Madsadgirl Is Two Today

Madsadgirl, my alter ego, is two years old today.

When I decided to start this blog one of the first things that I thought about was whether I wanted to be anonymous or to write under my real name. It didn't take me long to realise that I would probably be more honest in what I wrote if I was not easily recognizable. Yes, I would probably tell some people that I wrote a blog, but it would be my choice as to whether I told them the name of the blog, which was also the name that I adopted for myself.

I had been writing the blog for about three weeks when I told my GP that I had a blog. A few weeks later, while having lunch with Mr Smiley, I told him about the blog and he became a regular reader, and occasional commenter although always anonymously but I knew which were his comments nonetheless.

I thought that the blog might become a sort of therapy for me in my battle against depression. I was right. Originally meant as somewhere to write about how I was or wasn't coping with depression, it immediately became something more than that. I started writing about other things that were important to me and then about knitting, one of the things that has kept me going over the last few years.

I have tried to write every day, but sometimes the muse just wasn't there, and then there were the times that I was in hospital and therefore without my computer so the posts dried up. One of the things that I wanted to make sure I didn't do was write each day saying how awful I was feeling, so this led to posts about the strange, and sometimes funny, things that I saw around me. Writing about my experience of psychotherapy was another thing that found its way onto the blog, and was responsible for me being invited to give occasional lectures at one of our universities on the patient's perspective of therapy.

One of the biggest bonuses that I have derived from writing this blog is the array of virtual friends that I have made within the blogosphere. And some of them are not so virtual because I have actually met them and correspond with them outside of our blogs. And the support from other bloggers when things have not been going too well has meant a great deal to me too.

So, my third year of blogging is about to begin. Thank you for reading, and commenting. You have no idea how much it means to me.

That Eureka Moment

I think I know how Archimedes felt when sitting in his bath he realised that a body immersed in water displaces its own volume of water from the container in which it is placed.

For me, my 'Eureka Moment' came this afternoon when I realised that the latest version of my sock design was actually producing the effect that I wanted. After a number of false starts, I had finally got the stitch pattern right so that I was able to produce something that resembled a club such as those found on a playing card.

I know that I still have more designs to create, but the club symbol was always going to be the most difficult to produce for my planned series of patterns. This means that I can now press ahead as fast as my fingers, and mood, will allow me. I shall make one sock of each pattern as quickly as possible and write up the patterns complete with their charts so I have them all ready to submit. I'm going to ask if it is necessary to submit a pair of each design so as to allow me as much time as possible for the lace scarf design.

Despondency had started to take over last night when I realised that the design that I had hoped would look okay, in fact did not and needed to be redrafted. Mr Smiley often used to tell me that I should persevere when I found things difficult to do because of depression. And that is what I have done over the last few days; I have persevered and kept working at it until I had achieved what I wanted.

The sock will take a couple more days to complete, but knowing that the most difficult design has been nailed means that I can knit with renewed vigour. After this design the others will seem pretty simple and take only a few minutes to draft onto the graph paper. And they will actually be easier to knit too.

I didn't shout 'Eureka', but I did think it. Oh yes, Archimedes, I have an idea of how you must have felt at that moment.

Lifelines

I'm sure that many of us have lifelines; things that help us to remember names, things that help us to remember important places or occasions, and for those suffering with mental illness things that are our coping strategies when things get really bad.

I have a number of lifelines that help me when I am feeling very depressed and I write about them often on this blog, another of my lifelines. Writing was an important part of my daily life when I was working, and when I was studying for my degree. As both work and studying stopped at about the same time (although I have continued to do the odd bit of studying in the intervening period) the loss of writing as everyday occupation impacted on me quite severely.

I don't know why I feel the need to write, nor am I always pleased with what I have written, but writing does help me to remain sane. When I started this blog, I had no clear idea where it would take me, nor what I hoped to achieve with it. I wasn't even sure that it was something that I would keep up. The loss of the ability to maintain an interest in things can be one of the first signs of depression and this might well mean that I would, like many other bloggers, fall by the wayside.

But I haven't fallen by the wayside. Yes, there have been periods when I found it very difficult to find the energy, or enthusiasm to write. Two periods being hospitalized meant that blogging stopped for a while. However, I have always returned and perhaps I am stronger for it.

This blog has always been a cornucopia of subjects. Originally envisaged as a forum for writing about how I dealt with depression, it has become much more than that. The need to write has meant that I would often write about the things that I have seen or heard, that I would describe some of my coping strategies so that others may also embrace them. I have written about the good times (not that there have been many) and the bad, about knitting, about psychotherapy, about strange things that I have seen, about places that I have visited and the blogging friends that I have met.

