For Valentine’s Day this year, I got a day to myself. Oh, it wasn’t exactly intentional, mind you. It only happened because Richard wanted to spend a day at Dundracon (local gaming convention, for those of you non-nerd types) and today was the only day that would work this weekend. But still, it’s been nice – a whole day with nothing whatsoever I had to do; nowhere I had to go; no one I had to coordinate with.

I suppose I could have spent the day curled up in bed reading or knitting or just being blissfully lazy with the cats, but I decided I might as well take advantage of the free time. So this morning I headed off to a hardware store and coerced a nice young clerk to help me heft three huge steel shelf kits into my trunk. And then I drove them home and dragged them out of my trunk all by myself, with absolutely no grace, and spent the next few hours sitting on the floor of the garage surrounded by boxes and random pieces of metal, assembling shelves and rearranging the garage. It’s one of those chores I’ve wanted to do for months now because after almost three years in this house, the garage has started to look a bit messy. It’s not bad yet, but ‘yet’ is the operative word. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would become unmanageable; after all, this seems to be the natural order of garages. So I figured the best thing to do was to try to corral all the stuff onto shelves before it got the chance.

It was actually kind of fun, sitting there, trying to wrestle the shelves together all by myself. The first one was easy, since I turned it into two shorter shelves for all the recycling bins. The second one was a bit trickier, since I made it one single unit and it ended up being taller than I am, so I had to stand on a stool in order to get all the final bits in place. Plus, each of these shelf units weighed about 75 pounds when completely assembled, so dragging them into their final spots was a bit of a challenge. Considering I was dealing with heavy things, sharp things, *and* a hammer, and still somehow managed to not only get them together, but also move them and a few other things around in the garage without injuring myself at all, I would call this afternoon a qualified success.

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There are times when I wonder just what is happening to this country; when I can find no hint of any sort of progress. And then, sometimes, miracles can happen. What could possibly be more romantic, more beautiful, and more right than what is going on in San Francisco this weekend?

I suppose I should have learned my lesson with the last few tons of citrus fruit we purchased, all of which went scarily moldy (fuzzy and blue) within far too short a time. But I had to stop by the produce stand on the way home and while I was there I noticed they still had those ten-pound sacks of satsumas, so I decided to give it another try.

We’ve already made a sizeable dent in the bag, but I think this time I may break down and dump out all the remaining ones and give them a good scrubbing with soap and water. It’s ironic, in a way, that the reason they tend to go bad so fast is because they aren’t processed before they’re sold – they’re just picked and bagged and taken to the produce stand and sold as is. If I’d purchased those previous bags at the grocery store, they’d probably still be mold free. Ah, the allure of pesticides and other useful, yet pesky, little chemicals.

Speaking of chemicals, pesky or otherwise, last night I decided to forgo the decongestant and see how things went. In celebration I was all set to get up early and go biking this morning, but when Richard peered out the window, he said something about it being quite windy, and it didn’t take a lot to convince either of us that maybe we should just postpone our reentry into biking until later. Less you think we are being big lazy exercise slackers, however, we did both get back to our respective workouts yesterday after a week off to be sick.

Not, mind you, that I have completely recovered from this round of the winter crud. It was just as well I didn’t end up going biking this morning, since my throat spent all morning trying to decide whether or not it wanted to be sore, and by the time I left work this afternoon I was feeling achy and chilled – I had my heater up on full blast on the drive home, which should have been enough of a sign that I probably had a fever. At least the sinuses have remained blissfully clear, and after popping some cold medicine and curling up under the covers for an hour to whimper until it kicked in, I am feeling slightly more human. I am getting awfully tired of being sick, however, just in case anyone was wondering. Anytime this thing wants to go away for good would be just fine with me.

