Drowning in a sea of red ink!

Today, right now, I'm correcting the first draft of my paper. After the mammoth typing session on monday I didn't look at it again until thursday, and was immediately depressed by how awful the opening sections are. Ach!

My spare half hours since then have been spent going through it with red ink, gutting and rewriting entire paragraphs and generally making satisfying improvements. Now all I have to do is type the corrections. At great length. On friday evening. Ach ach!

In fact, this week has depressed me. I don't know where it's gone. Things (including yesterday's already-sour mood) haven't been improved by a colleague repeatedly informing me of deadlines half an hour before they expire. I do know where some of this week went: down the drain in the form of a calculation I'm nowhere-near capable of making yet, but which I still spent a day and a half attempting. Ach ach ach!.

Dear reader, it hasn't all been doom and gloom! Sparkling, gemlike highlights have included two genuinely interesting topology seminars (really), the gift of a lovely (and now necessary) hat, and the alpha highlight: Disco and Neyir's gala screening last night of Canadian Bacon and Stewie's Big Adventure.

That's right. The Urminskies have a projector. It turns their living room wall into a cinema. It dominates. The films were extraordinary, and all the more so since the first was written and directed back in the day by Michael Moore. Plus it was about Canada. Well, attacking Canada. Plus plus, it contained the ageless line "in a decent, godfearing country I'd be allowed to beat you both to death!".