Not very hermitty

Wednesday, 22 October 2003

Another ten days have slid by like eels. Where do they go?

Here's how like a hermit I've been of late:

The weekend before last was your classic Social Whirl, as I mentioned in my last entry. Song of the Sea's birthday party was on Saturday, which occasioned much donning of glad rags and shaking of funky stuff on the dance floor. It was lovely - I caught up with loads of people I hadn't seen in ages (not least Song of the Sea herself, albeit briefly) - but Paradise and I bailed fairly early, being the fuddy-duddy smug-marrieds that we are.

Then Sunday was Melusina's birthday, so after choir, and lunch with her parents, and an extra rehearsal, and a late afternoon spent largely asleep, and a hasty dinner, it was off out with us to another pub to meet Mel's large posse of friends and admirers. And again, Paradise and I bailed early. I do not have the stamina I once had.

I also have a full-time job, of course, which makes a difference - particularly because I spent last week hurtling towards the Deadline of Doom. I did have two evenings at home at the start of the week, but on Wednesday I went to chamber choir, and later had a birthday phone date with Autumnsong; on Thursday we had our Babylon 5 evening at Castle Badger; on Friday Melusina and I attended a concert in honour of the centenary of the birth of E.T.S. Walton (to date Ireland's only Nobel Prize winner in physics), in which her parents were performing, and then I met Paradise and we went to yet another birthday celebration (so many Librans, so little time!). Meanwhile at work, though I say it myself, I played an absolute blinder and lined up all my ducks ready for dispatch on Monday.

[Pause for breath.]

Then on Saturday I got up early (ungghhh) because the union was having a special Council meeting to consider a particular set of documents that have to be finalised so that we can all get our ickle pay rises in January. And after the free lunch, at which my father and I (yes, we're in the same union and we're both on the Council - do try to keep up!) chatted with a beekeeping Gaeilgeoir chemist about university administration and technological innovations in medicine, I picked up Paradise and we proceeded to Castle Badger for our monthly gaming session. And that was wonderfully absorbing, and served nicely to take my mind off the stresses of work.

Sunday started with choir, as usual, which was followed by a very pleasant lunch with Melusina and Burning Flower, and then a little light shopping before heading home to give Paradise the car so he could pick something up from his office, and then as soon as he returned, out with me again to hunt for potting compost and root trainers - only Hackett's on Liffey Street was closed so I ended up out in bloody Homebase, trailing around the forlorn pre-Christmas displays and failing to find what I needed - and then it was time to go out to my parents' for dinner, pausing only to collect my grandmother. Dinner was pleasant, as always, but yet more pleasant were the welcoming arms of my bed.

On Monday I met my deadline (hooray!), and waded into the next two major jobs, which I'm trying to get out the door by the end of this week. After a quick dinner, I went to a talk about nineteenth-century Italian women writers (long story), before heading out to our Babylon 5 evening (really, at this stage we may as well just pitch a tent in Castle Badger's garden, we're there so often). By the time Paradise drove us home at the end of the evening I was fit for nothing.

Yesterday was my last free evening at home until November, so I had meant to spend it churning my way through all manner of things (including this entry, indeed), but I stayed late at work to finish one of those two jobs (hooray!), and by the time I came home my head was thudding so hard I could barely see straight. So instead of doing anything remotely useful, I curled up on the sofa and finished reading The Princess Diaries, while Paradise tapped away on his laptop beside me. And it was good. But all the things I'd meant to do remained undone.

And then this evening was chamber choir again, and tomorrow we're having dinner with some friends we haven't seen properly in ages, and on Friday the Blue Voyager is coming around to be a guinea-pig for a luscious-looking recipe I want to try out, and then we have to pack because on Saturday morning at the crack of bastard we're flying to Geneva to visit Suzanne, back on Tuesday, and my chamber choir is performing some incidental music in a play next week, so I'll be out in Bray on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which latter evening is also when the Castle Badger Samhain party is on (I must find some time to concoct a costume)...

Hardly hermitty at all, in other words. But it all has to come to a stop on Saturday 1 November, because that's when NaNoWriMo begins. Wish me luck!

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