brilliant work of art.

That was this morning. This afternoon was thunders...

gillpolack @ 2010-02-09T23:50:00

I ought to admit that the reason I was thinking about Bluestockings the other days is because I keep getting reminders about the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Jane Austen Festival in April is booking out fast. I'm talking about food, of course.

I'm missing not doing a Conflux banquet this year. And there may not be much testing for next year's. So it's just as well I'm talking about food to Jane Austen fans, in April.

Gratuitous advertisement time, Canberra

This isn't a "how to avoid Gillian" post, truly. I hope some people enrol, because I'm missing the Middle Ages and want an excuse to teach them.

For writers: There will be a goodly amount of writing technique and some research technique in the family history course. The other three would all work well as background history for writers using the Middle Ages or - in the case of Our Edible Past - anything from Ancient Rome to the Blitz (though you'll only get an hour or two on each period of ...