Chrome

If the whole dissertation thing somehow goes awry, my plan is to go into the chrome business. Specifically, the chic chrome kitchen shelf with clever pot hooks business.

It seems that just a couple of years ago, Martha Stewart et al. had inspired a new retro kind of sparse kitchen design and one would think that perhaps the idea of a simple chrome shelf would be a little easier to remedy than it seems to be. This is why I found myself online at 11.43 pm last night (with the newly established internet, which I managed to install on my computer myself -- hoorah!) searching fruitlessly for a decorative yet functional addition to the kitchen, and which will allow more counter space to exist. Hmmm. Well, actually, there IS one out there... it is just $700. I suppose we could make do with the $580 one, but, you know... it just wouldn't be the same.

WHO spends $700 on a shelf made out of some chrome pipes and some clever hanging pot hooks? And why are they wasting our air?

Have also discovered that the UK version of The Container Store is The Holding Company.

As readers may at this point be aware, have moved into new habitat and am having lovely procrastinatory time with new surfaces to clean instead of typing and new furnishing ideas for nest. Hoorah for cleaning products and people who let one borrow their steam cleaner! At this point, am very close to 14000-word required threshold for dissertation. Just can't seem to stop ganglion in wrist from making arm numb (Eamonn seems to be of the opinion that answer to this is to smash the ganglion with a book or something heavy after this paper is finished. Am starting to believe him today. We shall see.). And am also terribly weary of looking at my data and trying to think of anything else clever to say about it.

Anyhoo, Georgia and Eamonn and I moved everything on Thursday evening, then E transformed G's data and made clever graphs, and then we had food!

New house is fabulous. Have front bedroom with bay window, which has space, space, space! Hoorah for space! Rearranged furniture completely and then rearranged it again (with addition over several days of much furniture from E's storage unit, so that now room is homey and cozy and should be good place to write brilliant words of intellectual promise). My housemates are: Steffi (my friend who is a PhD student from Centre for Language and Communication Research and who took classes with us last year) and Diana (a new international MBA student at Cardiff University, who has just arrived from Columbia).

Have a lovely garden, which will be brilliant for barbeques. There is a large paved area and our garden is separated from the next door neighbors's by a short rock wall with ivy. There is a tree in the middle of the grassy area, bordered at the back by tall fir hedges. Out the kitchen window is a view of the church steeple and tower around the corner. And we have windows that actually OPEN instead of just barely pretending to open for safety reasons (and, yes, I know. Must be careful with this, for safety reasons). It is just lovely! Will take pictures and organise them very soon...

Additionally, by Friday, the memo seemed to have been circulated and I was located by my new kitty friend (yet another benefit of having a garden)! He is a youngish tabby with bow legs; he walks like a pirate and I have named him Skimbleshanks. He enjoys sitting in the kitchen window. He does not appear to be related to a railway in any way. And this is just random. They do not, however, seem to have a reasonably priced chrome kitchen shelf for sale. Hmmmm.

Must get back to work... or some semblance thereof.