I went to bed with my hair still damp yesterday. This was not a good idea. I’m trying to convince myself that it looks kind of charming with my hair sticking out like that, but I’m not doing a good job of it. If I need to go outside today – which is doubtful, actually – I’ll have to stick my head in a bucket of water first.

On the upside – off to Copenhagen tomorrow. Armed with guidebooks that list various places to get beer and ale and even cider on tap and Ms Bookish‘s list of second-hand bookshops, this promises to be a nice long weekend.

– how come time can move agonisingly slowly and dizzyingly (is that a word?) fast at the same time?

– which century is this? *

– book sales are Good Things

– so are flea markets **

– ISDN really seems slow after broadband, I cannot now imagine how I ever managed to surf the net with any pleasure on a 56KB modem

– I miss the beach at Worthing

– working from home has some odd effects***

—————

* Prompted by a notice in the papers that Princess Madeline of Sweden was refused permission to be formally engaged to her boyfriend on the grounds that it would look bad if the younger sister got engaged before the older – the older being crown princess Victoria, who has yet to find the man of her dreams, apparently.

** I got hold of several Clupea plates (though only one unchipped) and a couple of good books on Saturday’s expedition

*** One of which is profound restlessness, probably due to the lack of “opportunities” of getting out of the house – unfortunately it’s not a restlessness it’s easy to employ fruitfully, there are fewer outlets what with living in the guest bedroom (normally, when I get restless, I try to utilise it by tidying the cupboards or cleaning or similar useful things, it’s less easy to do this in someone else’s house).

(Via) Which all seems rather off. But that’s ok, we all know astrology mostly sucks.

(Via)

Well, ok, so not quite yet, but we had our offer on this flat accepted this afternoon. We’ll not actually get to move in for another two months, as the current owners obviously need to move out first (and they only get the keys to their new place mid May).

But. We have found a flat! We can stop looking! Yay! I will have somewhere to put my bookcases! Yay!

I’ve just realised there’s another one for sale in the same building – want to become our neighbours? Now’s your chance…

Ayn Rand is totally pissing me off. No, not because she’s a reactionary b**ch (though I’ve heard it said). No. It’s because the stupid book (Atlas Shrugged, that is) is actually kind of interesting. Not interesting as in “I think I’ll become an objectivist” (or wtf they call themselves), but as in “I’d really like to finish this”. But it’s so bloody loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.

I don’t, as a rule, mind long books. In fact, I mostly think huge, weighty tomes A Good Thing. However, not if most of it is waffle. Or not waffle exactly, but certainly spending 1000 words saying something that could be said in 10. I’ve only read about 300 pages in about a week, and I’ve got 500 pages to go (this copy has 1100 pages of TINY print). That means another week and a half of my reading life spent on this.

Of course, I could just put it down and not finish, but then it IS actually kind of interesting.

Urk.

Addendum: I’ve finished. 

Apparently, this quirk has been around for a while, but anyway: Go to google, type in “miserable failure” as the search string and hit “I feel lucky”.

We are amused.

I just had to delete 239 identical spam comments. Thanks to MT-blacklist, it took me one minute instead of 239. Phew. Some tools are more helpful than others.