In other news I finished off the back of the sweater I am making for myself yesterday. This may not seem all that exciting, except that this is the second time I’ve done the back. I actually finished it about three weeks ago, but then realized that it was too narrow and also about half a foot too long and I really didn’t want to try to figure out how to fix it, and really, the pattern is easy enough that I realized it was just going to be easier to rip it all out and start over. At this rate my friend will have her sweater months before mine is done (her mom – the woman who’s been teaching me to knit – is making her the same pattern, except in a different color), but I actually prefer it this way. I figure this means that her mom can work through all the quirks of the pattern before I ever get to them.

Last night while pondering dinner, I had a craving for something with fruit. So on the way home I stopped by the produce stand and bought, among other things, a bag of Anjou pears. I went home and peeled and chopped four of them directly into a casserole dish with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon and corn starch for thickening, stirred together something vaguely cobblery for the topping, and then threw it all in the oven and called Richard to tell him to pick up some vanilla ice cream on the way home. And that was dinner – pear cobbler and vanilla ice cream. It was warm, sweet, cinnamony goodness and it tasted far more decadent than it actually was to be eating cobbler for dinner.

Perhaps my craving for cobbler last night was just in anticipation of all of today’s wild partying, because I left the house at about 9 this morning and did not get back until after 10pm this evening. In between I drove all over Northern California and in between all the driving I attended parties. Three parties, to be exact.

The first party of the day was for my youngest nephew’s third birthday. We kicked the morning off to a good and healthy start by eating leftover cobbler for breakfast, and then headed up to Napa in separate cars with my back seat full of presents. Nathan was, naturally, excited, but then at three he is always excited. Of all the niece/nephews, he’s the one that has always seemed to just be eternally excited. He jabbered incomprehensibly at Richard and me – although to be fair, now that he is three, we’re starting to be able to pick out a word here and there that almost makes sense.

My older sister made the cutest train cake, and with the little four year old from Nathan’s day care (too bad he’s too young to care that we were teasing him about his ‘older woman’) and my older nephew, there were three little kids doing their best to get wound up because it was a party.

I had time to stay for lunch and for the opening of the presents but had to leave before the cake because I had a two hour drive from Napa to San Jose for party number two – my Almost Twin’s bridal shower. I felt a little awkward about showing up for a bridal shower in jeans, since one doesn’t wear fancy clothes to a toddler’s party, especially when one is expected to get down on the floor to help said toddler put train tracks together, but luckily it wasn’t a formal crowd. It was, however, a crowd – lots of women were there, and the hostesses had outdone themselves with plenty of food and silly party games. I won a pretty glass and pewter vase for being the first one to whip through the word scramble, and probably would have won the game where you couldn’t cross your legs during the party, except that near the end I quickly foisted all my clothespins off on my younger sister-in-law because I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to win more than once.

Mindful of the fact that I had had pear cobbler for breakfast, and also pizza for lunch (hey, it was a party for little kids), I passed on the cake at the bridal shower. Okay, so the main reason was that it had raspberry filling, but leave me my self-righteous healthy eating delusions. And then it was time to hop back into the car and rack another few hundred miles onto the odometer in order to make it to Vacaville in time for the third and final party of the day. I managed to swing it with just enough time to spare that Richard could meet me in Vacaville for dinner beforehand, and then we continued on to our friend’s house for a rousing evening of games. There were eight of us, which was just the right number to take on two games over the course of the evening, as well as decimate an entire bowl of cheese dip and a large batch of brownies. I think all the kids thought we had all gone just a little bit insane, what with the laughing and the teasing and the noise, but that made it just that much more fun. We all left vowing to do this again, especially the parts with the laughing and the cheese dip. And now I am home, finally, and even though I had a very good day, I am hoping that I do not have to do any more driving, or partying, any time soon.