My blog was about a month old before I told anyone about it. It was about two months old when I mentioned it to Mr Smiley, who became a regular reader and commenter from that moment on and a great source of encouragement when I was finding it difficult to write for the blog. You won't find Mr Smiley's name on any of his comments; they were always made anonymously but because I knew his writing style I knew exactly which were his comments.

It is now more than six months since Mr Smiley's last comment on this blog. He was too ill to read it once he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, so he didn't know how well received the posts under the title Tackling the Mental Health Minefield had been, which is a shame because it was he who encouraged me to write about my experiences so that others might learn or derive support from them.

I guess that it would be true to say that Mr Smiley was another of my lifelines. I did wonder whether I would be able to continue without his support and encouragement. The fact that I am still blogging shows that I could, but it does grieve me that he is not here to read about my meetings with blogging friends, about the knitting group that I have joined (about which he would have been really pleased) and my new adventures in designing knitting patterns.

Lifelines are important to us and we should never underestimate the impact that they have on our lives or on what they allow us to achieve. I will continue to use my lifelines to help me keep my head above water and to make the most of every day that I have.

Plummeting Down

I'm having problems at the moment. I'm still not sleeping properly at night and I'm not even able to catch a few minutes sleep during the day. All of this means that instead of slowly sinking into depression I seem to now be plummeting at speed.

It's at times like this that I really miss being able to talk to Mr Smiley and benefit from his words of wisdom. He would tell me that I have been in this position before and I have got through it. He would tell me to focus on what I can manage rather than try to do things that I can't and that will only make me feel worse. He would tell me that I was strong and that I will come out the depression even stronger. He would tell me that and much more.

The problem is that although I know exactly what he would say to me, how he would encourage me, it doesn't make it any easier. It can be so much more difficult for you to convince yourself, even when you use the same words, as when someone that you trust says the words to you.

I know that these feelings will pass. I know that things will get better. But knowing doesn't make it any easier to cope with depression.

Blog Posts

At the beginning of the year I promised myself that I would try to write something on this blog everyday. Okay, so I knew that there would be days when it might prove difficult, but equally there would be days when I would suffer from verbal diarrhoea and would write more than one post. When I suffered from a sort of writer's block last year, Mr Smiley told me not to worry about it because I would soon write something meaningful because that was the way that I am; I don't waste words when I have nothing to say.

In January of this year, I managed to write more posts than there were days in the month. February saw me sinking into deep depression and being admitted to hospital again, so it stood to reason that posts may be a bit sparser. But I managed 22 posts for a 28-day month so not too shabby a total. March is now approaching its end and this is post number 31, so even if I don't manage to write anything further today, or tomorrow, I will have managed to average one post a day for the month of March.

I have never written this blog as a way to win friends and to influence people, but I have probably managed to do both during its existence. I have certainly made friends through blogging and some of them are not just 'virtual' friends never to be seen, but real-life, living people who I have met and with whom I conduct a friendship outside of this blog. The influencing people is perhaps a little more difficult to quantify, but if anything that I have written about living with depression has made a difference to someone, then perhaps I can claim that it has had the power to influence.

I know that I don't have the huge readership of many blogs but I do have a band of loyal readers and I worry if certain readers seem to be absent for a while. Before I went into hospital last year, the highest number of visitors on a single day had been 47. I thought that this was fantastic number until Mental Nurse found my posts about Tackling the Mental Health Minefield and highlighted them in TWIM. The number of visitors increased overnight and it meant a great deal to me that others should find something useful or interesting in what I wrote.

Over the last few days there has been a slight decrease in visitors but this is probably because I haven't been posting rather than any other factor. I'm not sure why I haven't been able to write anything, but I have tried a couple of times and nothing seemed to flow from my fingers. Perhaps Mr Smiley was right when he told me not to worry about not being able to write every day because the words would come when I had a message to pass on. I think that Mr Smiley would be really proud of me at this moment because that is what I have done; I haven't worried.

Ready For My Lecture

Tomorrow is a big day for me. It means an early start because I have to travel to the other side of London, and encounter all that the rush hour brings with it. One of the nightmares of living and working in London is travelling in the rush hour and it is something that I always said I would avoid if at all possible. But tomorrow I must face it because I am off to one of our universities to give my lecture entitled "A Patient's Perspective On Psychotherapy".

