Saturday 4th January, 2014                1800

Well it HAS been a bit quiet around here, plus I am only now starting to feel a tad more human.

Yes I stayed up for midnight to greet 2014 - alone at home as I didn’t want to be around people and had earlier declined an invitation from one of my classes to their party. I took full opportunity of the day off on the first by doing absolutely nothing. Ditto Thursday although Friday saw examinations with a vengeance. One of the classes took the Mickey. I had asked for seventeen of them this week and fifteen next week. I finished the seventeen only to find an eighteenth appear! “Could I please take the exam today?” Ok, softie that I am I agreed. I ended up doing 21 of them! Am I angry? No. it means lunch hour next Friday will start early!

Lucy came to clean today as did Kevin to put all my shelves and coathooks up. Not a bad job he did either, especially as he moved the shower towel rack over and up. This had to be done as I was unable to leave any towelling in the bathroom at all - Pooh somehow used to manage to get up there, nest on my towels and in jumping down again would dislodge them so they ended up on the floor, often in the wet. If he can get up there now then I am putting him on TV. It is nice to have somewhere to hang jumpers and jackets now though.

We had a problem a couple of days ago where we lost all power on campus at about 0800. Often if it is a planned “outage” they stick it on the website but there was nothing ahead of it. It was just what I needed what with feeling terrible and not being able to take a shower but power was restored around five in the evening. Until about nine when it blew again! I ended up reading by LCD rechargeable lamp and when that ran out, by candle. The only good thing had been that while the power was on I managed to cook for the brood, if not myself.

I was sleeping fitfully anyway since Christmas for obvious reasons and in the early hours I awoke. I had no electricity still but the rest of the campus certainly seemed to have it. Indeed it turned out that everywhere had it except the teachers accommodation! We never got it until two that afternoon. I took the shower I was so desperate for, praying all the while that there wasn’t another cut before I had finished because normally when the power goes so does the water so you can’t even rinse with cold.

Tomorrow I am going to town for a gastronomic extravanganza. We have a (this time) planned power cut for 0800-1700 so the plan is to go to bed as late as I possibly can tonight/early morning, sleep as late as I can and after taking Pepsi for her walk, catch the bus downtown. And I’m going to McDonalds for the first time for my lunch! I know that sounds sad - and indeed it IS - but I simply have to see if they do their version of a “proper” burger, you know, the one with all the garbage in it. I just pray they haven’t Chineseified the food like KFC have.  Come on Pizza Hut - hurry up and open your place too!  

I’m afraid that’s it for now and the possibility is there may not be anything interesting for a few days.