The good news is that the decongestant-induced mania has been subsiding in the past two days. The bad news is that I think this thing has settled, yet again, into a sinus infection. The few hours that surround the end of one dose and the time it takes for the next 24-hour pill to kick in, breathing gets harder and harder to do. At least the decongestants let me breathe, mostly, for the rest of the day. And maybe if I just keep up with them long enough the sinus infection will go away all by itself this time. In the meantime, at least I am in good company. My boss and I are having a fine time snuffling and coughing, back in our little part of the office, where we have been busy, busy, busy these past few days researching and writing a quick report. I was actually kind of excited about this report, so much so that when it was done, and formatted with pretty colors, I forwarded it to Richard just so he could see what I’d been doing. He was, unfortunately, decidedly unimpressed. I can’t understand why. After all, isn’t everyone fascinated with how the sharp rise in the price of steel is impacting the construction industry? Yes? No? Oh, fine then.

Last week someone on TUS posted a really terrific 50% off deal at Belkin for electronic equipment, so naturally I had to go poking around, and immediately found a few things we’d been thinking of buying. The highest priority item was to get a Universal Power Source for the file server, and considering how expensive they can be, getting one for 50% off was worth it. Unfortunately, once it arrived we discovered that contrary to the information posted about that particular UPS on their website, it really isn’t compatible with Linux, and considering Richard’s goal in life seems to be to convert every computer in the house to a Linux based operating system, that meant that today we sadly packed it back up and prepared to ship it back and get a refund.

The second gadget, luckily, has been far more successful. I found a nifty little device that Richard can hook up to his mp3 player, which then broadcasts to any nearby radio. Viola. Instant car access for his mp3 player. We tested it out driving to and from dinner and choir practice tonight, and it works quite well. And heck, even without the 50% discount it was still one heck of a lot cheaper than installing a new stereo system.

Monday morning I woke up completely in the thrall of the winter crud. Ugh. I called in sick, then crawled back into bed and spent most of the day curled up under the blankets, occasionally honking up more snot than any nose should ever be physically able to produce. Apparently this thing is making the rounds and knocking people out everywhere – three of Richard’s coworkers were out with it on Monday and Sunday afternoon two of our bible study group members were also complaining of the same sore throat and head stuffiness I was coming down with. So at least I was not alone in my being sick. Small comfort, that.

By the time Richard got home I had slightly more energy, enough to make it to the airport and meet my mom’s plane from Chicago, where she got to do the nifty go-through-customs dance on her way back from Germany, and I kept her company (albeit sniffly company) on her drive home so she wouldn’t fall asleep on the road after being up for 24 hours. And then I crawled back into bed and crashed again because oh yes, being sick with the winter crud is just oodles of fun.

Yesterday I felt marginally enough better that I decided to go into work, if only because I knew there was a brand new writing assignment waiting for me that I wanted to get started on, as well as a lengthy teleconference that I really wanted to attend. I tried to make it the whole day, but eventually just gave up and went home around 2, which I am sure pleased my coworkers to no end, since this meant they no longer had to listen to me blowing my nose. And on the way home I finally broke down and stopped by the store to buy some more decongestants. I didn’t really want to take them because I remember what happened the last time, but yesterday afternoon I didn’t really have much choice, so I gave up. An hour after I took it, I could feel my nose finally clearing up, and my energy started to return, and I started to feel cautiously optimistic that perhaps this time I wouldn’t have that really cool side effect of –

Wham. Wrong. It hit me like a ton of bricks at about 8pm, and after that it was a lost cause. I was up until midnight, wired and completely wide-awake. Even when I finally managed to get to sleep, every time I rolled over I was immediately wide-awake again. The alarm buzzed this morning and I did my usual smacking of the snooze button, but it was only a futile gesture. My brain was ready for action. It was time to Wake Up and Get Moving, because to my screwed up metabolism, decongestants are the next best thing to either popping speed or sucking down about ten pots of extra strong coffee in rapid succession, but without that heart-racing thing that caffeine gives me if I’ve had too much. Also, and perhaps more important than the whole pinging-off-the-walls effect, I can breathe without making lovely music through my nose. Is this stuff great or what?