Over the last couple of weeks, I have updated my lecture notes, so that I now include the termination of my psychotherapy last May, and the psychotherapy that I am undergoing at the present time. This morning I have printed my lecture notes and they are now sitting in a folder ready for me to take with me in the morning.

It's not an easy lecture to present because it is so personal, but it is important that these postgraduate students, who are all going to be working in a mental health setting, understand what it is like for the patient to undergo psychotherapy. The lecture is mainly based on emails between myself and Mr Smiley and posts on this blog, although it does include details of therapy that I underwent long before this blog came into existence.

It is going to be very difficult for me to talk about Mr Smiley so soon after his death. I'm not sure that I won't want to shed a few tears. When I gave the lecture to last year's students, Mr Smiley rang me as I was walking from the Underground station to the university. Whenever, I was about to do something that was difficult or anxiety-producing, Mr Smiley was call me or send me a text message offering encouragement. He would always tell me that I should imagine that he was there beside me and that if necessary I should imagine myself squeezing his hand for support.

I know that I won't receive a phone call from Mr Smiley tomorrow, but I hope that he will be watching over me. And if I need to, I will give a virtual squeeze of Mr Smiley's hand and hope that he squeezes my hand in return.

In Memorium - Mr Smiley

Mr Smiley lost his battle with cancer. Mrs Smiley has asked that this prayer be made in memory of her husband and my dear, dear friend, and for all others who are suffering from or have lost their lives through cancer.

Dear God, I pray for the cure of cancer. Amen.

Another Milestone

A couple of minutes after midday the 20,000th visitor to my blog arrived. According to FEEDJIT they live in Ilford, Redbridge, their computer runs Windows Vista and they use Firefox as their browser. They are also a regular reader as they came direct to the blog rather than from another blog. It's not a lot of information but it will perhaps allow the person who was that visitor to recognize themselves.

When I started this blog in June 2008 I wasn't sure whether it would be something that lasted for a long time or would merely be one of those things that was started and then became too much of a chore and fell by the wayside. It seems as though I may be here for the long haul though because even when I was in hospital I was concerned about not being able to write to let regular readers know why I wasn't able to post. And what was heart-warming to me was that several regular readers were concerned enough about me to have sent me emails asking if I was okay.

When we start writing a blog we all wonder whether anyone will bother reading it. Will it be interesting enough to attract comments? Will we be able to find things to write about? How much of ourselves should we reveal? Many of us blog anonymously. It is a way of writing about things that affect us or that interest us or that we feel strongly about. We can say things on our blogs that we might never express in person.

I started this blog with the intention of using it to record how depression affected me and how I dealt with depression. Much of it is still about depression, it can't help but be so because that is what shapes me at the moment. Here I can write about how I am feeling rather than bottling it up inside me. It helps; it helps a lot. But the blog has become much more than that. I have included my trips out to various museums and galleries in London. I have blogged about going to the theatre, about meeting other bloggers, and about my knitting.

Sometimes it has been very difficult to write about things that were happening to me. Mr Smiley has been making regular appearances in my blog almost from the start. He is a very dear friend who has seen me at my worst and my best. He has known me as a shy 18-year old who was shy and very unsure of herself and he has seen me as a confident woman who had found her true vocation in life. He helped me through the early days of my widowhood by listening to me when I needed someone who I could talk to. He has visited me in hospital after major surgery; he has even carried my handbag in public to bring it to me in hospital after I was taken from work by ambulance one Friday morning (and many husbands wouldn't do that). And most of all he encouraged me when I told him about the blog and became a frequent commenter. He told me that he thought that it had made a difference to me and at times when I found it difficult to write he was the one who said that I should just write about whatever I thought of at the time. It was Mr Smiley who, when I mooted the idea of writing about my incarceration in a mental hospital, said that I should do it because he was sure it would help other people. So the series of posts Tackling the Mental Health Minefield was begun and it resulted in me winning an award from Mental Nurse. One of the most difficult posts that I have ever written was the one that I wrote on hearing the news about Mr Smiley having terminal cancer.

One of the things that this blog has taught me is that I love to write. Maybe that was why I was so good at my job. That involved a great deal of writing and my reports were always well received. Mr Smiley has suggested on more than one occasion that I should write a book. More recently my GP has also suggested this as something that I should do. The short course that I have just done with the OU has shown me that I am not a writer of fiction. My tutor thought that a couple of my short stories were very good, but he did not realise that they were actually based on things that had happened to me. So, if I am going to write something it will either have to be factual, something that I can research and then write about, or I am going to have to write about me, but as that sounds a bit pretentious, perhaps it will have to be about depression and me.

