Update from Galway

It is very very cold here. It went from frosty to really snowy back to frosty and icy. Now it has thawed a little and is wet and sludgy. It gets dark really early too, so every day it seems like it should be time to go home at about 4, or even earlier, but there is still many hours left of work to be doing. It is going to be a very long winter, I have an awful lot of work to do. I have perhaps been slacking off a little over the past few weeks, but still, even if I hadn't I would still be in this situation. The situation being that I have until the end of February to finish all the things I am currently working on, so I will have to be working about 60 hours a week until then. Very sad.

It is still snowing in Dublin though, and over the UK. The mail is held up and travel is held up and people are having accidents. Yesterday and the day before a rescue helicoptor was flying back and forth over the river. As a joke I bet a friend that they were looking for a body. His bet was that it was something to do with the secret police and the new world order. But word has it that it really was looking for a body, that somebody somewhere left a suicide note and then jumped into the river. It's a really fast river too, and the water is really high over winter. It always freaks me out a bit that there is such a strong river in the middle of a city, in many places without fences or barriers. They broke up the big sheets of ice so that they could look properly.


But luckily this morning I arrived at work and my parcel from home has arrived! So my mood has improved by several orders of magnitude. There was nobody around my own office so early so I went in search of a friend to come help me open things. Because everything was wrapped up separate in christmas paper.

Now I have lots of NZ sweets to share, and I have everything I need to make real lolly cake, and our classic kiwi dip. I have lots of random kiwiana stuff, and I have a kiwi shaped cookie cutter!! That is probably the coolest thing. Plus the box had about a million stamps on it.

So a dash of Christmas has come early for me, and now there is only two weeks in which to get an insane amount of work done, then I will relax for at least one week! And maybe go somewhere for New Years but maybe there is no point making plans because that snow is like sentient malevolence going out of its way to stop all modes of transport and be a bit of a kill joy. Still, at least we can make snow men.