But hey, at least I have discovered a way to combat the early morning lethargy that’s been plaguing me lately. Just pop one of these little suckers and for the next 24 hours I am wide awake and ready to go, go, go. There is also that little unpleasant dry mouth effect (because after all, the whole point of the decongestant is to dry out everything. And I do mean everything), but hey! I am SOOOOO wide-awake!

On the down side, I did not bring another pill with me to work today, which means that the last one started to wear off before the end of the day and I spent a miserable remaining hour or so at work getting progressively more and more stuffed up before I could go home and take another one and start the cycle of ping-ping-ping all over again.

Let me tell you what I did not do yesterday.

Yesterday I went to church. I taught my class on the gospel according to Harry Potter, and I sang in choir, and I got a chance to talk to some friends, and I ended the day feeling pretty bleh as another round of the winter crud took a hold of my throat and nose.

But yesterday I did not watch the Super Bowl. This is because I could really not care less about pretty much every major sport out there, and most certainly I could not care less about football. The only thing remotely useful about Super Bowl Sunday, for me, was when I had my paper route back in Junior High, back in the days when we still would collect the money door to door each month. Super Bowl Sunday was great because everyone was so desperate to get back to the television to watch grown men scrabble around in the grass for a lopsided ball amid much grunting and yelling and testosterone-infused stupidity that people were willing to toss large bills at me and exclaim “keep the change” as they slammed the door in my face.

But I am digressing. So let me repeat myself. I did not watch the Super Bowl yesterday. So I was perhaps one of the few people in this country who did not see Janet Jackson’s bared breast during the split milliseconds in which it actually happened, real time.

Not, mind you, that I have been lacking in opportunity since the great Nipple Escape occurred. The uproar that has ensued has been nothing short of laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that people seem to be taking it so seriously. An outrage, it is called, a moral outrage that such a thing would be shown on prime time television. And in case any of us missed the initial titillating shot, there have been all manner of news spots happily willing to show it to us, again, and again. See? See? If you weren’t outraged before, aren’t you outraged now?

Well, as a matter of fact, I am. But my outrage has absolutely nothing to do with Janet Jackson’s star-studded (literally) bosoms. So she bared her boobies on prime time. So. What. Big. Deal. Who the hell cares? It’s not as if we don’t see things even more blatantly seductive in other programming. After all, one doesn’t have to look too hard to find other examples of nudity on prime time, although I suppose in Survivor’s case, they oh-so-carefully blurred out all the naughty bits so you have to use your imagination a little bit more in order to figure out that one of their contestants was prancing around in his birthday suit.

No, my outrage about this whole thing is in how it is being blown so completely out of proportion. A woman accidentally flashes a nipple on television and suddenly everyone is in a tizzy. Hell, the FCC is being called in to do an investigation. No mention at all of the streakier who ran across the field itself, baring a lot more than just one teeny nipple to however many people were present at the game. No mention of how those skimpy little outfits the cheerleaders for the Super Bowl contenders usually wear leave practically nothing to the imagination. All of those are just fine and dandy. But one little accidentally bared breast and you’d think the world was coming to an end.

Never mind that we’ve got a man in the White House whose administration is dragging this country down with his sorry, useless ass. Never mind that our soldiers are still dying daily fighting a war in Iraq based on intelligence that was being questioned even before it was used as ‘proof’ for a war that the Shrub wanted long before he ever made it into office in the first place. Never mind the continuing hemorrhaging of jobs to other countries and the continued erosion of personal liberties. Never mind anything that actually *matters*. No, the big news of the day is that Janet Jackson flashed America.

Sometimes it’s not so comforting to be reminded that just when you thought the media couldn’t get any worse, they prove you wrong yet again.

Every year for I’m not sure how many years now, Richard’s mom helps put on a play at an elementary school in her area. She’s actually the director (and Richard’s youngest sister has been doing a majority of the choreography for the past few years), so it’s the sort of thing that becomes all consuming for their family at this time each year.