After nearly 500 posts the blog has received 20.000 visits. I am amazed and hugely gratified that something that has been a form of therapy for me has been interesting enough for people to visit and return again to see what I have to say. Yes, it is a big day for the blog and it is a day that has meant a lot to me too. Thank you visitors, you make it worthwhile my sitting here day by day trying to think up things that you may find interesting and that may provide you with food for thought.

I Can't Believe It

I've won an award. Okay, so it's only a virtual award, but it still means a great deal to me. I was joint winner of the Best Mood Disorder Blog in the Mental Nurse TWIM Awards.

The Tackling the Mental Health Minefield posts were responsible for me being nominated and while they have been difficult to write (and still are because there are several more to come) I felt that it was important that the mental health system needed to be described from a patient's point of view.

Mr Smiley encouraged me when I first started writing this blog, and when I told him that I was thinking of writing a series of posts about my experience of being in hospital, he thought that it was a great idea. He has always encouraged me to write about my experiences and much of my lecture on a patient's experience of psychotherapy is based on a series of emails that I wrote to him over the period of that therapy. I'm sure he will be very happy that his encouragement has resulted in this recognition.

Lecturing Again

I've had an email this morning asking if I would be willing to give my lecture 'A Patient's Perspective Of Psychotherapy' at one of the London universities again. I replied straight away and now all I have to do is agree a date with 'S'.

It's nearly a year since I gave it the first time and I remember the nerves and anxiety that I suffered beforehand. I know that I will suffer the same feelings again, but the lecture was well received last time, and I have no doubt that it will go down well again.

Over the next few days I must make some time to sit down with the script for the lecture and update it. I still had a few months of psychotherapy after giving the lecture in February, so I can add the feelings that I had when the psychotherapy came to an end, and talk a little about the therapy that I am undergoing at the moment.

The lecture is based on posts that I wrote at the time that I was receiving therapy and the emails about it that I wrote to Mr Smiley. Updating it shouldn't be much of a problem so a few hours should see it done. Having the confidence to do things like giving this lecture and the presentations about patients having online access to their medical records is very much down to Mr Smiley. It was he who constantly reminded me that they were things that were well within my capability and that I had been doing for years.

It is moments like this that make me realise how much I will miss Mr Smiley's gentle encouragement and his faith in my abilities.

The Most Devastating News

I have just received an email from the wife of my best friend. Mr Smiley and I have known each other for nearly 40 years. We met when I was a very shy and nervous 18-year old. I can even clearly remember his first words to me, "What do you want?" That remark has been a source of amusement to us both in the intervening years as our paths have met and diverged again.

Mr Smiley was in the Army and I was in the RAF in those days and it was because we both worked in a particular field that we met for the first time, and led to us meeting and working together at various periods since then. But since 1997 we worked together almost continuously until I was retired on medical grounds.

When my husband died, Mr Smiley was the person who helped get me through those first agonising months. He was the person that I turned to when I needed to talk and he was the person who made others at work realise how difficult it was for me to continue working in a place where my husband had worked too. By then I had left the RAF and become a civil servant, but Mr Smiley was still in the Army. A few years later he retired from the Army and became a civil servant too and we continued to work, and talk, together daily until I gave up work.

It was Mr Smiley who took the phone call from my Dad the day that Mum died and who took it upon himself to give the news. That is another day that I will never forget. He had given bad news like this before when a serving Army officer, but when we talked about it some time later, he told me that giving me the bad news was probably the most difficult thing that he had ever had to do.

Mr Smiley helped me through that bereavement as he had helped me after my husband died. He did it again when Dad died. It was shortly after this that I moved back to London and was medically retired. Since then we have kept in regular contact through emails, phone calls, and meeting up occasionally for lunch.

Mrs Smiley's email this morning told me that Mr Smiley has terminal cancer, and that he is seriously ill in hospital. I knew that Mr Smiley was not well, and that he would be going for some tests in the new year. But last weekend he was taken into hospital and they operated on Monday, but there was nothing that could be done. The doctors had hoped that he would be well enough to come home by today, but having just spoken to Mrs Smiley on the phone, it seems that he is not recovering from the operation as well as they had hoped, and now she is wondering if he will ever be well enough to come home.

Yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad dying. To have had this news today, coupled with how I am feeling anyway in this run up to Christmas, means that I am sitting here writing this post with tears freely flowing.