Richard’s aunt came out for the play, since this is a yearly event and Richard’s mom has been involved in it for quite some time. So since she was out for a visit, and since the rest of us females in the family were all available the same weekend, and since the Almost-Twin’s maid-of-honor-to-be was also available it suddenly because prime time to do a little estrogen-soaked female bonding. And what better way to do that than for all of us ladies to ditch our guys and go out for tea.

Most of the group had been there before (almost exactly one year ago today, and for precisely the same reason, in fact – well, except for the whole bridal part), so we knew what to expect, but it was a surprise for at least a few of the group, and there were enough new things to find and admire amid the clutter of beautiful decorations and things for sale that we all spent a bit of time oohing and aahing as we were led to our table. And then it was time to select our tea and our lunches from the lovely menu that is full of too many delicious sounding choices, and then nothing else to do but sit back and nibble ginger cookies with lemon curd and wait to be served.

I tend not to like strong tea, so the flavor I (and several others at the table) chose was perfect – an Apple and Caramel blend that was very delicate and not at all overpowering like some teas can be. We chatted our way through many pots of tea and plates of tiny little tea sandwiches made of impossibly thin slivers of cucumber or tomato or roast beef or some other delicious concoction. There were scones and tiny little quiches that provided only one creamy bite each, and compact potpies full of cheese and broccoli or turkey and vegetables, and everything was so very good. And then once the plates were cleared away they brought us goblets of water and plates of dessert – tiramisu and little selections of petit fours and perhaps best of all, slices of dense caramel covered apple tart.

We talked incessantly. We laughed and teased each other, especially the youngest in the group, Richard’s niece. We would occasionally, and as discreetly as possible, watch the tea party for two that was unfolding on the other side of our room, where two little girls dressed in their most grown-up dresses and clutching purses importantly to their laps, drank tea from delicate china cups and ate their sandwiches and simply shone with the heady honor of being considered grown up enough to do this all on their own. Oh, there was the occasional lapse in ladylike behavior when one of them would curl her legs underneath her in her chair, or when they would lean across the table to share some girlish confidence and break into giggles. But they were, above everything, mostly little ladies, and if their mother popped her head into the room from time to time just to check on them, they never seemed to notice it. We put their ages at perhaps 8 or 10 – just the right age for little girls to have tea parties that do not involve fake tea and flower sandwiches, but that still just might require one’s fanciest hat anyway, just in case.

Stuffed from the hours-long lunch, my younger sister-in-law and I elected to walk the few miles home while the rest of them drove. It was the perfect sunny day for such a walk and it was easy to pretend that this sort of weather might be waiting for me back home, even though it has been gray and dreary and wet far more often than not of late in the Sacramento valley.

Later in the evening, after a chance to curl up on the sofa and work on my knitting while chatting with Richard’s aunt, we set off for the elementary school where the play was held. We wandered around outside for a bit and watched a horde of blue t-shirted small people darting around setting up tables for intermission refreshments, or clutching handfuls of programs to hand out at the door, and then we found our seats and got to practice our very best posture in order to somehow see around the tall people who inevitably are always seated in front of us, and then we watched the play.

This year they did Scheherazade, which is a rather sanitized version of 1001 Arabian Nights, wherein a young woman ends up marrying a king who is in the middle of a snit where he marries women and then kills them every single night. She escapes only by telling him stories, but leaving each story’s ending til the next night so he is forced to allow her to live. In the original tale, it takes her 3 solid years of telling stories before the king finally decides that he’s no longer going to threaten her with death every night of their married life. In the play it only took three nights, during which the king was somehow magically transformed into a woman and Scheherezade proves once and for all who really has the power in the relationship (it wouldn’t be the king) and during which a lot of small children did a lot of singing and dancing, mostly together and mostly in tune, and when the play was over we cheered and applauded because for little kids, they did a pretty good job. And besides, any ten-year old boy who is brave enough to dress up as a girl and be romanced on stage in front of his peers deserves as much cheering and applause as he can get.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling more alert and awake than I have in a while. Richard, however, was coughing and wheezing and has a sore throat. So I think the overwhelming lack of energy we’ve been suffering the last week or two wasn’t an effect of the weather; I think we’ve both been fighting off another bout of the winter crud. Except this time I seem to have avoided it, but Richard, unfortunately, has not.

He stayed home yesterday and today while I went to work and played with databases. I was very happy yesterday to have managed to get a particularly difficult piece of coding to work, but then realized that there is really no one else in the office that would have a clue what I was talking about if I bragged about it. So instead I just poked at the code some more and eyed my schedule and tried to figure out when it would be convenient enough for me to try the bus/bike thing to and from work again because, due to the sheer laziness of this past weekend (dancing and haggis do not, unfortunately, count toward bike miles), I am still sitting at 26 miles total for the year, and with the month almost over, I’m starting to feel a little nervous about how far I have already fallen behind.

This evening my friend came over to work on the tree. I sat and chatted with her after feeling a little guilty about how many leaves I have *not* managed to get painted on the darn thing, but she didn’t seem to care that I’ve been such a big slacker, and so she created leaves on the wall while I corralled the cats and kept them from stepping in paint. And then we took a break and ate ice cream because, it being Girl Scout cookie season, Dryers has their themed flavors out and as a former Girl Scout it is my solemn duty to support them in whatever way I can.

And speaking of trees and leaves and Girl Scouts and other things that are green, I finally have pictures of the back yard. Or rather, Richard took these pictures back in December but we have been big slackers and didn’t actually get around to doing anything with them until now. So here you go. From left to right, the new and improved back yard. It doesn’t look very exciting yet (well, except for the fact that there is bark where there once were oh-so-lovely weeds), and the trees all look so forlorn and vulnerable, all bare and grey since it is still winter. But we have been assured that come spring things will start to explode. There will be flowers and color, and even, quite possibly, leaves (real ones, not painted ones, no less). Needless to say, I’m looking forward to this very much.

We got up this morning and I hastily scribbled out my notes for the Harry Potter class (sin and temptation were the topics today), and then we headed off to church, still sleepy and yawning from getting back so late last night from our evening of dancing and haggis. It made for some interesting choir practice, trying not to yawn in all the important bits of the song, but enough strong coffee will get me through almost anything so somehow I managed to hold it all together.

It is Girl Scout cookie season, so after the service I was very happy to see one of the church youth dressed in her green vest, clutching a cookie order sheet in her hand and eying the people in the social hall nervously. Luckily for her all she had to do was just *be* there because most of us are so desperate to find a source for cookies that our eyes are trained to immediately pounce the instant we catch sight of anything resembling a cookie order sheet. There are a few new flavors but Richard and I have to stick with our favorites – Thin Mints and the chocolate covered cookies with the peanut butter filling. There are now four boxes of each coming to us, and we will put them in the freezer and then dole them out in ones and twos and play the yearly game of ‘how long can we make them last?’

The rest of the day has been nice and quiet. I crashed for a few hours after lunch in a futile attempt to recover from the lack of sleep last night (dancing and haggis, remember?), and then we went online and finally hashed out all the details for our trip to Ashland that we are going to take in May. I made hotel reservations after dithering over whether we should do the Bed & Breakfast thing, or pay less than half as much for a cookie cutter hotel room a little further away since we probably won’t be spending enough time in the room to care one way or another. And then we scribbled out the schedule of plays and figured out which ones we want to see and what times work best, and bookmarked links for other things to do in the area. I am trying very hard to not end up planning this thing out to the last minute because I know we would both prefer to have time to just relax and wander and not have to stress, but I also knew we would have to reserve our seats for the four plays we want to see sooner rather than later. So now we are set. There will be plays and there will be a trip to see stalactites and stalagmites and there will possibly be a trip to the Harry and David farm and I am really looking forward to this because it has been an awfully long time since I have gone on a vacation that wasn’t a rushed weekend-only affair.