When I told Mr Smiley about having started this blog, he became a regular reader and commenter on it. He thought it was one of the best things that I could have done and that it would be a very cathartic exercise. He felt that the things that I wrote about depression and how I coped with it would benefit others, and he had been reading Tackling the Mental Health Minefield when I started writing these posts.

We last spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago, and his last email was written on Friday 11th December and finished with the words, "I hope you have a relaxing weekend and achieve what you want to achieve, How are you coping with being at home? Talk again on Monday." Of course, we didn't.

I just have to hope that we can write a few more emails to each other, but in the meantime I am going to have to try to pull myself together enough to be able to write a letter to Mr Smiley telling him how much I have valued his friendship and how much he has done for me over the years. It's not going to be easy.

A Night At The Opera

I'm back. I did tell you that I would write about my night out later. My earlier post was written while I ate my breakfast, but it soon became apparent that after a long and enjoyable day yesterday, four hours sleep wasn't enough so I went back to bed to get a few more hours with my head on the pillow. And now I am back.

While we were lunching yesterday I had talked with Mr Smiley about how much I had enjoyed going to see Les Miserables again after a break of many years. I said that I was considering going to see if I could get a discounted ticket for another of my favourite shows and Mr Smiley asked that he be permitted to pay for it.

The management of the West End theatres do not want empty seats in their theatres if they can help it; the consequence of this is that if you want to see a show that day, you will probably be able to get a discounted ticket. If there is more than one of you and you want to sit together, this will probably reduce your options of available seats. However, if you are looking for just one seat, then you will have far more to chose from and may even manage a greater discount because of the difficulty of selling single seats. The first of the ticket sellers that I visited was only offering me a £2 discount on the best ticket that they had on offer (five rows back and to the right of the stage in the Royal Circle) so I gave it a miss as I was sure that I could get a better deal somewhere. And in Leicester Square, I got it. A 25% saving on a ticket for the front row of the stalls, just a couple of seats off the centre of the stage. Definitely a bargain.

And the show was ...

... Phantom of the Opera.

I am sure that even if you have not been to see the show you will be aware that one of the highlights of the show is at the end of the first act when the chandelier comes crashing down from the ceiling of the theatre onto the stage. When the show was first staged, the centre seats of the first five or six rows of the stalls were removed from the theatre so that no-one was sitting directly under the path of the chandelier's 'fall'. Today, there is no such squeamishness, so the centre seats in the first few rows have been reinstated and as I was sitting in Seat 7 (of 20) the chandelier was just inches away from me when it came crashing down. It was exciting, but I knew it was coming; the young American couple sitting beside me in Seats 8 and 9 were not expecting it and therefore it was even more dramatic for them.

It was wonderful to be able to spend a few hours enthralled by the wonderful performances of cast and orchestra. To be so close to them that it was though they were performing just for you. And to be lost in the wonderful music; the thrilling organ music when the chandelier rises to the roof of the theatre during the auction scene at the start, the caterwauling of Carlotta, the gentle songs Christine and Raoul, the aggressive songs of the Phantom, and the amusing songs of Messrs Firmin and Andre. Amazing.

To say that I enjoyed my evening, and consequently my belated birthday, would be an understatement. Many thanks Mr Smiley, I really do appreciate your friendship, and your kindness in giving me this pleasure.

A Belated Birthday Celebration

Yesterday I had my belated birthday lunch with Mr Smiley. We met at our usual meeting spot in Trafalgar Square and walked the short distance to our favourite eating place; a bar tucked up a tiny side street off Whitehall.

After a very grey start to the day, the sun and breeze had cleared the clouds from the sky and London was a hot place to be. We managed to find a table almost underneath an air conditioning unit so as to remain cool. But even though we had deliberately chosen that particular table (and the dining area was almost empty) because of its close proximity to the air conditioning, we were asked at regular intervals whether we would like the air conditioning turned down. Each time we both replied with an emphatic "No, thank you". Drinks and food were swiftly ordered and then we were free to chat. It is several months since Mr Smiley and I have seen each other and even though we email each other regularly, it just isn't the same as being able to have a face to face chat.

The time just flew by and before long it was time for Mr Smiley to head off to his afternoon meeting. But before we parted, Mr Smiley gave me my birthday present, a Waterstone's gift card so that I can indulge my passion for books, and the wherewithal to purchase a theatre ticket.