After putting large sums of money on credit cards in preparation for a trip that won’t even happen for another four months (sigh), we decided it was about time we tried out the newest restaurant in town. We’ve tried before, but for whatever reason we’ve always managed to go when they are closed. I was half expecting it to be closed tonight as well, but to my surprise, the Open light was still on. So we went in and had tempura and teriyaki and sushi and are now fervently hoping that this new place sticks around, because it would be awfully nice to not have to drive to the next town over to get decent sushi for a change.

In continuation of the serious lack of energy from the rest of the week, this morning I went back to bed after feeding the starving hordes/cats and didn’t drag myself out of bed again until after 10. After that there was really no point in trying to get much of anything productive done. So instead we went out for breakfast (which was actually lunch by that point) and then we came home and sorted out all the cardboard for recycling. The intent had been to sort out all of the recycling, but we were running low on time and the cardboard had piled up so high after Christmas packages and such that it was threatening to take over the garage. So we stuffed Richard’s trunk full of flattened boxes and dropped them off at the recycling center in town and then went back home and poked sleepily at our computers until it was time to leave.

We left a bit early so we would have time to swing by Trader Joe’s in Concord on the way down, in order to stock up on some of our favorites. The day they build a Trader Joe’s closer to us is the day I do a small but cheerful dance of celebration. And then we continued on our journey to Richard’s parents’ house, where we sat around and chatted and then piled back into the car and drove to Mountain View for the South Bay Scottish Society’s Burns Supper.

I have heard about these things, but never actually attended one. After all, haggis is always involved and while I’ve eaten haggis before it’s not one of those foods I feel the need to consume on a more regular basis. But Richard’s father has really gotten into his Scottish roots (so naturally he attended in formal kilt), and it sounded like it would be fun, so what the heck.

It *was* fun. It was also very, very long, but that is because there was so much going on. The evening started, of course, with the traditional reading of Robert Burns’ Address to a Haggis. Considering that most of the room was also in formal kilts and other such attire, it was no wonder that they were all nodding along and chuckling in all the right places. Richard and I, however, being completely clueless when it comes to these sorts of things, were only picking out one word in every twenty or so and it was only after the recitation was done that I found out the reason I’d had such a hard time understanding it was because it was read in the original old English.

After the ode to the haggis was read (complete with processional and bagpipe) we ate dinner, which comprised of various mashed root vegetables, birdie (which is ground beef and onions and stuff inside a pastry shell), and of course haggis. Yes, by the way, I *did* eat haggis. It tastes mainly like an oddly spiced sausage, and it helps if you just don’t think about either what’s in it, or what it looks like when it’s still in its rather embryonic looking outer coating. And then once we had all stuffed ourselves on meat and starch and were eying the beautifully decorated shortbread cookies blearily, it was time for dancing.

Scottish country dancing – or at least the stuff we did this evening – looks deceptively simple. They would come out and demonstrate the steps and we would sit there, watching, thinking “hey, that doesn’t look too hard at all”, and then we would all crowd out onto the dance floor and the music would start and suddenly there was an entire room of people frantically looking at their feet or each other, hoping to find *someone* who knew what they were doing and which direction we were all supposed to be going at any one time. It was grand fun, all whirling around and trying to remember if we were supposed to do two steps or three steps left or where we supposed to be going backwards right about then, and Richard and I usually only got the hang of the whole thing about the time the music was ending, and since we weren’t the only ones who were clueless there was much slamming into people and accidentally stepping on toes and laughing and “excuse me” and “Oh, very sorry” and since we were all doing it with equal abandon to each other no one was really offended and it was so very much fun! It was also an aerobic workout because there is all the whirling and the stepping and the waltzing and by the end of the evening there were tables all around the room of people looking a bit dazed and flushed and out of breath, and then out they would come again with another round and what could we do but gulp some water and drag ourselves out of our chairs and give it one more try?