After we parted, I headed for Leicester Square in search of a discounted ticket for a 'must see' show, and then on to Oxford Street as I needed to visit John Lewis to buy some knitting needles. The heat of the day meant that by the time I had completed my purchase in John Lewis I was hot, and my feet were aching from the pounding on the pavements, so I cheated a little, I took a short ride on the Underground to Charing Cross to make my way back to the hub of London, Trafalgar Square.
Yes, that really is a photograph that I took yesterday. While not as crowded as it might be in the height of summer, or during the lunch period (the photograph was taken at 16.22), the area was still full of tourists. I still had a few hours to kill before going to the theatre so I went in search of somewhere to get a snack, and a cold drink (I wasn't particularly hungry but I knew that I would be a little later and that I would regret it if hunger pangs were to spoil my enjoyment of my night out) and I sat and drafted this post in the notebook that accompanies me everywhere.

So what did I go to see? I'll tell you about that later.

I've Had A Pretty Good Day

Today has been the best day I've had for quite a long time. I got up this morning, knowing that I probably wasn't going to be doing any work on my TMAs, but I didn't care. I was going out to have lunch with Mr Smiley and I would be having my first real conversation of the year. I have been avoiding going out over the last week because it was so cold, so I have been on my own and I haven't quite got to the stage of having a conversation with myself, although sometimes I am tempted. I think that blogging helps, because writing posts, and commenting on other blogs is like having conversations. At least that is what I tell myself.

Anyway, I left the house and walked up the road to catch a bus. Unfortunately just before I got to the top of the road, a bus stopped and then set off again before I could get to the bus stop. Still, it wasn't too much of a problem because buses on the particular route that I wanted run about every 10 minutes, and it was nowhere near as cold today as it has been this week. So after sitting at the bus stop for about 10 minutes a bus arrived and I was on my way to Trafalgar Square. I arrived in plenty of time for my lunch date, but I had intended to because I wanted to have a look in Waterstone's. I had a Waterstone's gift card for Christmas and I was going to see if there was something that I really wanted. I gave up in the end because I couldn't make up my mind.

So, I took a walk to the pub where Mr Smiley and I were going to meet and found a table where I could wait for him. We had an excellent lunch and a good chat. Even though we communicate almost daily by email, it is so much better to be able to talk face to face. We had an excellent pasta dish served with garlic bread, and we were both naughty because we decided to have a pudding. Chocolate cake with ice cream for me, and sticky toffee pudding with ice cream for Mr Smiley. We finished off with a coffee, and more conversation. Then it was time for us to go our separate ways.

I didn't have to wait too long for my bus home, and after the usual slow journey to travel what is actually a relatively short distance in miles, I arrived home. I switched on the computer to check for emails and to see who had been blogging and found an email from Lily at The Student Doctor Diaries. After I had written the post about possibly doing some posts on 'How to Knit' she had got in touch with me and we had been corresponding about what would be the best thing for her to knit. Well, she has found a pattern, and she was going to buy some wool today after doing her exam, so I was going to give her some hints and tips, and see if there was anything in the pattern that she would find too difficult. So I dealt with that, and now I am having a restful evening before going to bed to read for a while before trying to get to sleep.

Tomorrow is psychotherapy day so I probably won't sleep too well tonight. It's not a conscious thing, I try not to think about it, but I seem to start getting anxious on a Thursday afternoon, and this means that I don't sleep properly on a Thursday night. Let's hope I don't have a problem tonight.

The Thief Got More Than He Should Have Done

I have to admit that I wasn't entirely successful yesterday, and that old thief Procrastination did rather well as a result.  However, all was not lost, because I did manage to download a lot of my course resources onto my new netbook (my Christmas present to myself) and this means that when I go to the library to do some serious studying, or when I go away anywhere, I have all the materials that I need to continue studying and they are all on a computer that will fit into my handbag.  Admittedly, it will have to be one of my larger handbags, but a handbag nonetheless.

Some work on the TMAs did get completed so I am nearer completing one of them, and I have an extension for another, which is good because although I have done much of the work for that TMA, I do still have a long essay to write and as it is a Science Course it is more complex to write than an essay for a Humanities Course.  So it is going to be a busy weekend as I try to get everything back on track again.

Today, I am having a trip out.  I'm meeting my friend Mr Smiley for lunch; we haven't seen each other for ages as our last three arranged meetings have had to be cancelled owing to illness or changed working priorities.  It will be nice to see him again and catch up on the news about his lovely grand-daughters.  And lunch will probably be quite nice too.